i' 11

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Social Heredity and
Social Evolution

The Other Side of Eugenics

BY

HERBERT WILLIAM CONN

Profetaor of Biology in Wesleyan Univeraity

Author of Evolution of Today, The Living World, The Method of

Evolution, etc.

THE ABINGDON PRESS

NEW YORK CINCINNATI

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^17489

Copjrright. 1914. by
HERBERT WILLIAM CONN

blrst Kdition printed September, 1914
Reprinted May, 1915

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PKEFACE

The application of the great laws of nature to the
explanation of the history of the human race is one
of the fascinating phases of science. In the study
of the evolutionary processes of the organic world
that has followed Darwin it has been generally as-
sumed that the laws which govern the rest of
the animal world have also governed the evolution
of mankind. That man holds a unique position in
nature has been generally recognized; and some-
times this idea has been so prominent in the
minds of scientists, as well as other classes of think-
ers, as to lead to the assumption that the develop-
ment of man has been a thing apart from the rest of
the living world and due to some special stimulus.
Most generally, however, it has been silently as-
sumed that mankind has been developed under the
same kind of laws and forces that have been con-
cerned in the formation of the lower orders of
nature. One of the more recent phases of this belief
has found expression in the great interest taken in
the modern study of eugenics; for this school is
based upon the laws of inheritance as they have been
determined by the study of the lower orders of
nature which have then been applied to man.

It is the purpose of this work to show that the laws
of the evolution of animals and plants apply to
human evolution only up to a certain point, beyond
which man has been under the influence of distinct
laws of his own. It is our purpose to show that
while the human animal mav doubtless have been

vi PREFACE

developed under the laws which have brought about
the evolution of the rest of the living world, the
human social unit has been developed under the
influence of a new set of forces which have had little
or no influence in developing the animal kingdom. In
doing this there will be given a sketch of the evolu-
tion of what we call civilization, for such a sketch
will show us that social evolution has been controlled
and guided by a new force which we call social hered-
ity, a force which had had almost nothing to do with
the evolution of the rest of the organic world, and
one which acts practically independently of the laws
which the eugenists are disclosing to view. It has
appeared to the author that, with all the cogency of
the facts presented by the eugenists, there is a side
of the question of human develoj^ment which they
are overlooking and which their readers are there-
fore likely to overlook ; a side which, in our opinion,
weighs more heavily in determining human progress
than the laws of inlieritance upon which eugenics is
based. To present this other side of the case, with-
out endeavoring at all to detract from the value of
the agitation for a better inheritance by the best
possible control of marriage, is the excuse for the
preparation of this book at the present time.

H. W. C.

MlDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT, Juue, 1914.

j CHAPTER I

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED

The Evolution of Man and Animals Attested by
THE Same Kind of Evidence

It seems to be quite generally admitted to-day that
the human race was the culmination of a long series
of evolutionary changes. Whatever may be said of
his mental nature, man's body is of the earth earthy
and has had a history parallel to that of other ani-
mals. The same arguments which have led to the
well-nigh universal acceptance of the theory of or-
ganic evolution of animals apply with equal cogency
to the physical nature of man. The lines of argu-
ment which have led to the acceptance of the doctrine
of evolution are three : 1. The evidence derived from
the study of comparative anatomy. 2. The evidence
derived from the study of fossils. 3. The evidence
derived from the study of embryology. While many
and varied arguments have been brought forth for
the theory of genetic descent, they may mostly be
centered around these three lines of evidence. Now,
these three kinds of evidence apply equally to man
and to the lower animals. Man shows exactly the
same kind of anatomical similarity to the lower
animals that they show to each other, for, anatom-
ically, muscle for muscle, bone for bone, man is built
upon the same plan as the ape. Human fossils too,
though scanty, clearly tell the same story of a prog-
ress from lower forms. Among the few fossil

1

2 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

human skulls that have as yet been found there are
several that indicate a being of lower brain capacity
than man of to-day; and there are one or two that
seem to be so distinctly intermediate between man
and the ape that there has been a dispute as to
whether they were really men or some especially
highly developed ape. Moreover, these human
fossils carry the history of man back to a much
earlier age than was at one time thought possible,
and thus have given a far longer period to human
evolution than we formerly supposed. Embryology
teaches the same lesson. The human embryo, like
that of other animals, passes through a series of
stages more or less representing the earlier types
of animals in the earth's history. At one period it
develops gill slits on the sides of its neck like a fish ;
at another it possesses a well developed tail; in
short, like the embryo of a cat or a dog, it passes
through stages that in a measure represent the past
history of the animal kingdom.

It has been these lines of argument primarily
that have led to the general acceptance of the doc-
trine of organic evolution. Now, we may perhaps
deny their cogency entirely and therefore refuse to
accept the theory of evolution in toto; but if we
accept them as sujB&cient to convince us of a gen-
eral evolutionary history of animals, it is simply
mental suicide to refuse to apply them to mankind.
Logical thinking forces us either to accept the evo-
lution doctrine as applying to physical man or to
deny entirely the truth of any evolutionary history
of animals. Since the patient search for evidence
during the half century or more since Darwin has
convinced thinkers generally of the truth of the

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 3

theory of evolution as concerns animals, we are log-
ically forced to admit a similar natural origin of
physical man.

Mental Evolution. — The problem of the origin of
mental man is not so clearly nor so easily settled.
When his mind is taken into consideration, man
stands on a pinnacle by himself, so widely separated
from lower animals that to some there has seemed to
be an impassable gulf between him and the animal
world. Various attempts have been made to define
this mental distinction between man and animals.
Likenesses between them are evident enough. Ani-
mals certainly have some powers of thinking; some
have a memory and are taught by experience. Their
sensations appear to be like those of man; and this
is true also of their emotions, for fear, affection,
anger, jealousy, love and the like are clearly seen
among some of the higher animals. While man
alone may be said to reason, still something at least
faintly resembling reasoning may be seen among cer-
tain animals. Man alone has been said to make and
use tools ; but monkeys certainly learn to use tools,
for thev sometimes utilize sticks and stones for their
own purposes; and it must be remembered that the
oldest records of mankind definitely tell of a period
in his history when he too simply used the sticks and
stones which he found at hand as a first step toward
the manufacture of tools for his own definite ends.
To be sure, man did not stop at this point, but passed
upward to the higher plane of tool making, as well
as tool using, and why he did so while animals have
not, it will be for us to inquire later. But surely we
cannot find any radical separation between man and
animals at this point of the use of tools when we find

4 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

a monkey using a hook on the end of a stick to pull
a desired banana within his reach.

Fundamental Differences Between Man and Animals. —
Actual differences of a fundamental character be-
tween man and animals are not easy to find, but after
extended analysis the fundamental differences ap-
pear to be two : 1. Man alone possesses the power of
forming concepts and using words. 2. Man alone
possesses a moral sense, or conscience. Other sec-
ondary and subordinate differences may surely be
found, but these are radical. No animal forms con-
cepts and gives them names, and none has a moral
sense.

Even along these lines some thinkers are telling
us that this seeming gap between man and animals
may be at least partially bridged. Animals certainly
have perceptions — a first step in mental activity.
Some animals too have a sort of practical, though
vague, classification of perceptions ; as, for example,
when a dog smells an object and at once recognizes
it as belonging to one of the two classes ''good to
eat" and "not good to eat." This is a step toward
a conception and only needs to be named to become
full concept. A water bird acts quite differently in
alighting upon the water and on the land, thus show-
ing a practical recognition of the difference between
solids and liquids. In this the bird's mind certainly
resembles that of the child when, long before he
knows the difference between the words ''hard" and
"soft," he jumps quite differently when he is to
land on a hard floor or a soft cushion. The recogni-
tion of such a practical classification is surely a step
toward their clear conception, and certainly in this
respect the animal may stand on a par with the

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 5

3'onng child. The child, however, goes on to higher
thinking, while the animal stops here, and the real
question is, therefore, why the animal stops and the
child goes on. The illustration will serve, however,
to show how it may be claimed that even in the line
of forming concepts man differs from the higher
animals in degree only.

Along the line of the moral sense, or conscience,
a somewhat similar reasoning has been used. It has
hardly been claimed by anyone that any animal has
a moral sense. No one has ever suggested sending
missionaries to the animals in the jungle. But it is
pointed out that many animals have impulses that
are imperative, urging them into definite courses of
action which are for the benefit of the species but
may be fatal to the individual. The salmon is im-
pelled by an irresistible impulse to ascend the rivers
at the time of spawning. That this is for the benefit
of the species is probable, but it certainly results in
the death of the individuals by millions. A tiger will
sacrifice her life for her young. In these actions
there are certainly points of resemblance to the
action of a martyr who sacrifices his life for a prin-
ciple, and this latter action we call moral.

Thus it appears that doubts have arisen whether
there are any real lines that can be drawn between
man and animals which do not disappear upon care-
ful study. That there is a vast difference, however,
is perfectly apjiarent, and this difference must be
found along the lines pointed out, that is, in the
formation of language and concepts, and in the de-
velopment of the moral sense and the consequences
that have resulted from it.

To these differences it may be perhaps possible to

6 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

add a third in the fact that man alone universally
develops societies and government. It is true that
societies are not wanting among lower animals, and
some sort of government occasionally appears. But
these are commonly based upon a somewhat differ-
ent principle from those of mankind. This point we
will not dwell upon here, for it is the primary topic
for discussion in this whole work, and will be exten-
sively developed in later chapters.

Natural Forces Sufficient to Explain Natural Phenomena. —
The acceptance of the reality of a natural origin of
the human race by evolution thus comes to rest upon
exactly the same basis as that of the rest of the
animal kingdom, and it stands and falls with the
general theory of evolution. Now, no thinker can
fail to realize that the evolutionary theory has re-
ceived its almost universal acceptance from two gen-
eral lines of reasoning. The first is the direct evi-
dence derived from the collection of facts such as
above mentioned. The second is a broader one and
lies in the fact that this conception falls into line
with the general tendency of thought. For cen-
turies science and philosophy have been endeavoring
to group the facts of nature under the influence of
definite forces acting by definite laws. As we have
studied more and more deeply into nature we have
found ourselves able to remove from the realm of
miracle one after another of the former mysteries
of nature and put them in their place as due to
known forces acting by known laws. Step by step
has this comprehension of nature advanced as as-
tronomy, chemistry, physics, geologj^ have been sub-
jected to more and more rigid scrutiny, and every
step taken has been leading in one general direction.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 7

It has become more and more evident with each dec-
ade that nature's forces are sufficient to account for
all natural phenomena, and that these forces act
according to definite methods which we call laws. As
one after another of the previously mysterious phe-
nomena have been thus brought within our compre-
hension it has been more and more certain that all
of nature's phenomena will in time be explained by
natural forces. Further, it has been more and more
clearly seen that nature's processes are regular,
though they may be slow. The "cataclysms" of
earlier science have been forgotten, and in their
place we have found constant but persistent forces,
slowly but continuously producing the series of
changes by which the world has been built. The
great Colorado canon was cut out slowly by the
same forces that are digging channels for the tiny
rivulets by the roadside; and in the same way the
other great wonders of nature have been the result
of the slow but persistent and ever-present forces
of nature.

Now, it is evident that this line of thought, after
it has comprehended the processes by which all other
forms of life have been developed, must in time
inevitably extend to the origin of man. Just as
rapidly as the thought of the day becomes accus-
tomed to this conception of the method of nature's
action, just so rapidly does it adopt the only view
of the origin of the human race that is consistent
with this conception. It is thus a general realiza-
tion of the uniformity of law that has brought about
the general willingness to accept a belief in a natural
origin of the human race, a belief which is to-day
very general not only among scientists but even

8 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

among theologians — a class of thinkers at first much
opposed to such a doctrine.

Have Human and Animal Evolution Been Con-
trolled BY THE Same Laws?

In all this line of reasoning there has been a tacit
assumption that human and animal evolution have
been controlled by the same laws, and therefore that
the conclusions reached concerning the development
of animals may be legitimately applied to the devel-
opment of the human race. This conclusion is a nat-
ural one, and is surely correct up to a certain point.
A human animal was doubtless produced by the
same laws that were concerned in the production of
a horse or an ape. But the human race is some-
thing more than a collection of human animals.
Human evolution has progressed along wholly new
lines, and has produced a result so different from
anything found elsewhere in the organic world as
to have led some to insist that mankind belongs to
a kingdom by himself distinct from plants and
animals both. Now, while no modern biologist will
hold such an extreme position as this, none can fail
to realize that, evolution in the human race has pro-
duced unique results. Whereas every other animal
may be regarded simply as an incident in an evolu-
tionary progress, each appearing and then disap-
pearing without leaving a trace of itself behind,
unless perchance it became a fossil, mankind is tak-
ing possession of the whole world, is exterminating
all forms of life except those that contribute to his
comfort and happiness, and, though he leaves few
fossils, is leaving behind himself traces which are
changing the whole face of nature. His evolution

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 9

cannot, from the standpoints of its results, be com-
pared with that of any other animal. It may well,
therefore, be possible that his evolution may have
been brought about by new forces and controlled by
new laws, so that the conclusions drawn from the
study of animals may not be legitimate, or at least
not adequate, when applied to man.

The organic evolution of animals and plants in
general has been brought about by the action of
three great factors, namely, reproduction, variation,
and heredity. It has been the task of the last half
century to work out the laws by which these factors
have brought about the history of the living world
which we have called organic evolution. It was
Darwin who first set us thinking about this subject.
In the years that have passed since Dai-win, new
data have forced upon us a considerable modifica-
tion of the views advanced first by him. These years
have disclosed many details of the method of action
of these forces in producing evolution, and while
to-day we cannot pretend that we understand the
process fully, we certainly have an approximate idea
as to how these three forces have interacted with
each other to produce the living world of to-day. In
applying these principles to man it has been as-
sumed that the laws discovered for animals apply
also to man. Unquestionably they do up to a cer-
tain point. But since the human race is more than
a simple animal, it is possible that its unique attri-
butes may have been developed under a different set
of forces.

Heredity. — Whatever may have been the details of
the method by which organic evolution has been
brought about, there is no question that the primary

10 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

factor has been the repetition in the offspring oi i\u:
characteristics of the parents, a phenomenon that
we call heredity. This has so clearly been the funda-
mental force as to have led to most extended studies
aimed at solving the method of its action. Darwin
tried to form an idea of its mechanism, but with
little success. Various others have attempted the
same thing with equal lack of success, until the
simple suggestion of Weismann, about thirty years
ago, placed it in an entirely new light. His concep-
tion of a continuous germinal substance so clearly
fulfilled the requirements as to place AVeismann's
explanation of heredity beyond the class of mere
theories and to put it among the accepted truths of
science. With increasing interest and avidity as
newly discovered facts began to disclose fundamen-
tal laws, has the subject of heredity been studied for
three decades. Out of the accumulated facts some
clearly definite results have already been reached.
1, It has been quite firmly demonstrated that the
class of characters which we commonly call acquired
are not passed on to the offspring by inheritance.
Animals may transmit to their offspring those traits
that they themselves have inherited, but they cannot
transmit those characters that they have developed
in themselves as the result of their own actions, or
as the result of the action of their environment upon
them. It has been difficult to make us willing to
accept this conclusion; for we have generally been
unwilling to believe that our own actions cannot in
any degree affect the characteristics that we trans-
mit to our children. But the accumulating evidence
has finally forced us to give up the cherished belief
in the inheritance of acquired characters. 2. The

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 11

modern study of heredity has disclosed the fact
that there is a noticeable permanency in the nature
of inherited traits. It has shown how definite char-
acteristics are handed on from parent to child gen-
eration after generation, showing in each successive
generation the same characters as at the start. It
has told us that such traits may seem to disappear en-
tirely in one or more generations to reappear later
unchanged in some subsequent generation. 3.
Modern study has even shown something of the laws
by which different characteristics, dominant or re-
cessive, as we call them, are transmitted to posterity,
and has particularly emphasized the idea that such
characteristics, in some cases, remain as distinct as
at the start in spite of crossbreeding. Inheritance
has been thus shown to be a very definite thing, far
more fixed in the race than we formerly believed.
We have learned that desirable traits cannot be
brought into inheritance or forced out by any kind
of training, for inherited traits are fixed. All
this emphasizes the fact that to produce a good race
of offs})riug "nature, and not nurture/' must be
appealed to as the dominant force.

In all this, again, we find that it is assumed that
the laws that control animal inheritance apply
equally to man ; and again we say that this is doubt-
less true up to a certain point. Doubtless the human
animal was the result of the same kind of laws of
reproduction and heredity that have guided the evo-
lution of the animal kingdom. Out of this concep-
tion has emerged the interest that has appeared in
the modern study of eugenics. A couple of genera-
tions ago it was possible to teach that a child's edu-
cation should begin "a hundred years before he is

12 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

born," for we could then believe that the education
of the parents actually affected the characters which
they transmitted to their offspring. But with the
new knowledge of heredity such a belief is no longer
possible, since education is nothing but a series of
acquired characters and hence not transmitted by
inheritance. The education of the parents has no
effect upon the inherited traits of the children. If,
then, neither environment nor training can affect
inheritance there seems to be left as a means of
improving the coming generations no method except
improving the inheritance by guiding in some way
the mating of individuals, so that only those with the
better lines of inheritance shall be allowed to prop-
agate the race. This feeling has brought to the
front the modern interest in eugenics which tries to
improve the race by some kind of control of the mat-
ings of mankind which shall breed a race of men
as perfect as our breeders have produced in their
I high-bred horses.

Eugenics. — The teaching of eugenics leads to two
unfortunate results. The first is a feeling of hope-
lessness and pessimism. As long as it was possible
to believe that the inheritance which we transmit
to our offspring might be modified by our own ac-
tions, it was possible to see a hope in the future. If
the race can be permanently modified by the training
that may be given to individuals, progress is inevit-
able. But if we are forced to believe that by nothing
that we do can we influence the inheritance which we
hand down to our children, we are landed almost in
despair. By this new view of heredity we learn that
the inheritance which we are to transmit into our off-
spring is fixed when we select our husband or wife.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 13

and that nothing that we may do subsequently can
possibly modify it. There seems little hope for the
future with such a view, for we cannot believe that
even the most extended discussion will have any
material effect upon the mating habits of mankind.
The choice of husband and wife is bound up in the
complex social conditions in such a way that it is
determined by an indefinite number of artificial
factors of which physical fitness hardly plays even
a minor part. It is not possible to expect that mar-
riages will be determined by fitness, nor that human
breeding will ever be controlled as is the breeding of
domestic animals. It is probably not desirable that
it should be. But, remembering the inexorable laws
of inheritance, there seems to be no hope for the
future except By^ontrolling marriages, and the
'manifest im})Ossibnity of this leaves us helpless and
despondent. Marriages will continue to be deter-
mined by passion and accident rather than by fitness.

The second unfortunate tendency of the emphasis
placed upon eugenics is that it inevitably makes us
neglect certain other phases of the inheritance ques-
tion which in reality have had great influence upon
the evolution of mankind. Reference is here made
to phenomena which in the subsequent pages of this
work are together called social heredity. Since a
discussion of this topic is to follow, no further refer-
ence need be made to it here.

Eugenics and Disease. — In our reference to eugenics
in this discussion in this work it must be clearly
understood that we take into consideration only
those phases of the subject that have to do with he-
redity in the strict sense of that term, and not certain
other matters that are frequently considered with

14 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

it. In tlie discussion of eugenics in the public
press reference is most commonly made to the sad
and terrible story of the ravages played upon
the race by the sexual diseases which are undoubt-
edly transmitted from parent to child. The actual
attempts made by certain States to regulate mar-
riage by requiring medical certificates of fitness
of the contracting parties have reference largely to
the question of the presence of the venereal dis-
eases. Nothing is more certain than the disasters
that follow in the train of these diseases, and no
attempt should be spared to eradicate them by con-
trolling marriage if this is possible. But to make
our discussion clear it must be definitely understood
that these diseases are not inherited in the same
sense that we inherit the color of our eyes and other
features of our bodies. It is true that they are passed
from parent to child, but not by organic inheritance.
They are contagious diseases, and the child does not
inherit them, but, rather, ** catches" them from its
parents. They are due to perfectly well-known
microorganisms which lodge in the reproductive or-
gans and may pass bodily from the parent to the
child by simple contact. When one child acquires
measles from another we never think of saying that
he inherits it from his sick friend. In the same way
if the parent has contracted one of these loathsome
diseases, the child may be directly infected with the
disease organisms at birth, or even before birth, but
does not in the true sense inherit the disease. We
must clearly recognize that by true organic inherit-
ance reference is made only to such characteristics
as have been incorporated into the germinal matter
in the egg or sperm and not to any extraneous para-

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 15

sites which may, either early or late, attack the indi-
vidual that grows from the egg. We can only say
that such diseases are inherited by using the term
"inheritance" with a totally different meaning from
that which we have been accustomed to give it since
Weismann led us to a conception of the subject, us-
ing the term, indeed, in much the same way as we
shall use it i)resently under the designation of social
heredity. That type of heredity that denies the
transmission of acquired characters, which tells us
that characters are so firmly fixed generation after
generation, and which has been the foundation upon
which organic evolution has been builded, is a totally
distinct phenomenon from the transmission from
parent to child of the germ parasites of the venereal
diseases. If syphilis can actually affect the germi-
nal substance so that its effects are produced in the
following generation through that germinal sub-
stance, we might then call it inherited ; but so long as
the child simply becomes inoculated by the germs
which are present in the parent it is not true inherit-
ance.

One other misunderstanding must also be guarded
against. There are certain substances which act as
poisons upon the individual and also upon the germi-
nal substances which the individual carries in his
body. These may produce an effect upon the first
individual acted upon by them and also upon sub-
sequent generations because they directly poison the
germinal substance. For this reason they are called
racial poisons. The poisonous action of alcohol and
of the syphilitic poison are the best-known examples,
for these disastrous substances directly poison the
germinal substance, so that subsequent generations

16 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

are affected. But this is not a case of real heredity ;
for the effect upon the parent is not transmitted to
the child. The poison has one effect upon the parent
who is first subjected to it, and perhaps a totally
different one on the offspring. It has poisoned the
germinal material so that subsequent generations
are perhaps weak and abnormal, but the children do
not inherit the special effects that are produced upon
the parents. They are instances of racial poisoning
and not of direct inheritance.

In our discussion of eugenics we make reference
only to the characters that are handed on by the
germinal inheritance, and this does not include the
venereal diseases. In all our references to heredity
we have in mind only the inheritance of normal
healthy individuals and not the inheritance of dis-
ease either physical or mental. These latter phases
of inheritance stand in a class by themselves and
cannot properly be considered as matters of inherit-
ance in the same sense as are the normal characters
that the child receives from its parents.

The conclusions of eugenics are all based upon the
assumption that mankind is controlled by the same
laws as the rest of the organic world, but, again it
must be pointed out that man stands in a unique
position. The human animal may be controlled by
the same laws of heredity as other animals ; but the
human being is more than an animal, and the charac-
teristics which isolate him so sharply from the rest of
organic nature are not features of his animal func-
tions at all, but are something quite distinct. It is
quite possible that, while his animal characters are
under the dominion of the common laws of heredity,
those characteristics which make him stand forth

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 17

SO sharply in contrast to other animals are under the
influence of a different set of laws. If so, these con-
clusions of helplessness which come from the eugen-
ics may not be well founded.

Man As an Animal Contrasted with Man As a

Social Unit

In man there are two more or less distinct natures.
These we may perhaps best understand under the
terms of his animal and his social nature. By the
former he possesses his body with its bones and
muscles, its brain and sense organs, its instincts
and mental powers. By the latter he has those
attributes that make him a social unit. His animal
nature makes him an animal much like others, but it
is the other side of his nature that makes him a man
in the unique sense in which that term is commonly
used when contrasted with animal. While it is true
that his evolution as an animal may have been con-
trolled by the same laws as those that have pro-
duced the evolution of the rest of the animal world,
this does not necessarily apply to his evolution as a
social individual, since this particular development
has been a unique one. It is one purpose of this work
to show that this social evolution has not been con-
trolled by the same laws that have dominated or-
ganic evolution in general.

The contrast between the animal man and the
social man is an extraordinary one, but one which
science rarely take the pains to draw. Man the
animal, except as concerns his brain and brain
power, does not by any means stand at the summit
of the animal kingdom. Many animals excel him in
strength, in agility, in ability to defend themselves

18 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

or to master enemies. He is poorly protected from
the weather, for his skin is naked; his powers of
flight are feeble compared with many other animals ;
his body, seemingly built for an arboreal life, is
poorly adapted to life on the ground, and the upright
position he has assumed entails many points of
weakness. His senses are not so keen as those of
some animals. His children are weak and helpless
for a longer period than any other animal. Thus in
many respects he is not particularly well built as an
animal, and other lower animals are in these points
his superior.

But when we turn to the question of man as a
social unit we find a very different story, since no
animal is his equal in any one of the above men-
tioned respects. No animal compares with him in
strength when he uses the machines that he makes ;
no animal is so well protected from the weather as
he is with his artificial clothing, his houses, and his
fires ; no animal can see as far as his telescope or so
minutely as his microscope, nor can any hear as far
as his telephone, and none can compare with him in
the ability to rear and maintain his offspring on the
earth. In every and all respects he is the superior
of animals when the totality of human life is con-
sidered, but he is superior not from his powers as an
animal but from the powers given him by society.

After all, it is civilization that makes the man, and
not his bones, muscles, nor even his mental attri-
butes. Of course intelligence is a fundamental
factor, since without it civilization could not have
developed. But it is really the powers that come
from society that put man upon a plane so much
above animals. Perhaps this may be best realized

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 19

if we try to compare that which might be accom-
plished by an exceptionally intelligent savage with
that which lies within reach of an intelligent member
of a civilized nation. The former can accomplish
little or nothing of lasting moment. All that lies
within the reach of the highest intelligence among
savages is the possibility of controlling for a few
years the actions of a small body of fighters. After
his death, and frequently long before it, his influ-
ence ceases entirely, and the life he has lived has
had hardly more lasting influence than that of the
buffalo he has slain. Contrast this with the power
and influence of a ruler of a civilization. He may
direct the activities of millions, may turn the tide of
civilization into new channels, and his influence, in-
stead of ending with his death, may go on with ever-
increasing force. The influence of the life of Lin-
coln is greater to-day than ever, but the influence of
Sitting Bull ended long before he died. Now, it may
be possible that the intelligence of the ruler of a
civilized nation is higher than that of the savage
chief, though there are good reasons for doubting
this conclusion, but it is very manifest that the dif-
ference in mental attainments did not explain the dif-
ference between the achievements of Lincoln and
Sitting Bull. Whether the German Kaiser, when,
a few years ago, he decided to demand indemnity for
a few missionaries killed in China, acted with more
intelligence than an Indian chieftain did when plan-
ning an Indian raid, may well be doubted, and is,
indeed, of no special concern, for it is perfectly evi-
dent that the results were not commensurate with
any intellectual differences between the two men.
The action of the one, by starting events, finally

20 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

waked up sleeping China and altered the history of
the world, while the raid planned by the other was
forgotten almost as soon as it was over. The reason
for the difference was that civilization had placed
in the hands of the one immense forces to be wielded,
while the other had little at his command beyond his
own individual power. The one by means of the
forces placed in his hands by society turned the
destiny of the world ; the other had an influence that
hardly extended beyond his own vision, because the
society in which he lived could not give him such
powers. A man standing alone is a feeble individ-
ual. Imagine the most intellectually endowed indi-
vidual brought up without any contact with his
fellow men. His life would be merely an existence,
and at its close it would have meant no more than
the life of an ape. But that same man placed in a
community with other men, by utilizing their com-
bined powers, may do a work that will live for all
time. Man thus owes his powers not to what he him-
self possesses, but, rather, to the fact that he lives
in such relations to others that the united accom-
plishment of all may be relied upon to accomplish
any work that promises mutual utility.

By this time the contrast that we wish to draw will
be evident. Man shares with the rest of the animal
kingdom certain characteristics. These include his
physical nature, a body made of a series of organs
similar to those which are possessed by his close
allies among the lower animals. They include, too,
whatever of instinct he may possess; for while
instincts do not play a very large part in human life,
they are not wanting. With animals too man shares
a brain, and his brain is closely similar to that of

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 21

some of the higher animals. Mental powers too he
shares with them; although manifestly they are
more developed and upon a higher plane, since his
mind is capable of much that is quite beyond the
capacity of other animals. Concerning all these ani-
mal characteristics, the logic of the argument that
human evolution has been controlled by the same law
as that of animals is irrefutable. Since man is so
closely like other animals, all of the arguments which
apply to the organic nature in general apply also to
him, and logical consistency forces us to recognize
the origin of this being as the result of the same
forces that have produced other species.

But there is the second phase of human life which,
more than his animal nature, constitutes the real
nature of mankind, and this consists not in the char-
acters he possesses as an animal but in those which
he possesses as being a member of society. These
he does not share with any animals, and, as we shall
see later, he owes them to a totally different set of
laws from those which have determined his animal
characteristics. To this whole set of characteristics
the conclusions of eugenics, and the rather hope-
less deductions from modern studies of heredity, fail
to apply.

The Characteristics of Social Man

To set more clearly before us the real significance
of the social characteristics of man we will here
briefly outline the primary features that man owes
to his social in contrast to his organic nature. When
we try to analyze human attributes with this in mind
we are possibly surprised to find how large a part of
them depend upon the social nature. We may clas-

22 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

sify these social attributes under the following heads :

1. Language. Beyond question, this is a social and
not an organic characteristic. Language is impos-
sible except where social intercourse is found. It
develops with society and it in turn develops society.
If we try for a moment to imagine what the human
race would be without language, we see plainly that
it would not be man. The individuals might be ex-
ceptionally shrewd, cunning animals, but the very
essence of manhood would be lacking.

2. Writing and Printing. These clearly are lan-
guage carried many steps beyond speech. If by
some miracle we could blot out writing and printing,
man would drop back into savagery in a single gen-
eration. That these attributes are social rather than
organic is self-evident.

3. The Moral Sense. By this term we mean that
phase of human nature that leads man to a willing-
ness to sacrifice his own interests to another. Here
clearly belong the religious instincts. It is upon
this attribute that society is founded, since civiliza-
tion would be impossible without it. That moral
sense is a gift to mankind from his social relations
may not seem certain, and it will be considered in a
later chapter.

4. Customs and Government. It has been the
existence of a willingness to be governed that makes
possible the union of great bodies of men into coher-
ent units. It is this which makes it possible for man
to accomplish the gigantic changes on the face of
nature that he has been bringing about during all his
history.

5. Knoivledge. Under this broad term we include
the vast accumulation of information which the race

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 23

has been obtaining century after century in all direc-
tions. This information manifestly constitutes the
foundation of modern civilization and is most cer-
tainly a direct result of man's social relations.

6. Accumulations. By this term we refer to the
material wealth which man has been heaping up age
after age, and it includes all those works of mankind
that an earlier generation prepares and which a later
generation uses. This wealth has to-day come to
be of vast extent.

These various attributes together, it will be read-
ily agreed, comprise all of the highest phases of
human life. It is these acquirements that have en-
abled man to place himself upon a plane far above
all other animals; these which have given him his
command over nature, animate and inanimate ; these
which set the human race so far above the mere
human animal. Blot these all out of existence, and
man would be a brute surely, little superior to his
closest animal allies, a rather weak animal, being
poorly protected by nature and poorly furnished
with either offensive or defensive powers. Far
below the lowest savage would he stand, and surely
almost on a par with brutes. A human animal he
would be; but world-wide different from man as we
now understand the term. We cannot avoid the
conclusion that the real man is the social individual,
and his unique characteristics, all his highest attri-
butes, are those coming from his social rather than
those coming from his animal nature. The real ad-
vance of man over the animals has been in develop-
ing his social attributes and not in becoming a better
animal.

A little further consideration of these various fea-

24 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

tures of mankind which constitute the higher pliase
of his nature shows us that they are one and all of
the class which are generally called acquired char-
acters. Nothing is more certain than the fact that
mankind is not born possessing these attributes that
constitute his chief glory. The young child does not
inherit language, nor does he show a moral sense,
nor the principles of government, nor any shred of
knowledge from his parents. It may perhaps be
questioned by some whether he does not inherit a
moral sense, and this subject we shall have to dis-
cuss later. But for a moment we may be allowed to
assume the truth of this position; and certainly in
regard to the other special attributes which we have
mentioned above, they are each acquired independ-
ently by each individual after his birth. They are
distinctly acquired characters, and like other
acquired characters they do not seem to be trans-
mitted to the offspring. Although our ancestors
have used language for long generations, and though
they have been submissive to law and government,
it is still absolutely necessary for each child born
into the world to learn to speak, and to be taught the
principles of submission to authority; and the same
principle is manifestly true of the other distinctively
human attributes.

Social Inheritance

This conclusion leads us to another of much
wider significance. Since civilization is a unique
phase of evolution, it must have been developed by
laws of its own. Since it is simply a series of ac-
quired characters, it cannot have been inherited in

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 25

the common sense of that term. But nevertheless
it is perfectly evident that these characteristics
which constitute civilization are handed on from gen-
eration to generation. There is never any failure of
one generation to receive them from its parents, and
thus they are transmitted from generation to gen-
eration just as truly as are the color of the eyes and
the complexion of the skin. It thus becomes clear
that there is a kind of transmission of attributes
from parent to child that is totally distinct from that
which our students of heredity have been studying.
Our parents may directly give us some of their pos-
sessions, so that we as well as they may use them,
and yet these need not become a part of our organic
nature and never be transmitted by the ordinary
processes of reproduction. This kind of inheritance
may be distinctively called social heredity in distinc-
tion from organic heredity, which latter term we will
retain for heredity as it has been commonly under-
stood.

By the term '* social heredity" is meant thus the
power of handing on to the offsi^ring the various
accumulated possessions of the parents. These pos-
sessions may be material, as when one generation of
man receives the various structures which previous
generations have built. They may be purely mental,
as when one generation teaches to the next the facts
that have been taught it by the previous generation,
or the facts that it has itself discovered anew. They
may be even more intangible than this, as when one
generation quite unconsciously learns the customs,
habits, and even the mental methods of thinking of
the last. In all cases, however, the things handed on
to the next generation may be looked upon as pos-

26 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

sessions which each generation may enjoy and may
make use of; but in no case do these possessions
become part of the individual so as to enter into the
structure of the germinal substance, and therefore
they do not become a part of organic inheritance.

Social heredity is thus simply the handing from
generation to generation of the accumulations that
have been heaped up by the past, wholly outside of
the innate nature of the individual.

The laws controlling these two different types of
heredity are diametrically opposite. Organic hered-
ity concerns the germinal substance in the egg and
sperm. It is fixed and determined by the mixture of
the germinal substance of the two parents in sex
union. It is not capable of being modified by any
action of the individual and is unmodified by any
kind of acquired variations. It is controlled by very
definite laws, as has been shown by the studies of
recent years. It is organic heredity that has been
almost wholly concerned in producing the animal
and vegetable kingdoms as they exist in the world
to-day, and it is this which has been subjected to the
severe scrutiny of the last thirty years. It is
organic heredity that has been chiefly concerned in
the development of what we have spoken of as the
human animal, and it is this type of heredity that is
kept ever in mind by our eugenic friends in their
endeavors to emphasize the primary importance of
a control of marriage and of thus securing a better
inheritance for mankind.

In sharp contrast to this stands social heredity.
This does not at all concern the germinal substance
in the egg and is not fixed by the union of germ sub-
stances in sex union. It is capable of being modified

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 27

by the action of individuals, and may be entirely
changed by the development of newly acquired varia-
tions. It has had little or nothing to do with the
evolution of the human animal, but much to do with
the evolution of the civilized human race. It is con-
cerned with the transmission from generation to
generation of the highest attributes of mankind,
whereas organic evolution is concerned in the trans-
mission of the lowest, that is, those which we some-
times call the animal attributes. It is a factor that
our studies of eugenics pay little attention to since
it is not controlled by the ordinarily accepted laws
of heredity. In everj- respect, indeed, in its method
of working and in the characteristics that it trans-
mits, social heredity stands in sharpest contrast to
organic heredity.

Social Inheritance and Acquired Characters. — It will
be noticed that the characters transmitted by social
heredity stand in quite a different relation from
those transmitted by organic hereditj^ in that they
can be modified and directed by education. The feel-
ing of hopelessness that attends discussions of
eugenics comes from the belief that our inheritance
is definitely fixed in the germ substance from which
we came; and, moreover, that nothing that we can
do in our own lives, and nothing that we may do for
our children after birth can affect their heritage for
good or bad. If it is assumed that heritage is fixed
by the mating of man and wife, and if nothing except
a change in the methods of mating can influence the
heritage, then truly the only hope for the future lies
in the control of marriage. But quite differently
stands anything transmitted by social heredity, since,
by the very nature of the case, such characters are

28 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

transmitted differently. These may be acquired,
they may be developed by education, they may be
consciously improved by our intelligence, and all the
improvements may be handed on to the next genera-
tion. The possibility of modifying the nature of the
inheritance we hand to our children does not, then,
hang upon such an uncontrollable and mysterious
phenomenon as the mixture of germ substances in
sex union, but it may depend directly upon our con-
scious efforts. Along these lines an advance in the
race may be brought about by improving the condi-
tions of life, even though we are forced to admit that
no amount of training can in the slightest modify the
characters that we transmit by organic heredity.
When we come to learn, as we shall in a later chap-
ter, that the characters transmitted by social heredity
far outnumber in scope and significance those trans-
mitted by organic heredity, the whole problem of the
improvement and advance of the human race assumes
a new aspect. That a good organic inheritance is
of value beyond conception no one will deny; and
certainly every effort that can be made along the
lines advocated by modern eugenics to improve the
heritage should receive the heartiest support by all
interested in the advance of the race. But if our
higher attributes are mostly the nature of acquired
characters which may be transmitted by social hered-
ity, then the future of the race does not seem quite so
hopeless, even though we do recognize the proficiency
of a Jukes family to produce criminals. Social char-
acters may be transmitted to posterity in many cases
in spite of an organic inheritance tending against
them.

Significance of Social Heredity — The idea of social

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 29

heredity is certainly not new. Of course it has long
heen recognized that what the parents themselves
learn they are likely to impart to their children. To
call this by the name of heredity may be somewhat
new, but the idea is old. But in former years this
idea was not clearly separated from heredity in the
more common use of the term. It was somewhat
unclearly thought that one generation passed on its
characteristics to the next by a combination of meth-
ods. It was supposed that each generation inherited
at birth certain powers {congenital characters), and
then by the experiences of life developed these pow-
ers, consciously or unconsciously, transmitting to
the next generation an inheritance different from
that which it had itself received, which was still
further modified by the next generation. The whole
process was looked upon as heredity without any
very definite attempt to separate the different fac-
tors. Later, especially after Weismann had thrown
so much light ui)on the process of transference of
characters by organic heredity, the complex ideas
of earlier days began to get cleared up. As a result
the term "heredity" has been retained as apply-
ing only to the ])rocess of transference from one
generation to the next by the germinal substance
in the sex cells. The intense interest which was then
aroused over the process of organic inheritance drew
attention to this phenomenon. As it became more
and more evident that acquired characters are not
inherited by organic inheritance, they came soon to
be slightingly spoken of and looked upon as not hav-
ing any influence in the evolution process. Further,
it is a fact that among animals the phenomenon of
social heredity has little influence, and inasmuch as

30 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

biologists confined their attention almost wholly to
the animal and vegetable kingdoms, exclusive of man,
it was natural that they should pay less and less
attention to acquired characters. It has thus come
about that to advance a belief that acquired char-
acters may influence the onward sweep of evolution
has come to be regarded to-day as almost biological
heresy.

But this is manifestly a very one-sided view of
nature. Even though acquired characters may not
be inherited in the usual acceptance of that tenn,
they surely have some influence upon life. It is
time to turn our attention for a little away from
congenital characters, whose appearance in the germ
plasm is as yet wholly unexplained, and to see
whether we may not have made a mistake in aban-
doning all acquired characters so totally as factors in
evolution. If we find that such characters, instead
of constituting a small part of human attributes,
really form a larger part of the whole, surely, then, in
explaining human evolution the process of acquiring
characteristics by the individual cannot be placed
behind the process of inheritance. If we find that in
the human race these acquired characters comprise
nearly all that we hold most valuable in our human
nature, then with equal certainty social heredity will
not stand behind, but really ahead of organic hered-
ity in determining human evolution, quite irrespec-
tive of what influence it may have had among other
animals. Since we find these factors are handed
from one generation to the next, we are justified in
calling the law of their transmission by the name of
heredity.

human and animal evolution contrasted 31

Scope of the Two Types of Social Heredity

Having recognized the two sharply contrasted
methods by which one generation can transmit its
characters to the next, we must raise the question as
to the scope of the two methods. An extended dis-
cussion of the general conclusions upon this question
will be reserved for a later part of this work. At
this point will be given a brief outline of the applica-
tion of organic and social heredity to certain phases
of life. Manifestly, we should infer that social he-
redity is concerned in the transference of all that is
generally comprised in the broad term of social attri-
butes, while organic inheritance would deal with the
purely animal nature of man. But this statement is
too vague to show the real import of the subject.

Social Heredity in Animals. — "We may notice, in the
first place, that the reason why social heredity has
been so generally neglected in discussions of evolu-
tion is because such discussions have been largely
based upon a study of animals lower than man,
and among them social heredity plays a compara-
tively small part. ' The lower orders of nature have
only been incidentally touched by the forces of
social heredity. The essential feature of social
inheritance lies in the ability of the individual to
learn from his surroundings and to teach his off-
spring what he has learned, this form of heredity
being really a relearuing or reacquiring by the
young of those things that the parent is able to teach.
Now, it is notorious that animals are capable only
to the most limited extent of learning anything.
Among some of the higher and most intelligent of
them there seems to be fairly good evidence that

32 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

individuals have the power of learning something
from their surroundings. Surely, a dog can be
taught by his trainer, and surely too, which is more
to the point, a dog, an elephant, or a monkey learns
some things from natural surroundings. So far
as a monkey in his troop of relatives learns from
them how to behave under common conditions of
life, so far does he come under the influence of
social heredity. Certain it is too that the monkey,
by following his mother, is inevitably led into habits
of life that materially modify his structure. If we
could imagine a monkey brought up in a country
without trees, he would become a very different adult
from that which his brother had become reared
in a forest. With an identical organic inheritance
the two animals would become quite different adults.
So far then as the animal is modified by his sur-
roundings, to this extent he benefits by the prin-
ciple of social heredity. Where we find animals liv-
ing in societies we may therefore assume that a social
inheritance is a possibility.

But as we go to the animals with less intelligence
we find the power of learning disappearing. The
lower orders of animals do not learn from expe-
rience, and certainly never teach each other. We
may believe that monkeys are perhaps modified by
their associations with each other, and that the indi-
viduals of a herd of antelopes are somewhat differ-
ent from what they would be if they lived a solitary
life. But it is certainly doubtful whether the indi-
vidual members of a school of fish are at all modified
by their living together, and most certainly social
heredity plays no part in the development of a swarm
of flies. Among a vast proportion of the lower ani-

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 33

mals individuals live more or less solitary lives with
practically uo contact with other members of their
own species, and under such conditions beyond ques-
tion social inheritance can play no part. As we go
lower in the scale of life the influence of social hered-
ity vanishes entirely, and organic inheritance is left
as the only method by which one generation can influ-
ence the next.

In another respect also we find the action of social
inheritance must be limited among lower animals.
Since characters thus inherited must be indepen-
dently acquired by each generation, and, indeed, by
each individual, it is manifest that social inheritance
can be of great influence only where a generation
lasts long enough to make possible considerable
acquirements of information. It takes years of
training of even intelligent man to make a social indi-
vidual of him; and manifestly if his life extended
only over a single year, no matter what mental pow-
ers he might have, his acquirements by the time of
his death would be slight, and the great fabric of
civilization would be impossible. Now, we must re-
member that the great host of animals live short
lives. Some of thorn have a generation of only three
to four days; some pass from one generation to the
next in three to four weeks, while others may live an
equal number of months. Some, indeed, live for a
year or a few years, and some without doubt live
even longer than man himself. But for the most
part the lower animals live such short lives that an
acquirement of a social inheritance by the process of
learning would be impossible because of lack of time,
even were the mental powers sufficient. An insect
that lives its whole life in three weeks clearly could

34 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

not wait for the slow process of learning in order to
live its life with, success. Social inheritance may be
of great moment in a long-lived race, but can be of
little significance in a short-lived species. Animals
whose whole life is passed in a few days or weeks
cannot wait for the slow process of learning, but must
depend upon something quicker. Hence we find
short-lived animals endowed with instincts which
come from organic inheritance. Now, instincts are
unquestionably the result of an inherited structure
of the nervous system. Two eggs are hatched under
the same hen and therefore under like conditions ; but
one hatches into a duck and runs to the water while
the other hatches into a chick and shuns it. No other
conclusion is possible except that the nervous system
that controls the muscle action is different in the
two cases. Our psychologists too are equally con-
fident that the nervous structure of the brain of a
child is different from that of an adult, and that it is,
moreover, different in the case of adult men in differ-
ent conditions. The brain of Newton at his zenith
was different in structure from that of Nero. The
human brain thus becomes molded by experience.
But in the life of a chick there is not time enough
in its few months of existence for the brain to be
molded by experience, and the animal is born with its
brain already preformed so as to control its actions.
We call the actions of the preformed brain by the
name of instincts, and we learn that the traits so
named are handed on from generation to genera-
tion by organic inheritance. We call the actions
of the brain that becomes molded by experience,
but is not preformed, by the name of intelligence,
and we find that this is not handed on by heredity

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 35

but is acquired anew by each individual after years
of training.

From all these considerations together it becomes
evident that among the lowest orders of nature the
factor of social inheritance plays no part, and that
even among the higher animals just below man its
part is a subordinate one. Only in long-lived species
can it be a factor of much moment, and long-lived
animals are very rare. While we would not deny
that this factor may have had an influence in the
lives of some species, its influence is slight. The
evolution of the animal kingdom below man has been
the result of the action of organic heredity transmit-
ting congenital characteristics from generation to
generation.

Organic Heredity in Man. — It is not easy to state ac-
curately just what man owes to organic heredity, or,
at all events, it is difficult to draw any clear line sep-
arating his organic from his social inheritance. It
is, of course, manifest that he owes his physical
nature to this law, and this includes all the features
of his bodily structure except such modifications of
his body as are due to his peculiar mode of life. If
he becomes a blacksmith, a watchmaker, a pianist,
or a baseball player, the peculiar development
of his arms and hands he owes to an acquire-
ment by social inheritance and not to organic
inheritance. But except for some few such charac-
ters man owes his physical structure to organic
inheritance. This physical structure, of course,
includes that of his brain as well as his muscles, and
with his brain come his mental powers. It is clear
that the mental powers with which he is endowed
come to him by organic inheritance ; but it is equally

36 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

clear that he does not owe to such inheritance the new
powers that he acquires by using his brain and by
learning. What the child is when born he owes
to organic heredity, but what he becomes he owes
chiefly to social heredity. This general statement
will probably not be disputed. But when we try
to determine just how much of the mental equip-
ment of the adult is the result of his organic inher-
itance and how much of it is acquired by teaching
and imitation, we may find a considerable lack
of agreement. Inasmuch, however, as the primary
purpose of the following chapters is to develop
this phase of the subject, we will not here attempt
any further analysis of the matter.

Social Heredity in Mankind

It may be questioned whether the principle which
we are considering can properly be called heredity.
Certainly, it cannot be so called without a clear
understanding of it, which will prevent its being
confused with organic heredity. But with a proper
understanding the term is perfectly legitimate.
Indeed, one of the most common uses of the term
*' heredity" has always had reference to that phase
of it that we have called social heredity. It is com-
mon to speak of children inheriting property from
their parents, using thus exactly the same term
that is used in speaking of the inheritance of black
hair or blue eyes. In the common use of the
word, inheritance signifies the passing to the chil-
dren of anything possessed by the parents; and if
we adopt this common understanding, it is proper
to speak of the child as inheriting the language
as well as the property or the physical characters

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 37

of his parents. It is necessary, however, clearly
to distinguish between the two types of inheritance,
and to recognize that they are brought about by
a different set of forces and controlled by differ-
ent laws. If for the one type of tranference we use
the term '' organic" or '^ germinal heredity," and
for the other ''social heredity," there can be no con-
fusion of meaning and our use of the terms in this
sense is perfectly defensible.

Its Certainty of Action. — We next notice that social
heredity is just as sure in results as organic he-
redity; indeed, it is sometimes more sure. Organic
inheritance has always been recognized as a matter
of great uncertainty. Even though the parents both
have black eyes, it is by no means sure that the off-
spring will have the same. Some features are indeed
fairly certain to be inherited by the children, for we
may be reasonably confident that the child will have
arms and legs, inherited of course from its parents ;
though occasionally this rule is broken, for armless
children are sometimes born from normal parents.
In regard to the countless minor characters there
seems to be apparently no definiteness in the result.
Part of this doubtless may be due to our ignorance,
and we must believe that some day these obscure
facts may be made more clear. But it is certain that a
child's inheritance is still problematical, even though
his line of germinal inheritance is fixed. History i«
filled with instances of children departing wirl'^iy
from their parents, and cases will occur to the mind
at once of the "black sheep" in the family of excep-
tionally good inheritance, or of unexpected "white
sheep" in a family made up mostly of the black
variety. With an identical inheritance two brothers

38 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

may be far apart in character, so that germinal in-
heritance seems sometimes as uncertain as the winds.
Judging from the past, we shall have to conclude that
even if it were possible to control the matings of men
and women so that only the better representatives of
man should marry, even then we could not be sure
that any individual would show an ideal, or even a
desirable, inheritance, nor could any family be thus
guaranteed against the *' black sheep."

In sharp contrast to this story is that of many
features of social inheritance. If a child is born and
reared under a certain environment, it is certain to
develop under the influence of that environment. A
child reared in England is sure to talk English, while
the child brought up in a Chinese family will as
surely speak Chinese. This is far more certain than
it is that he will have the same colored hair as his
parents. The child brought up in an upright, intelli-
gent family in the United States will develop totally
different habits and modes of thinking, even a dif-
ferent conscience, from that which will be found in
the child brought up in a Turkish family. Instances
sufficient are on record of children being separated
from their parents while very young and brought up
as members of a family of savages; and they are
found when adult to have developed the instincts,
customs, and methods of thinking of their savage
<'^ster parents. The social inheritance is stronger in
su*^ cases than the organic inheritance. The Amer-
ican boy in these days will develop a knowledge of
baseball and be able to play it, while the Chinese boy
will as surely learn to fly kites. The child of New
York, reared within its walls, will become fashioned
by his environment into a totally different adult

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 39

from the child of Peking or of the mid- African sav-
age village. The social inheritance is sure, for it is
totally impossible for a man to be reared in an en-
vironment and not to be molded by it. A child of
red-haired, English-speaking parents may not have
red hair, but he must speak English if he is brought
up by his parents. Social inheritance is dependent
solely upon the environment m wnicn the child-JS-
r eared, and is as certain as the environment. To be
sure, different individuals absorb this inhel-itance in
different degrees, especially certain phases of it con-
nected with what we call the moral nature; but all
absorb some of it, and the integrity of the man who
has been reared under one set of influences, as well as
the vices of the man of the slums, are to a large
extent — one might almost say wholly, if he did not
believe in personal initiative — due to the inheritance
which society has given him.

The Jukes family has often been quoted as illus-
trating the effects of inheritance where for genera-
tion after generation the offspring of the original
pair have produced criminals. The Edwards family
is in the same way used to illustrate the effects of
good inheritance, since this family produced genera-
tion after generation college presidents and pro-
fessors, as well as other eminent men of learning.
We will not attempt to doubt the effect of organic
inheritance in these cases, but they may just as well
be used to illustrate our point of the inevitable
effects of social heredity. It must be remembered
that the Jukes children were reared amid crime and
profligacy, and were from childhood taught, both
consciously and unconsciously, that crime was some-
thing to be respected. No wonder they became crim-

40 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

inals ; so would most children, whatever their ances-
try, if reared under these conditions. Social heredity
surrounds each child with conditions which it is
impossible for him to escape and the influence of
which is most profound. Both organic and social
heredity have played a part in determining the life
of the Jukes and the Edwards families and likely
the latter as profound a part as the former. In
fiction we like to read of the child of the lower
classes rising above his surroundings and becom-
ing successful in a social life of a higher grade;
but in actual life these instances are rare indeed.
Where they do occur it will be always found that
some events in the child 's life brought him under new
influences, put him into a new environment, or
started new ideas and hopes in him — in short, that
he was brought under the influence of a new type of
social inheritance, and that his departure from the
general rule of his family is due to social inheritance.
The rule is that the child as he grows into man-
hood grows into the environment in which he is
reared and becomes a part of it — a rule rarely
broken. Social heredity is thus one of the most cer-
tain of forces and one which no one can escape. In
its certainty of action it stands at least on a par with
organic heredity.

Social Attributes Transmitted by Social Heredity

It will naturally be inferred that social heredity
will be concerned in the transmission of all that per-
tains directly to society. This force acts through
close associations of men which make it possible for
them to interact upon each other in such a way that
one individual may benefit from another and one geu-

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 41

eration learn from the last. Hence it will concern
all those characteristics that go to make up society
in its widest sense. This will clearly enough include
language, customs, government, knowledge, and the
accumulating works of mankind which have been
age after age changing the face of nature. In respect
to these no question will be raised. We may hesi-
tate whether to regard the tendency to form socie-
ties as itself a matter of social or organic inherit-
ance. We may hesitate still more in determining
whether the moral sense of man, his conscience, is a
matter of social inheritance, or whether this may not
be inborn and hence one of the characteristics trans-
mitted by geraiinal inheritance. If we should con-
clude after study that the moral sense is a matter of
social rather than organic inheritance, we should
then be faced with the even more significant question
whether there is any distinctive human attribute that
comes in any way except through social inheritance.
We should perhaps be forced to the conclusion that
it is only what we sometimes call the lower side of
our nature that is given us by organic inheritance,
while all that is more ennobling, all that is most dis-
tinctively human, comes to us through social hered-
ity. We should be even forced to ask whether, after
all, the chief difference between man and animals is
not in the fact that man alone has acquired the power
of utilizing this force of social inheritance, and
whether what we speak of as humanity may not be
thought of as simply an accumulation of the expe-
riences of the ages which man has learned to hand
on to his progeny by a method entirely new. If this
should be true, it will follow that mankind has by this
means cut himself off from the action of the laws of

42 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

heredity that govern the rest of the animal kingdom.
Perhaps a fairer statement would be, since manifestly
he has not freed himself from the ordinary laws of
germinal inheritance, that man has created for him-
self a wholly new series of laws and forces which,
in large measure, nullify the older laws of heredity.
Humanity, civilization, social evolution, call it what
we will, has not developed by the same laws that have
produced organic evolution elsewhere. If this is
true, we shall have to change front and turn our at-
tention in other directions. It will not be by the
study of the laws of organic heredity that we can
solve the problems of human evolution, but by the
study of that class of characters that we have been
calling acquired characters. These, which it has been
the custom of the last few years to throw aside as
of no significance, assume new and profound mean-
ing. Acquired characters may not have been of
much, if any, importance in bringing about the evo-
lution of animals, but they may still constitute the
factors upon which human evolution has been built.
It would not, then, be wholly or chiefly by the control
of the matings of individuals that we should try to
control the future, but in large part by the control
of environment.

Before we can intelligently apply to the problem
of human social evolution the principles thus briefly
outlined we must get clearly before us the salient
features of that evolution. Instead of continuing
here a further consideration of social heredity we
will next make a brief study of the history of the
origin and development of human society. In this
outline we shall have two purposes. The first will
be to get a picture of the evolution of civilization

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EVOLUTION CONTRASTED 43

with the forces and influences that have been at work
in its progress. In this sketch, of course, we have
no thought of giving the deiails of that evolution, for
this would involve universal history. Our object is,
rather, to gain an outline which shall disclose the
salient features of social evolution, together with sug-
gestions as to its general direction in the past and
its probable future. Such a picture ^^^'. give us the
latest chapter in the long history of ev-jlution, a his-
tory that began, we know not how far back, with the
first form of life that appeared on the earth. Our
second purpose will be to show how completely this
final phase of evolution has been controlled by what
we have called social, in distinction from organic
heredity.

This discussion will be taken up in the following
order :

The origin and development of language.

The origin and development of the moral sense
and moral codes.

The beginnings and development of society.

The fundamental laws and principles of social
evolution.

The relation of social evolution to social and or-
ganic heredity.

CHAPTER II
THE OPJGIX OF LANGUAGE

It is manifest at the outset that humanity is based
upon social habits which must begin with the forma-
tion of societies. But it is equally manifest that the
formation of societies of high grade must be based
upon language, since such society without language
is unthinkable. Indeed, the grade of civilization
reached bv anv tribe of man mav be closelv measured

• • • •

br the grade of its language. A low civilization
always means a simple language, while a high civili-
zation means a complex one. The study of the origin
of language is manifestly our first task in tracing
social evolution. In this study we shall reach a sig-
nificant result ; for the unhesitating conclusion of the
studies of the last half century or more is that lan-
guage, instead of being given to man at any distinct
jDoint of creation, has been developed slowly from
smaU beginnings. The evidence for this most preg-
nant conclusion comes from three sources: (1) the
language of animals, (2) the language of children,
and (3) the study of comparative philology.

AxiMAL Language

Do animals possess any rudiments of language?
Manv animals certainlv understand the use of Ian-
guage, at least to a limited extent. It is wholly un-
necessary to give illustrations of this well-known
fact, for all books upon domestic animals give in-
stances by the score. Xo one who owns an intelli-

44

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 45

gent dog can doubt it, and probably no one will ven-
ture to raise a question at this point. AMiether it be
from articulated words or simply from the intona-
tion of the voice is immaterial, for either would
imply that animals obtain ideas from sounds. This
fact shows that the mental p»owers of some animals
are upon a grade high enough to recognize the use of
some words, and consequently considerably above
that grade which simply involves perceptions.

More significant, however, is the fact that some
animals have means of communicating with each
other. This fact, for some years dimly appreciated,
has been brought into clear light in recent years by
the study of both wild and domestic animals. Even
among animals guided mostly by instincts, like the
insects, this power is evident. An ant finds a piece
of food too large for it to handle alone and runs off
to its nest, soon to reappear with several helpers.
What happened in the nest, of course, we do not
know, and verv likelv we are inclined to see more in
the incident than really belongs there. But beyond
question communication must have been conveyed to
the individuals in the nest to have caused them to
follow the leader to the food. Among higher animals
the evidence is better known. A mother hen seeing a
hawk, calls her chicks to herself for protection by a
few clucks which plainly convey some idea to them.
Multiplication of instances is unnecessary, for they
are generally known. The method of the communi-
cation certainly varies. Sometimes it is by voice,
sometimes by variation in intonation, sometimes by
actions, and sometimes perhaps by tactile impres-
sions.

Whether it is proper to call this language it is

46 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

uot necessary for us to decide ; but it is important to
notice that among animals it never approaches a
point where any clear ideas are conveyed by it. My
dog and I are walking side by side when certain
sounds cause us both to turn around. We both see
the same object; probably it makes much the same
sense impression on us both, so that we have a sim-
ilar perception. But I at once name the object, an
angry dog; and now I stand alone, for my dog can-
not follow me in this realm. But does not my dog
recognize a difference between dogs and cats, and
does he not see that an angry dog belongs to a differ-
ent class from a friendly one? I judge so from his
acts, for he chases the object if it is a cat, makes
friends with it if it is a friendly dog, and runs away
from it if it be an angry dog larger than himself.
Undoubtedly, the dog has a vague, indefinite idea
which corresponds in a measure to the concepts
which I can name, but which he cannot. Now, when
we look closely at the so-called language of animals
it seems to be on a par with such crude ideas. When
a sentinel of a herd of antelopes gives a warning sig-
nal every individual in the herd is put on the alert.
The signal probably gave the herd no definite idea of
any particular danger, but simply a general recog-
nition of danger. A rooster who calls his flock to
share some newly discovered food, or a mother hen
calling her chicks to run to cover when she sees a
hawk, certainly conveys some general idea, and the
ideas seem to be midway between perceptions that
animals share with man and the named conceptions
that man forms alone. Without going further into
this matter, we may say that among the higher ani-
mals we can certainly see the beginnings of language

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES 47

in their power to convey to one another some vague
notions that are perhaps too indefinite for words,
even if the animals had the power to make words.
No one can fail to recognize in a dog's whines,
growls, and barks, given with varying intonations,
that he can convey to us his feelings of anger, pain,
or entreaty, and doubtless to his brothers these
sounds are equally intelligible.

Child Language

If we compare this condition with the language of
the young child, we find a striking resemblance. In
early childhood the child passes through a stage in
which his language and mental powers are both upon
practically the same level as those of animals. At
first his expression of feelings is confined to such
intonations of pleasure and displeasure as are shown
in laughing or crying. But presently he gains a few
more general, vague ideas, and with them an ability
to express them. He holds up his arms to express
his desire to be taken up, a gesture that is plainly on
a par with that of a dog sitting on his legs to beg
for food. The use of gestures, however, is never
highly developed in the child, because he soon learns
by imitation to use words.

It will be instructive next to notice what sort of
language the child first develops as he begins to use
words. It is most suggestive to find that all his
words early indicate that his mental actions are
vague, and that he is on about the same plane as the
animal. The words he uses are of the broadest char-
acter and have a most indefinite and wide meaning.
Everyone who has watched young children will think
of many examples. The word "star" means to him

/ ;

48 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

at first a star, a sun, a lamp, or a fire, or anything
bright. The child has conceived the general idea of
brightness and uses this word to apply to this qual-
ity. The word ' ' papa ' ' means at first a combination
of trousers and whiskers and applies to one man as
well as another. He has distinguished between the
class of mammas and papas. Later he confines the
word to a particular person of the class, but only
after years does he come to know what ''papa"
really means. The fewer his words the broader their
meaning, and as he advances in speaking it is by
constantly narrowing the use of the words. Illus-
trations are unnecessary. The significant point is
that in learning to use language the child begins like
an animal. In the first few months he uses only in-
tonations and gestures ; but he soon begins to apply
sounds, which he learns by imitation, to the crude
indefinite impressions made upon him by his sur-
roundings. The first words he uses are not the
fundamental words of the language, but are such as
express his growing experiences. They are the same
kind of experiences which animals possess, and
which they too express after a fashion, though, of
course, the animal never reaches the word stage.

Primitive Language

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the use
of word language comes to the child from the imita-
tion of his elders and not as a spontaneous develop-
ment on the part of the individual. If the child were
left entirely to himself, without hearing any speech,
he would not in his short life develop the power of
using language, Helen Keller did not lack the keen-
ness of mind of other children, as has been shown by

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 49

her wonderful life, but until some one, who was in
contact with society, as she was not, found means of
teaching her she had no language. If two children
could be imagined to have grown up together without
ever hearing any speech, it is quite possible that they
might learn to communicate with each other such
simple ideas as touched their simple life, but it is
sure that they would not develop such a complicated
system as our language, which has been the result of
the accumulated efforts of thousands of generations.
All races of mankind develop a language, but they
do not receive it by organic heredity.

That the child acquires its power to use language
by imitation, that is, by social inheritance, no one
can doubt, for we see it as a matter of daily expe-
rience. But the real question is not so much how our
children acquire language as how primitive man first
obtained his language. Primitive man at the first
could certainly have had nothing to imitate. How
did his language start? What sort of a language
was it? Did it consist of few simple words, expres-
sive of the vaguest ideas such as those used first by
a child, and was its history that of a gradual refining
of those notions into a real language! Or was lan-
guage given to mankind originally by some force
which furnished it ready for use ? Was it furnished
man as a congenital inheritance, or did he learn
slowly by trial and transmit his knowledge by teach-
ing? The answer to this question can hardly be
doubtful considering the nature of language ; but the
facts derived from the study of philology are espe-
cially cogent and give valuable and interesting evi-
dence upon the matter.

The Evidence from Philology. — There is naturally no

50 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

direct evidence within our reach as to the type of
language possessed by primitive man. But by the
study of various phases of language we are able to
get such a clear idea of its development as to tell us
much concerning primitive language. The data upon
the subject have been accumulated by a class of stu-
dents who had originally no special interest in any
theory of evolution and were interested in language
itself, quite oblivious of the far-reaching inferences
that came from their conclusions. It has been stu-
dents of philology who have collected, analyzed, and
classified the data bearing on the subject; but the
conclusions have given us an illuminating conception
of the development of the mind of primitive man,
since we cannot avoid the conclusion that the mental
status of any race is on a par with its language.
Since the studies on this subject were made by phil-
ologists, and not by students of biological evolution,
their conclusions will be all the more valuable as
attesting the slow development of the human race
from a point where it merges into the stage of the
mere animal.

The force of this statement will be realized when
we notice the general conclusion of philology. This
study has demonstrated in no uncertain manner the
conclusion that the language of mankind has de-
veloped from rudimentary beginning's. It is, of
course, true that many points have been and are still
in dispute to-day over which philologists are waging
battle royal. But on the general matter there is no
dispute. Human language has been the result of
growth, and did not come into the possession of man-
kind fully developed and ready for use. From
simple, and, indeed, rudimentary beginnings, it has

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 51

slowly developed and expanded into its present con-
dition.

The sources from which our evidence for this con-
clusion have been derived are three. 1. The study
of the records of ancient language as they may be
found in the oldest literature. The older the liter-
ature the more significant it becomes as being nearer
to primitive language ; and naturally Sanskrit, repre-
senting, as it does, the oldest language with a
literature, is called upon for the largest number of
facts. But all written languages offer collateral evi-
dence. 2. The comparative study of existing as well
as ancient languages. As numerous languages com-
plex as well as simple are compared, an immense
wealth of information has been obtained as to the
meaning and development of speech. 3. The study
of child language, compared with simple languages.
It is possible to doubt the cogency of this last line of
evidence. Biologists in general have learned that
embryology repeats past history; and possibly we
might expect that it would do so here, so that the
child learning to talk would give a sketch of prim-
itive man developing language. But the cases are
not parallel. The child of to-day learns to speak by
imitation of his elders, and primitive man could cer-
tainly not have at first thus acquired his language.
In other words, the child gains his language through
social inheritance rather than by organic inheritance,
and it may well be that the law of embryological
repetition, which holds for organic heredity, will not
hold for social heredity. Still, it will be not without
significance to compare the development of speech
in the child with what appears to be the development
of language in the race.

52 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

The Records of Language-Building. — We can trace lan-
guage toward its beginnings by two general methods.
We may study the literature of the earlier ages, or
we may study the languages of the lower races of
living men. By either method the result is the same,
for by either method we find language becoming
simpler and simpler. The earliest written language
is vastly simpler than any written language of to-
day, and the languages of some savages are simpler
still. The simplification of language is seen first in
the fact that as we go backward many words disap-
pear. The words of the complex, highly developed
languages are largely coined out of combinations of
the earlier and simpler words, so that the farther we
go back the smaller become the number of words,
until even in the earliest written language their num-
ber seems surprisingly small. Sanskrit, represent-
ing, as it does, the oldest language with a literature,
becomes of special interest since to it we are able to
trace most of the later inflectional languages. The
languages derived from the Sanskrit are noted for
their wealth of words, and with this in mind it seems
hardly credible that one of the early philologists,
Miiller, at one time thought that he could trace the
whole language back to one hundred and twenty-one
original words, or *' roots, '* as he called them. It
must not be inferred that Miiller found any liter-
ature so primitive as to be made of such a small
number of words, since even the earliest Sanskrit
known contained many more. But he thought that
by analyzing the words of early Sanskrit he could
find evidence that they were themselves compounds
from older and simpler forms, and he finally reduced
these to one hundred and twenty-one. Other phi-

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 53

lologists have not followed Miiller quite so far in
this simplification, and it is generally admitted to-
day that the oldest literature gives evidence of a
larger number of ''roots" than Miiller was at one
time inclined to accept. But even though the words
cannot all be reduced to quite such a small number,
it is universally admitted that the number of words
in early Sanskrit was surprisingly small, and that
they pointed toward a condition in which they were
fewer still in an earlier age. From such a condition
we can legitimately go a step farther back and
recognize the inevitable existence of a language so
simple that the few root words were all that existed.
Of such an early language, of course, literature could
only give us a hint, with here and there a suggestion
as to what the language was. Writing must have
come into existence ages after speaking. Many races
of men are not yet able to reduce their language to
writing ; and a language like Sanskrit, which had not
only reached the stage of writing but had even risen
to the grade of a literature, must have been an
immense distance from the primitive language. Con-
sidering the tremendous amount of time that must
have been required to convert the first spoken words
into a definite language, and then to have developed
writing and a literature, it is surprising to find it as
simple as it is.

Even though Miiller 's roots can no longer be ac-
cepted as forming the foundation of all of Sanskrit,
it is certain that these one hundred and twenty-one
words were very prominent, and it will be instructive
to note briefly the ideas represented by these few
root words. They nearly all seem to be verbs, and
refer to types of action which the very crudest intelli-

54 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

gence must have recognized, and many of which must
also be vaguely comprehended by animals. They
consist of such words as eating, singing, hiding,
stealing, and the like. These are ideas which, when
named as man names them, become concepts, but
some of which are certainly vaguely comprehended
by the more intelligent animals. An animal that
examines an object, and, after giving one smell,
decides that it is good to eat, or not good to eat, has
certainly a notion of the process of eating, ready
for a name if it had the power to give it a name. In
other words, many of the fundamental roots of the
oldest Sanskrit language are expressive of just such
ideas as are vaguely developed in the minds of
animals. They are names for exactly those ideas
which we should suppose man would first acquire,
upon the supposition that his mental powers, with his
language, were developed from the lower condition
represented among animals. Animals, of course,
never name these ideas, and at this point of naming
we come to the break between man and the lower
animals. As soon as man succeeded in naming these
crude ideas they became concepts, and thus became
instruments for communication of ideas from person
to person. While no animal but man has had the
power to give names, it is certainly suggestive to find
that the primitive words of the oldest language con-
tained most prominently words for just the simple
general ideas that animals seem to possess as well as
man, and which must have been the first thoughts to
crystallize into clear ideas in a being who was begin-
ning to rise into a plane of thinking. Of the higher
conceptional notions which mankind later possessed,
such as truth, beauty, sublimity, etc., there is abso-

THE ORIGIN OP LANGUAGE 55

lutely no trace in the roots of early Sanskrit. These
concepts were not in the language, and we must
naturally infer that they did not exist in the minds of
the people using the language.

Comparative Study of Living Languages. — Sanskrit is
evidently far from a primitive language, and we may
naturally turn to languages of the lower savage races
to see if among them we may not find something
more primitive. Such we certainly do find. Among
the various tribes whose languages have been studied
we find some that are on a par with the imaginary
early man when his speech consisted of a few words
only. It is sometimes a marvel to us who have such
difficulty in mastering one or two foreign tongues to
read of African explorers visiting tribe after tribe,
each with its own language, and learning quickly to
converse in them all. But the surprise somewhat dis-
appears when we learn of the real dearth of words
and the simi^licity of speech. Savage languages are
totally lacking in abstract words, showing, of course,
that the savage thinking must be in concrete rather
than abstract ideas. Frequently such a language
will have names for concrete objects, but no general
name for classes of objects. For example, one Zulu
tribe has ten names for different kinds of cows. It
has a name for a red cow, a white cow, etc., but it lias
no name for "cow." The Tasmanian language has
several words rejoresenting different kinds of trees,
but no word for "tree." Some travelers have sup-
posed that this represents a very complex language ;
but the reverse is the truth, for it represents a lan-
guage too crude to have formed any class objects,
and it certainly represents a type of thinking so dis-
tinctly in the concrete as never to have felt the need

56 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

for a class name ' ' tree " or ' ' cow. ' ' That such sav-
ages have a notion of a tree we may not doubt ; but
possibly any dog has a notion of class objects too,
for he certainly places cats in a different class from
dogs. With the dog the idea has not become clear
enough to demand a name, and with the savage also
hosts of these class ideas are still too vague to
demand a name. Savage languages have a ''hope-
less poverty in the power of abstraction." The sav-
age lives largely in a world of concrete thoughts, and
his language fits his world.

In still another direction does the simplicity of
early language show itself. Not only do words van-
ish as we come toward simpler languages, but some
of the parts of speech disappear entirely. In prim-
itive tongues the distinctions between nouns and
verbs vanish, and nouns, verbs, and adjectives may
merge in one comprehensive word. For example, the
word ' ' round ' ' may mean a round thing, or it may be
used as an adjective, or it may be a verb indicating
the making of a thing round, this serving at once as
noun, verb, or adjective. Such a use of words won-
derfully simplifies language, but it makes it corre-
spondingly less clear and definite.

The use of words with several meanings points
unmistakably to a simpler condition still, frequently
found illustrated even to-day among some peoples,
where a single word represents a whole sentence.
Such a sentence word may serve to give not only a
thought of the object but of an action as well. For
example, a savage hearing a cuckoo singing in a
tree might simply utter the word ''cuckoo." This
word, especially if used with a certain intonation or
a gesture, might mean not only that he heard a

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 57

cuckoo, but that he was going to hunt for it; or it
might be a command for another to go on the hunt,
the one word serving for a whole sentence. Such a
use of language is occasionally found to-day; and
our philologists are agreed that there is evidence
that language in general must be traced back to
sentence words, the earliest step in language forma-
tion being the use of single words to express com-
plete ideas. But such sentence words are incomplete
without either special intonations or gestures, or
both. Simple languages of savages are commonly, if
not always, accompanied by gestures. Some savage
languages are largely gestures with a few words, and
in some African tribes so large a part do gestures
play in their languages that it is said they cannot
understand each other at night. There is every rea-
son for believing that the primitive language was
differentiated into the parts of speech by pointing
and thus that grammar arose from gestures. One of
the first parts of speech to be differentiated was the
pronoun, and pronouns came from pointing. The
speaker might point to himself as '*!" and to an-
other as "you" or ''he," and from such gestures
arose the pronouns.

The Nature of Primitive Language

From various facts of the nature just mentioned
the attempt has been made to picture language at its
origin. It is, of course, evident that nowhere have
we any primitive language to study. The oldest
written language was the Egyptian, of which we
have records going back probably four thousand
years or more. But it is self-evident that a language
that has reached the stage of being written is very

58 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

far removed from a primitive stage, and hence the
origin of language must go back far earlier than
the Egyptian. We can find no race of man just
learning to speak ; for every savage tribe has a lan-
guage, even though in some cases the language is
simple, crude, and partly dependent upon gesture.
Our only conception of the origin of language must,
therefore, be obtained by inference. By tracing lan-
guage backward we may be able to see the direction
in which it seems to be tending, and from this gain
a fairly accurate conception of its still earlier stages.
Now every bit of evidence from all sources tells
the same story. As languages are traced backward
the tendency is always toward simplification, by loss
of differentiation, by loss of words, and by the use
of words with a broader and less definite meaning.
This tendency is so evident and so universal that
philologists, quite independently of any conception
of any special theories of evolution, have concluded
that it points clearly toward a time when language
did not exist at all, and when therefore the human
beings were obliged to create, slowly and painfully,
a method of communication by speech. It may not
be unprofitable to note a few of the steps that have
been suggested as leading to the invention of lan-
guage. The start must have been in the crude gen-
eral ideas which represent life experiences of all
higher animals, and which man must have had with
the rest; such experiences as eating, running, etc.
The first step must have been in applying some
recognizable sound to these ideas. Mr. Garner be-
lieves that monkeys do this to a slight extent
although his observations are not generally credited
by naturalists. How the first sounds came to be

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 59

applied to the ideas is a subject on which philologists
are not agreed. One favorite notion has been that
the first sounds were imitative of sounds in nature.
Some words are manifestly so, as, for example, the
word '' cuckoo." But this theory of the origin of the
first words has been much disputed, and the evidence
for it is not very strong. The spontaneous cries of
animals have also been suggested as furnishing a
starting point. These emotional cries are recogniz-
able in all higher animals, and they clearly indicate
two different mental states at least. We may recog-
nize among animals that use these cries one indicat-
ing a need or desire, and another indicating a warn-
ing, a summons, or a threat. Man, with a more effi-
cient vocal apparatus, increased these emotional cries
by reduplication and intonation until, according to
some, they became the starting point of speech. To
these latter were added other sounds derived from
an attempt to imitate sounds in nature, used first to
indicate the object imitated, but from this easily com-
ing to refer to the properties of the object. ^Vhat-
ever may have been the origin of these first words,
whether by imitation or by spontaneous cries, or
otherwise, of course all trace of their origin soon dis-
appeared as they acquired new and more definite
meanings and began to crystallize into language.

In such a primitive language there were doubtless
only a small number of sounds expressive of the gen-
eral notions that entered into the life of man. Words
were at first whole sentences. Into a village a man
runs shouting ''Elephants!" and this one word is
enough to announce that he has seen these animals
and summons others to join in a plan for hunting
them. When these pregnant words were sujople-

60 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

mented by gestures they became more useful and
constituted a great advance over the language of the
highest animals below man. But how different from
the developed language of later generations! But
we must remember that the life of these men was on
a very narrow plane ; their needs and interests were
slight and their sentence words and gestures were
sufficient to make possible the beginning of that
social life which, as we shall see, was the secret of
the elevation of the human race into civilization.
With increasing social needs came the need of more
definite speech, and by contact with each other, by
testing and trial, a differentiation of the wide mean-
ing, pregnant, early words took place, slowly enough
at first we may be sure. Words were joined to-
gether in such a way that the closeness of the words
showed connection in thought. Verbs and subjects
came to be used and the sentence evolved. But mean-
time man had learned to combine two or more words
together into one with a new meaning, and such com-
binations enriched his vocabulary. As he acquired
more words he felt more and more the need of them ;
for his life became richer and he had greater desire to
impart his e^^periences and thought to others. Old
words were brought into new relations, and the orig-
inal words presently lost their early meaning and
became the roots out of which language was built.
Sentences took the place of sentence words ; adverbs
and pronouns replaced gestures, and, with the early
words capable of being molded and modified, lan-
guage was well started in its evolution. Of course it
was still a long distance from a possibility of a
written form, and much less of a literature. The
unknown length of time preceding the earliest

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 61

written language must probably have vastly exceeded
the period that has passed since that time.

Primitive Language and Child Language It is sug-
gestive to notice that there is a close parallel between
primitive language as outlined above and the lan-
guage of the developing child. The child with his
dawning intelligence may be compared with prim-
itive man beginning to use his mind, and the method
of acquiring language is much the same. At first
the child has no way of expressing his feelings except
by his emotional cries ; but these are quite sufficient
to express his feelings of pleasure or dissatisfaction,
and even of entreaty or command. Presently, from,
hearing words used around him, he begins to imitate
the sounds he hears and soon attaches them to his
wants. Then we find always a stage when he uses
sentence words in the same indefinite way that we
have already noticed. He has learned to associate
the word "up" with his being taken up by his par-
ents ; and now by using this one word, perhaps ac-
companied by the holding up of his arms, he conveys
an entreaty or a command, the one word ''up"
serving as a whole sentence. The sentence word is
all that he needs to express his desire. But presently
his ears and his mind catch new words, and he begins
to put them together. He now says "Papa up," or
"Baby up," meaning by it just the same that he did
by the single word "up." Presently it is "Papa
baby up," a little further differentiation of the sen-
tence, but with no added meaning; the word "up"
still serves as verb and adverb. After a while he
begins to use the words "you" and "I." We must
not place too much emphasis upon this fact, however,
since the reason why the child does not early learn

62 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

to speak of himself as ''I" is because he learns by
imitation, and never hears himself called as ''I," but
always by some name. Of course he cannot be ex-
pected to use the personal pronoun until his intelli-
gence has considerably developed. It is not partic-
ularly significant that he learns to use pronouns late,
although some students of the child mind have made
a great point of this fact. Be this as it may, we now
find that the progress in the development of lan-
guage is rapid and consists in the gradual differen-
tiation of broad words into the parts of speech. The
method of putting words together to form sentences
is, of course, the result of imitation, and, indeed, the
whole acquirement of the power of speech is the
result of imitation. But it is certainly interesting,
in view of what we have noticed of the probable
method of the original formation of language, to find
that the child universally learns to speak by the same
route, namely, sentence words, the formation of sen-
tences by the simple approximation of words without
real verbs, and finally by the further differentiation
of broad words into parts of speech of more definite
meaning.

It is also important to notice in this development
of the child that the first words he uses are expres-
sive of that class of simple ideas which lie in the
region between precepts and concepts. The word
**up," for example, has for the child no clear notion.
It is not a real concept, but represents one of those
intermediate types of ideas which lead from precepts
to concepts. With the animal world such ideas never
pass beyond this stage, but with the child the
crude notions rapidly become more definite. A word
which at first stands for the idea of subject, object,

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 63

and verb together, soon becomes freed from some
of tbese ideas, and finally retains a very much,
narrower content, until in the end a real concept is
formed, which can then be used in quite new connec-
tions. Exactly where in the developing mind and
speech of a child the change takes place no one can
say, but the significant fact is that the change does
occur.

Just what is the meaning of this parallel between
the development of child language and the origin of
race language may not be wholly clear. It is a law in
the organic world that the development of an animal
from the egg repeats more or less of the past history
of the race, and this law has sometimes been used to
explain the parallel we have just drawn. But this
hardly seems legitimate, because in the development
of language we are not dealing at all with that type
of heredity which has controlled the evolution of
animals. Language is not transmitted by organic
heredity, but is acquired anew by each generation,
and the laws of repetition which apply elsewhere
may not apply here at all. It seems probable that
the explanation of the reason why the child goes
through these stages is simply that they represent
the simplest, straightest, and easiest course by which
the developing mind can reach the end. Before he
can imitate a sound the child has wants which he can
express only by emotion cries. He learns only a
word at a time; and when he has onlv one or two
words he simply connects the sound of each word
with the experience in his life in connection with
which he has learned it. The word "up" was
learned in connection with his being taken up, and he
simply pronounces the word when he wishes to be

64 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

taken up. And so he goes on using the words he
learns, one at a time, at first singly and later in com-
bination with each other. This is the simplest and
straightest road toward speech, and it is hardly con-
ceivable that the child should take any other route.
But this makes it all the more probable that the be-
ginning of language in the early history of man vas
something as outlined above. Primitive man too, as
well as the child, would inevitably have taken the
simplest plan to make himself understood. If his
mind was developing in those early days as the mind
of the child certainly develops, it is inevitable that
the simplest means of communication of ideas would
be followed at first. Intonations, sentence words,
followed later by a differentiation of words, and
finally of sentences, would be the natural course to
primitive man as well as the child — a fact that tells
us almost surely that the outline given by philology
for the beginning of language must express the es-
sential facts.

The Development of Languages
Whether there was more than one beginning of
language in human history we have no means of
knowing. This seems to be a part of the other ques-
tion whether the human race had several origins or
only one, a question for which science has as yet no
answer. If the race of speaking animals were only
one at the start, it must surely have separated early
into groups which have since kept isolated from each
other; and this isolation must have taken place be-
fore language had become well developed enough to
have any definite form, for the languages of different
great groups not only differ totally in words, but

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 65

differ also fundamentally in their structure. One
great group, the isolative, developed a few monosyl-
labic words and then made its language by grouping
these words in an endless variety of relations. An-
other, the agglutinative, created its language by fus-
ing together into single words of great length several
shorter words, thus making a language rich in long
words. Another group developed its language by
adding to its primitive words certain prefixes and
endings which denoted relations, giving the inflec-
tional languages. Whether these types of language
ever really came from a common center, or whether
different groups of primitive men each independ-
ently created a language for itself, there is no good
evidence for deciding. If they ever were connected,
certainly all trace of any connection was lost long
ago. The differences between the structure of the
different languages and the absolute lack of anything
in common among them would seem to suggest that
they have been independently acquired. Such a con-
clusion is the most natural one possible. In the
study of organic evolution biologists have difficulty
in accounting for similar results appearing in uncon-
nected lines. It has always been a puzzle, for ex-
ample, why the vertebrate and the squid should de-
velop eyes with such a remarkable similarity, since it
is evident that heredity could not explain this like-
ness, the vertebrate and the squid not being in the
same line of inheritance. But that all races of man
should have developed a language offers no mystery
at all, since this has not been developed by the proc-
esses of organic inheritance, but developed by intel-
ligence and has been handed on by social inheritance.
Assuming that language has thus had its origin more

66 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

than once among primitive men, while it has never
appeared to any extent among animals, we are faced
with the significant question as to why man alone has
developed language.

It is self-evident that language from the beginning
has been of the nature of acquired characters and
has been handed on by social heredity only. It has
been recreated by the mental activity of each genera-
tion of mankind. It has never found its way into the
germinal substance and no language is given to
the race by organic inheritance. One generation
has learned from the last, and then each genera-
tion has its opportunity to add to this inheritance by
contributing new words or new methods of using
words. The structure has thus been intelligently
built up step by step, and any generation, or, indeed,
any individual, may by its or his own efforts add to
the heritage which the next generation will receive —
a privilege which it does not have in regard to the
characters transmitted by organic heredity. Now, we
must remember that human civilization is absolutely
dependent upon the mental power, and that the pow-
ers of the human mind are wholly dependent upon
language. We cannot think of society without lan-
guage, for it could not exist. The foundation of
human evolution, then, is not based upon man's phys-
ical structure, but upon his developing a language,
and this is based not upon organized inheritance, but
upon social inheritance.

The Development of Language and Mental

Evolution

It is not impertinent to our topic to note how
intimately language and mental evolution are con-

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 67

nected. If language has developed from small begin-
nings, it follows as a corollary that the power of
thinking has been a matter of equally slow develop-
ment, since the thinking cannot transcend the speech.
If it is true that in the history of the race language
has progressed from a condition where words simply
expressed crude general ideas, it is equally true that
the thinking powers of man have passed through a
corresponding stage. If there ever was a time when
the human race communicated simply by sentence
words and gestures, it follows that there was a time
when human mental processes were on a par with
this language. In other words, there is no real break
between the mental actions of animals and the more
complex thinking of man. There is a great differ-
ence, indeed, between the mental processes of ani-
mals and of man ; there is an equal difference between
the mental processes of the babe and the man who
grows from the babe. But just as there is no break
between the mind of the child and the adult, so there
seems no break between the mental actions of the
highly developed animal and the human being. In
both cases there has been an orderly sequence of
development. In one respect there is a difference.
The child does develop higher mental powers, while
the animal never does.

Why Has Man Alone Developed Language? — After all
has been said the fact remains that man alone has
developed language, and in him alone do the mental
activities pass from the rudimentary condition of
the child or the animal and reach a higher plane.
The child and the animal both lack developed mental
powers, but only the child later develops them.
Here, after all, is the radical difference between man

68 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

and the animals. We may undoubtedly find among
animals rudiments of the mental attributes of man,
and we certainly may find a long series of links be-
tween the mental powers of animals and those of
man. But in the one case these powers develop into
intelligence, while in the other they do not. If ani-
mals do possess the germs of intelligence, why have
not they as well as man developed into the higher
plane of mentality? Any complete theory of evolu-
tion must recognize this question and find an answer.
Man is of comparatively recent origin. Compared
with other animals, his life on earth has been only
a few centuries. During this brief history his mental
powers have progressed immensely, until the dif-
ference between him and the most intelligent animals
has become prodigious. The very facts that have
shown the presence of so many rudiments of mental
processes in animals make all the more forcible the
question of why in man alone they have developed
beyond rudiments. If this mental power is of such
value to its possessor, and if the germs of intelli-
gence are present in other animals, why is it that in
man alone they have developed? Unless we can
answer this question we must acknowledge that the
problem of the evolution of man is not answered. Is
there any answer to the question?

At first this question seems to be similar to thou-
sands of others that might be asked in regard to any
other valuable character of animals. If an eye is of
so much value, why have not the worms developed
eyes? If a wing is so useful to enable its posses-
sors to escape their enemies, why has not the rabbit
developed wings? Such questions might be asked
indefinitely, but science recognizes that they are all

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 69

idle questions. To ask the scientist to repeat all the
myriads of incidents which have led one animal to
develop in one direction and another in another, is as
fruitless as to insist that he should explain in detail
exactly why every leaf in the forest chances to fall
on one side or the other, before we would admit the
cogency of the law of gravitation. They are inci-
dents in the general application of law, and incidents
only.

The question before us, however, is quite differ-
ent from any of these. All other such questions are
problems of organic structure and are bound up
with the still mysterious laws of organic inheritance.
Language is an artificial structure which is con-
sciously built, and its possession is not dependent
upon a question of organic inheritance. It could be
acquired seemingly by any animal with sufficient
mental powers to make use of it. The very fact that
we do find among animals so many rudiments of
human mental activities makes even more cogent the
question why in mankind alone they have really
developed any power of speech. What has been the
stimulus which started the development of the mental
powers of man and forced it into such a marvelous
advance while other animals have remained upon a
low plane of monotony? The force of this question
has appealed quite differently to different scientists.
Wallace has felt its force so vividly as to have been
led to assume some special supernatural stimulus as
being required to start the wonderful development of
man. Others have not accepted such a position and
have tried to find some other more natural kind of an
answer.

We notice, first, that mind and language in a

70 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

measure explain each other. The rapidity of the
evolution of the human mind is partly explained by
the aid it received from its new tool language. With-
out language animals cannot hand on their expe-
riences, and their intelligence could develop no faster
than race experience could be incorporated into the
organic structure by inheritance. This process, if
acquired characters are not inherited, is very slow.
Experience is not transmitted by organic inherit-
ance, and without language animals could not teach
each other nor benefit by each other's experience.
But just as soon as a race developed the power of
speech the whole problem was changed. Then com-
munication between individuals made it possible for
the knowledge of the one to be imparted to another.
From this time the development would be immensely
accelerated. It would be like the avalanche, small at
the beginning, but increasing more and more rapidly
with each increment. Mind and language would react
on each other, and the advance of the one would make
possible a new step in the other. Language devel-
oped mind and mind created new needs for language.
Now, no one will perhaps question this statement,
for it is practically self-evident and is a matter of
history. But it is hardly a sufficient answer to our
question why man alone developed the power of lan-
guage and the accompanying mental power, for why
should not the same history have occurred in other
animals? Sometimes an attempt is made to find an
answer in the fact that man alone, of the highly
intelligent animals, has developed organs which
make articulate speech possible. Herein may doubt-
less be one of the reasons why speech belongs to man
alone, and why man alone has developed the rapidly

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 71

increasing intelligence that has accompanied speech.
But we are still unsatisfied, for there are other pos-
sibilities of language besides articulate speech.
Some tribes of men have a language made almost
wholly of gestures, and other animals besides man
could certainly have used gestures in developing lan-
guage. The answer to our question is, then, not to
be found in this simple statement that the human
vocal organs made speech possible, and speech then
forced the development of mental powers.

There is at least a partial answer to this question
which is to be found along the line of our discussion.
Man alone of all animals has discovered the possi-
bility of utilizing to its utmost the force of social
heredity. Speech, with its accompanying mental
growth, is dependent upon this type of inheritance
which the lower animals have scarcely utilized at all,
and human development has thus been dependent
upon the newly acquired, or at least newly empha-
sized, power of transmitting acquired characters to
one's offspring. But this leads to a second question
of equal significance. Why has mankind alone ac-
quired the power of utilizing this new factor! The
answer which we would give to this question involves
all the rest of this work. It may, however, make our
discussion clearer if we anticipate the conclusion
which we shall be forced to reach. This conclusion is
that the force ivJiich has produced the mental de-
velopment of man, with all its accompaniments, is the
instinct ivhich has resulted in the development of the
moral sense. Human evolution and human civiliza-
tion have been the result of the exaltation of the eth-
ical nature of mankind.

CHAPTER III

THE EVOLUTION OF MOKAL CODES

The Problem of the Moral Nature

No phase of human evolution has developed so
much dispute and uncertainty as the problem of the
moral nature. The reasons for this are clear. 1.
Here is the most distinctive characteristic of man.
It is his moral rather than his intellectual nature, as
we shall later see, that is the foundation of his civil-
ization. 2. The moral sense is the one attribute
which is most closely allied to the religious notions
that we hold so dear, and it has frequently been
assumed that the acceptance of an evolution of the
moral sense would undermine the grounds of reli-
gious belief. For this reason many have held tena-
ciously to the belief that the moral sense was God-
given, without appreciating that it would be just as
truly God-given if it came to man by a slow process
of development as if it came by a single creative fiat.
3. The origin of the moral sense has proved the most
difficult problem for the evolutionist to solve. There
may be found among animals rudiments of most of
the common mental attributes of man, and hence the
problem of their development into the grade of hu-
man intelligence is a comparatively easy one. But
animals do not possess a moral sense. No one claims
that animals recognize right and wrong. Moreover,
it is difficult to discover in the lower orders of nature
anything that can be looked upon as offering ele-
ments that might have developed into human con-

72

\

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 73

science. Seemingly, the moral sense is new with
man.

From the standpoint of our discussion the really
significant question is whether the moral nature is
the result of innate or acquired characteristics. If
it is innate, it is, of course, inbred into our nature in
such a way that it has become a part of the germinal
structure and is, therefore, transmitted by organic
inheritance. If this is the case, every individual is
born with his moral sense fixed in his nature in such
a way that neither he nor any one else, not even
society, is responsible for it. If this is the case, the
only way to modify the moral sense will be by
improving the mating conditions of men so as to pro-
duce a race of better-equipped men in this respect.
But if the moral sense is a matter of social inherit-
ance, the matter stands very differently. In this case
it has been the result of teaching and learning, and
the person is more or less responsible for his moral
sense, and other people and society in general are
directly responsible for it also. If this be true, it
would be possible to elevate the moral nature of the
race by education, by training, and by changing the
conditions of social life. The question whether the
moral sense is innate or acquired has, therefore, par-
ticular significance.

This question, whether the moral sense is innate
or acquired, has been long and vigorously studied by
both philosophy and science. Into the philosophical
aspects of the case we shall not pretend to enter ; but
it is necessary for us to consider carefully the scien-
tific conception of the subject, since the whole prob-
lem of social evolution is dependent upon the con-
clusion. The study of the moral or ethical condition

74 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

of the lower and primitive races, combined witli the
knowledge of early ethical standards as disclosed
by historical records, together with a study of the
development of the moral nature in the child, give
data for a legitimate conclusion as to the origin of
this side of human nature, and for concluding that, at
least so far as concerns moral codes, and possibly
also as concerns the moral sense itself, the ethical
nature of man is mostly acquired, and thus trans-
mitted by social heredity rather than by organic
heredity. But while this is true, we have to recognize
that even those theories of the origin of the moral
nature which attribute it largely to social heredity
regard it as developed from two basal instincts,
which, like other instincts, are matters of organic
inheritance. These two instincts are (1) the struggle
for the life of the species, and (2) the social instincts.

Stexjggle for the Life of the Species

The development of the moral nature is dependent,
first, upon a phase in the life of animals that has only
recently been fully appreciated. Influenced by Dar-
win, science has become impressed with the notion
of the struggle for existence, and as animals in
nature have been studied the most patent fact has
been that each animal and plant is in severe competi-
tion for its own existence. Natural selection has
been studied chiefly as affecting the individual in
competition with others for his own life. This is a
most obvious conclusion.

But in the last few years emphasis has been placed
upon the fact that, in addition to this struggle for the
life of the individual, there is a more fundamental
struggle for the continuation of the species. Indeed.

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 75

it is toward the race as a whole rather than the indi-
vidual that natural selection is directed. In speaking
of this as a new line of thought we do not mean to
imply that the conception is actually new. It was
recognized by both Spencer and Darwin long ago.
But though long ago recognized, its great signifi-
cance has not been commonly appreciated. We have
been so occupied with the idea of the individual's
struggle for his own life that the other side of the
problem, with its numerous and far-reaching conse-
quences, has been too generally neglected. Clear
thought shows us, however, that natural selection
must be always directed toward the survival of the
race rather than the individual. Natural selection,
it is true, preserves the best fitted individuals, but
only when they are the individuals best fitted for the
preservation of the race. Nature is sure to eliminate
those that are incapable of reproduction no matter
how excellently fitted they may be for the personal
struggle for life, while it preserves those best able to
perpetuate the race, even though the individuals be
poorly adapted to the struggle for life. The former
may preserve its own life longer, but if it cannot
produce offspring, it eventually disappears. This
important fact, which quite changes the aspect of
natural selection in many points, has only recently
been brought into prominence. It has been discussed
by Brooks as a '^ struggle for the life of the species,'*
and by Drummond as the '^struggle for the life of
others." In certain aspects it is altruism, and in
some respects it is independent of and opposed to
the struggle for existence.

As the result of this law the individual may be-
come of no significance and will be, if necessary,

76 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

readily sacrificed to the good of the race. This is
most noticeable among lower organisms, but evident
enough among the higher. Among low animals the
individual is commonly sacrificed completely in the jj

reproductive act. The simplest form of reproduction
is simple division, in which case the parent always
disappears as the offspring appears {Protozoa).
In some higher groups (Hydroids) the individual
from the beginning of life feeds and grows rapidly,
increasing in size and vigor. But this is only in prep-
aration for the reproductive act which is its cul-
mination. In the act of producing reproductive
bodies the energies are all spent, and after this act is
performed the individual dies. As we rise in the
scale of nature this sacrifice to the reproductive act
becomes less universal, and an individual may con-
tinue to live for a period representing several sea-
sons of reproduction. It is to these higher forms
that our attention has been chiefly directed in the
study of the laws of evolution. It is the individual
and his struggles for his own life that has engaged
our attention, until we have failed to appreciate that
he is an incident and not the end. Even among
higher forms it is clear enough that the apparent
purpose of nature culminates in reproduction. The
instincts connected with the reproductive act are so
strong as to obscure even the ordinary instincts of
self-preservation. At the breeding season the
salmon is forced by an irrestrainable reproductive
instinct to ascend the river to deposit its eggs. This
act is doubtless useful for the perpetuation of the
species, but it is extremely destructive to the life and
interests of the individuals. They ascend the river
fat and vigorous and in great numbers. But the

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES TT

dangers that they meet in their journey destroy them
by the hundreds of thousands, and few survive the
severe battles of the journey. In the ocean they
remain for a series of months to gain sufficient vital-
ity for their perilous journey when the breeding sea-
son comes. From the standpoint of the individual it
would certainly be better for the animal to remain
in the ocean. But from the standpoint of the per-
petuation of the species the river spawning is a
necessity, and the individual is ruthlessly sacrificed
to the continuation of the race.

This principle runs through organic nature, al-
though it is not uncommonly concealed by certain
more obvious facts. It is certain that among animals
and plants each individual is engaged in a struggle
for his own existence, and this explains the ordinary
incidents of life. Moreover, among the higher
animals at least, it commonly happens that the ad-
vantage of the individual is identical with the advan-
tage of the race. When an animal is competing with
adverse conditions or with foes for its own life, it is
at the same time competing for the opportunity to
leave offspring, and the struggle for self and the
struggle for the species are identical. This fact has
quite generally concealed the deeper one that natural
selection is in reality directed toward the race rather
than the individual. It is when the two interests
come in conflict, as in the case of the salmon and
many others that might be cited, that we see how
ruthlessly nature sacrifices the individual to the good
of the race. The former is merely an incident in the
history of the latter.

This law, that places the race first, frequently
leads the individual to sacrifice his interests in a

78 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

manner whicli can have no meaning to liim. From
his standpoint there is certainly no reason for his
yielding his own interests and comfort for the un-
born generations of which he has no knowledge.
This sacrifice of self has sometimes been called altru-
ism. But among animals it does not properly
deserve this name, since it is wholly unconscious, and
genuine altruism must appreciate its sacrifice. While
the struggle for self-interest is sometimes a conscious
one, this struggle for the good of the race is commonly
unconscious. Most animals that sacrifice so much to
their posterity never see their offspring and know
nothing about them, commonly not even knowing the
possibility of their existence. They yield to blind
instinct, not to reason. The salmon is not drawn
into the river because she feels it is the best place to
deposit her eggs, for she never sees her young which
hatch long after she may be dead. She faces the
danger of the river because she is driven by an irre-
sistible impulse which though not understood is
blindly obeyed. Such an impulse is an instinct, and
its origin must be included under the explanation of
the origin of instincts in general. It is significant to
note that the instinct that leads to the perpetuation of
species is the most imperative of all instincts. What-
ever sacrifices it demands are freely given. Among
low and high animals alike this instinct is ever lead-
ing to individual sacrifice, wholly inexplicable from
the standpoint of the individual, but readily inter-
preted from that of the race. Among insects the
yielding to the instinct may lead to exhaustion and
death, and even in man the sexual instinct has always
been one of the most potent influences in society.
Since this sacrifice of individual interests to the

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 79

life of the species is usually an unconscious one, to
call it, as Drummond does, the '' struggle for the life
of others" is almost sure to be misleading. Most
animals never see their young, and may die before
they are born. Each animal, so far as he is engaged
in a struggle with nature is battling for his own exist-
ence, and not for the existence of others. His
instincts may lead him to conduct this battle in such
a manner as will prove a benefit to his offspring, but
he is unconscious of the fact and is eager only for
his own interest. With a few of the highest animals,
it is true, this principle develops into the mother's
love, in which the spirit of sacrifice is accompanied
by a knowledge of and interest in the offspring. But
this mother's love is only a small part of the more
fundamental law. It appears only after the young
is born and is always fleeting, while the sacrifice for
the life of the race is permanent. The term,
*' struggle for the life of others," therefore, is apt to
be misleading, and it is better not to use the phrase,
but simply to recognize that natural selection is
really directed toward the preservation of the species
rather than the individual, and that the latter is
readily sacrificed when his interest comes in opposi-
tion to that of the race.

This principle of the struggle for the life of the
species is one foundation stone ujion which a moral
nature may have been built ; but it is in itself insuffi-
cient. It might lead to a sacrifice for the good of the
race. But mankind has certainly set up standards of
ethics which could not be comprehended by this gen-
eral force. Like other animals, man has a desire to
enjoy himself, and, as with other animals, his repro-
ductive instincts are among the strongest that influ-

80 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ence his actions. But our ethical standards fre-
quently bid us to restrain both of these instincts. Our
ethical standards tell some to sacrifice their own
pleasures by giving their life to work in the slums for
people vastly their inferiors ; they may direct us to
share our food with others, even when we may be
starving; they constrain us to control the reproduc-
tive instincts except under certain specified condi-
tions. No such requirements are placed upon animals
by nature, for their instincts frequently impel them
toward the very things that our ethical nature for-
bids us. How has man developed impulses urging
him to act so contrary to the rest of nature? Clearly,
some other foundation stone is needed besides the
struggle for the life of the species. A second factor
seems to be the social instincts.

Social Instincts

While it is true that competition is a universal law
of life, and that the general result of competition is
to lead toward enmity and isolation, it is also true
that among the higher animals — and with these only
are we concerned — we frequently find evidence of
pleasure taken in one another's company. Even
among the lower animals we not infrequently find
individuals living in companies, like a swarm of flies.
It is doubtful, however, whether this can be called the
beginning of social instincts. But it is also certain
that among many of the higher animals below man
such instincts are common. Higher animals do not
always respond wholly to the pleasure of the
moment, but are somewhat influenced by remem-
bered, or perhaps by anticipated pleasures. This
leads to their associating in companies. Fishes live

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 81

in schools ; birds flock togetlier, and one cannot watch
a flock of birds without being convinced that they
take pleasure in each other's company. Among
mammals examples are too well known to need atten-
tion. While some, like lions or tigers, live solitary
lives except at the breeding seasons, most mammals
live in companies. These groups are doubtless gen-
erally for the purpose of protection, but this does not
make them any less significant. That the members
of such groups take pleasure in each other's society
is evident to anyone who has taken the trouble to
watch a cage of monkeys, or to notice the friendship
of dogs. Animals have a deal of altruism mixed
with their egoism. "While these social instincts are
by no means universal, we find them especially well
developed among the higher animals. As we ap-
proach man, among the monkeys, we find such
instincts not only well developed but in some respects
closely resembling the social habits of low savages.

The struggle for the life of the species and the
social instincts are the two foundation stones out of
which seemingly the moral sense must have been
developed. At all events, these are the only two
animal instincts which seem to promise any aid in ac-
counting for the human moral nature. But it is pal-
pably evident that the instinct that leads to the
preservation of the race and the social instinct are
neither one, nor both together, similar to the moral
nature of man. The ethical nature of the human race
has passed far beyond these instincts into totally new
realms of activities. But it would seem to be a fair
statement of the case to say that while these instincts,
for race preservation and for jocial life, are innate,
and hence due to organic inheritance, the rest of the

82 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

complicated human moral nature has been built upon
them in a purely artificial way; by which we mean
that it has been built as the result of the accumula-
tion of a long series of acquired characters trans-
mitted by social heredity. To understand this it is
necessary as the next step in our discussion to notice
how from these two fundamental instincts the ethical
conceptions of modern man may have been derived.
The data upon which the conclusions are based come
from studies of primitive races as well as from the
growth of the child's mind. In tracing this history
we must divide the subject into two parts : 1. The de-
velopment of moral codes. 2. The development of
the moral sense.

Evolution of Codes of Morals

The Family. — For any advance toward an ethical
nature above that shown by the simple instincts men-
tioned we must look first to the conditions of the
human family. The moral sense always involves
duties; and for animals living in nature there are no
duties, unless we count the instinct for reproduction
as implying a duty. Among animals each individual
looks out for himself and, as a rule, neither gives aid
to others nor expects it from others. Each is
attracted to that which pleases self and is repelled
from that which hurts self. Pleasure and pain are
for them the only good and ill. We cannot regard
the instinct found among low animals to sacrifice
themselves to the race as constituting a duty, since
the sacrifices are unconscious. Among the higher an-
imals we find a few birds and mammals among which
the mother may, for a few brief weeks, consciously
yield her interests to those of her helpless young.

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 83

This may perhaps be the beginning of duty. But it
appears only when family life begins, and it is not
found in the life of animals in general. But it does
suggest to us the line along which we must look for
the beginning of duties, and points to family life as
the beginning of ethical obligations.

Family life among animals is rare ; but with man
such a relation is universally organized and with it
new conditions arise. When family life begins the
individuals are placed in new relations to each other.
Each must live his life without too seriously inter-
fering with others, otherwise the family will break to
pieces. This necessitates restraint, and with it obli-
gations. The head of the family feels that the family
is his property. Among primitive races he has per-
haps either bought and paid for his wife, or has won
her by fighting, and hence he can demand of her what
he will. His children too are his own property and
he can dispose of them as he pleases. For long years
they are dependent upon him and must obey his
word. The wife knows that she is owned by her hus-
band and that her happiness, and even her life, is
dependent upon his pleasure. She knows that un-
faithfulness to the obligations that custom places
upon her will mean her death. To be sure, these
obligations may be of the loosest kind, sometimes
binding her to her husband only on certain days of
the week, and perhaps allowing her to confer her
favors anywhere with the consent or frequently with
the command of the husband. But whatever these
obligations are, their infraction means trouble or
death. The children too learn that they must not
follow their own caprice, but must yield to the com-
mands of their parents. The husband on his part

84 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

learns that unless he fulfills his part of the family
obligations he will soon cease to have a family. Thus
each person in the family comes to live a life some-
what limited by his relations to others. Here is mani-
festly the foundation of duty.

The question of the origin of the family may best
be postponed to a later chapter. At this point we
notice only that the family with its duties was the
beginning rather than the end of development. The
process of reproduction would of itself increase the
size of the family, and as the children themselves
began to have offspring the natural group would
soon come to consist of a large number of individuals
connected by a common family bond. Such growing
groups might perhaps sometimes remain together
as a unit, or they might perhaps have soon broken to
pieces. We know too little of the history of early
peoples to be able to determine which was more com-
mon and we know nothing that will tell us what was
the primitive condition among men. But this much
we do know. After a time groups larger than fam-
ilies, which we call clans, or tribes, began to be
formed. Sometimes these clans seem to have been
overgrown families, while at other times it seems that
they were composed of the union of families at first
distinct and isolated. But whatever may have been
their origin, groups of families appeared in all races
of men, or at least in all races that showed them-
selves capable of development. The few races where
such larger communities failed to appear have re-
mained the lowest of all the races of men.

The Beginning of Duties. — All evidence points to the
conclusion that the earliest condition of the human
families was one of constant hostility to all other

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 85

families, although there was more or less harmony
among the members of the same family. But as soon
as families began to unite to form larger groups the
earlier condition of feuds and warfare between fami-
lies would surely be fatal to any union ; indeed, large
associations of men would be impossible until there
was some cessation of the hostilities that at first
plainly existed among families. Amid the constant
warfares which were going on among primitive tribes
and clans those groups of men which had a union
strong enough to enable them to act as a unit would
have exceptional advantage over those in which con-
certed action was not possible ; and as a result natu-
ral selection would soon leave in existence only those
which had been able to unite into compact masses.
Since union would be impossible unless the inter-
family feuds should cease, selection would in time
preserve those clans where the original family hos-
tilities were in a measure checked. Moreover, man,
with his growing intelligence, perhaps began to real-
ize, that success against a foreign foe was dependent
upon unity, and that this in turn was dependent upon
the disappearance of the family hostilities which
seem to have been the normal condition of early man.
Under such forces there gradually arose methods
of settling without open hostility the quarrels that
were constantly arising among families. An injured
family would agree, perhaps influenced by a dis-
inclination to fight a more numerous family, to
accept payment for an injury instead of demanding
retaliation in kind as was the primitive method of
settling disputes. There were sometimes definite
payments specified for a murder and other j^ayments
for the injury of stealing a woman. Such peaceful

86 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

methods of settlement were a necessity for a lasting
union, and in times of common danger, when the need
of union was apparent, they certainly did arise
among intelligent men. Likely enough at first the old
system of family feuds and retaliation in kind would
appear again when the immediate danger was passed
and the necessity for union became less apparent.
But even though temporary, such unions gave an im-
petus toward wider range of duties and brought into
existence a broader system of customs which regu-
lated the relations of families to each other. As
these unions of families became more lasting, not
breaking up at the close of the pressing need, the
customs became more permanent and eventually
developed into a code of unwritten law for these
early tribes. Quarrels that could be settled by resort
to tribunals or to kings ended commonly without con-
flict. Wars still arose, largely because there were
no tribunals for the settlement of the disputes of
kings; although sometimes even these were avoided
by resort to religious tribunals, like the Druids of the
Gauls or the Roman Church of later centuries.

Morals and Laws. — There thus arose two different
sets of customs regulating human relations, both
involving restraint upon the free action of individ-
uals. The one arose within the family and produced
what we commonly call morals, while the other arose
outside the family and eventually developed into Imu.
The former have never been definitely formulated
but have been based upon custom. The latter have
acquired a more and more definite meaning in suc-
cessive stages of society, and have shown a general
tendency to be distinctly formulated. They were at
first probably rules that had force only in times of

THE EVOLUTION OP MORAL CODES 87

war, when union and concert were necessary. But
slowly they acquired an application to times of peace,
and eventually became the unwritten and then the
written law of the races. They made permanent
society possible. The origin of society was thus the
appearance of restrictive laws that regulated the
relations of different families.

These two classes of regulations from the begin-
ning till to-day have had different foundations.
Family customs, though perhaps more or less
founded upon fear of the results of disobedience,
have been very largely based upon sympathy and
love. The willingness of the parent to yield his inter-
ests to those of his child, and the child's obedience to
his parents, have arisen from mutual interest and
feelings of affection. But the primitive laws that
regulated external relations had nothing to do with
these gentler principles. They were devised solely
to reduce the evils that arose from the natural law
of retaliation and were forced upon man by the neces-
sity of making as firm unions as possible. If the
notion of right and wrong entered into the question
of relations within the family, a question which we
must consider presently, it is certain that ideas of
right and wrong had, at first, nothing to do with the
formulation of laws. No conception of right or
wrong, of justice or injustice entered into the formu-
lation of the rules regulating families. The reason
why one family in the primitive condition of man-
kind demanded retaliation for an act of violence was
not because of the wrong done, but because of the
injury received. This is abundantly proved by a
host of facts. Early law, for example, recognized no
distinction between intentional injury and accident.

g8 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

If one person killed another by the most unavoidable
accident, exactly the same pa^nnent was demanded as
if it had been premeditated murder. The amount of
payment demanded had reference wholly to the
injury done and not to the wrong committed. If a
man should violate the daughter of another, he
should pay a certain sum on the ground that he had
depreciated the market value of the girl. Over his
slave or his own daughter he had unlimited freedom,
the law failing to recognize such acts, since no other
person was injured thereby.

No one who reads the condition of early law
can fail to be convinced that there was practically
no attempt made to secure justice, and that the
rightfulness or wrongfulness of an act hardly en-
tered into the conception of law. Laws were
designed to keep the peace and not to punish
wrong. Frequently they did not even try to pay for
the injury that was done. When we remember this
we can understand early types of trials which seem
so strange to us to-day. In some races, even till
recent times, a trial consisted in summoning wit-
nesses to swear to their belief that the accused was
innocent or guilty ; and if there were more witnesses
who thought him innocent, he was acquitted, while a
majority on the other side would convict him. Ab-
surd enough such a procedure appears to us, but it
was perfectly logical at an earlier period. Law was
designed to keep the peace, and the trial was not
looked upon as designed to show the innocence or
guilt of the accused, which was wholly a secondary
matter. The trial showed how large a band of fol-
lowers could be depended upon to support either
side, and this showing would take the place of an

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 89

actual resort to arms. The method of distributing
justice to-day in some of our most enlightened
nations, as shown by the Dreyfus case, bears mani-
fest evidence of such a desire to keep the peace rather
than to determine the justice of the case.

Law was thus established as a means of regulating
pajTuent for injuries. The only justice recognized
was that each should be held responsible for the
result of his actions, wholly irrespective of his
motives. This is exactly the kind of justice that
nature measures out to the individual. The inex-
orable laws of nature pay not the slightest atten-
tion to motive. The man whose leg is broken try-
ing to save the life of a friend suffers exactly as
much as if it had been broken in trying to take his
life. Motive and justice play no part in nature's
laws.

It was natural enough, therefore, that the artificial
law developed by mankind should have a similar
aspect. But as society developed new notions en-
tered into the conception of law. Louis XII of
France improved the conditions of things by intro-
ducing into the courts the force of reason as a substi-
tute for the force of arms; but he made no special
attempt to make them courts of justice as we under-
stand the term. More recently attention has been
turned from the act to the motive. Justice, as we
understand it to-day, insists that in the administra-
tion of our artificial laws each shall, so far as pos-
sible, be rewarded according to his motives and not
simply his acts. This is quite a new idea in the his-
tory of the administration of law and we are still far
from realizing it to perfection. We frequently say
that our courts are travesties of justice. The ability

90 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

of a brilliant lawyer to obtain decisions entirely con-
trary to plain justice reminds us forcibly of the con-
ditions of the courts of Louis XII. Even when
the laws are legally applied we know too well that
justice is rarely done. The really guilty man goes
unpunished while the weak tool suffers for the deed.
But even if we should rise above these failures in the
application of justice, our laws are still, of necessity
perhaps, based upon the idea of the injury done
rather than the motive concerned. A man who lives
a life of petty meanness, causing the suffering and
ruin perhaps of hundreds, would receive, if rewarded
according to his motives, a much more severe pun-
ishment than one who in a fit of anger kills a fellow
man. But the law punishes the latter with extreme
severity, while the former likely goes through life
untouched by law. Justice is an ideal toward which
we hope our system of public law is tending and
which we think of as measured out in a final judg-
ment by an omniscient judge, but which is far from
realized by human law. But in the development of
public law there is a clear progress in this direction.
While courts are still largely a means of regulating
the payment for injuries done, either intentionally or
unintentionally, we are recognizing more and more
that their ultimate purpose is to measure out justice
rather than retaliation and payment.

While morality, as we have defined it, was origi-
nally confined to the family relations and law to tribal
relations, this distinction soon began to break down
and moral codes began to extend beyond the family
bounds. Family customs, even though having their
origin partly in fear, were largely developed from
the feeling of love, and so long as love and sympathy

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 91

were dominant no formal rules were needed for the
guidance of men. Law is not needed to regulate the
family relations except in cases where there is a lack
of love on the part of members for each other. For
centuries public law paid no attention to family rela-
tions, upon the principle that the feeling of mutual
interest should be suJScient for their regulation.
Law was needed only in external relations where the
natural attitude was one of hostility. But as larger
and larger organizations appeared men were brought
into wider and closer contact, and as this contact
became more intimate the sympathies of man ex-
tended beyond the limits of the family. He came to
extend to persons outside of his family the same kind
of feelings of love as had previously been confined to
his own family, though, of course, less intense. The
exclusiveness of family life disappeared and mutual
interest began to broaden. Duties and obligations
were recognized as binding quite independent of law
and based upon a widening brotherhood. The scope
of actions included in the moral code thus slowly
broadened.

The Broadening of Obligations When the clan took

the place of the family as the largest unit of men, the
obligations originally binding only upon the family
extended to the clan. When the tribe succeeded the
clan and when the kingdom succeeded the tribe a
similar expansion of duties occurred. But with all
the broadening of obligations it is significant to
notice that they never extended beyond the limits of
the special group of which each person was a mem-
ber. No obligations were recognized toward the
enemy. To love one 's friends and hate one 's enemies
was the rule. The only question was as to who was

92 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

one 's enemy. At first the enemy was anyone belong-
ing to another family. Later it was the member of
another clan or tribe. Later still it was only the
foreign kingdom or nation, and last of all the foreign
nation only in times of declared war. But in the
whole history wherever man recognized an enemy he
felt himself free from obligations toward him. Aris-
totle taught that the Greek had no more obligations
to barbarians than to beasts.

So far as principle is concerned we do not stand
upon a higher plane to-day. To be sure, our sym-
pathies have broadened and we recognize obligations
extending over a much wider range. We are begin-
ning to speak of a universal brotherhood of man,
which involves, of course, universal obligations. But
we must remember that war was the universal condi-
tion of early people, and even to-day, let a period of
war arise, and we find our sense of obligation toward
the enemy vanishes at once. Even in times of peace
our methods of diplomacy are based upon the laws of
hostility rather than friendship. In settling ques-
tions of diplomacy the principles of justice and hon-
esty admittedly play a very small part. We are hop-
ing for a time when justice shall settle international
disputes, but it has not come yet. In diplomatic con-
tests each party endeavors to gain his point by every
possible advantage, and does not hesitate to use
force, trickery, argument, or deceit, and expects sim-
ilar treatment in turn. This actual state of affairs
to-day shows us that in principle we are upon the
same plane as early man, with love for our friend
and hate for our enemy. The difference lies simply
in our having extended the limits over which we
apply the name ''friend." To-day nation bears to

THE EVOLUTION OF MORAL CODES 93

nation the same relation that the primitive savage
bore to his fellow. The command to *'love your
enemies" is a radical break in the development of
morals, a world-wide departure from the previous
condition of the ethical nature.

"We have no space to develop this topic further
and must leave it with this sketchy outline. Brief as
it is, our outline will serve to illustrate the point
which we wish to emphasize. The present condition
of the morality of nations has been a matter of slow
growth and development. History clearly shows that
moral codes, which regulate the customs of mankind,
have developed from the condition so low as to be
hardly an advance over the life of the brute creation,
and have come to their present state by a series of
traceable steps. Obligations began with the family
and have grown and expanded with the size of the
organizations of men. So far as concerns codes of
morals there is no break of any significance separat-
ing the highest from the lowest man.

CHAPTER IV

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MOEAL SENSE

The Nature of the Moral Sense

We have not yet reached the center of the question,
for we have thus far traced only the development of
codes of morals and have not touched the question
of the moral sense itself. Conscience does not exist
among animals, but with man it frequently proves to
be the mightiest force that controls his actions. Is
this moral sense also a matter of social inheritance
or is it a part of his organic nature, and derived
by germinal heredity 1

From the origin of moral codes as outlined in the
previous chapter, it would follow that right should
always be that which is customary. The right would
necessarily be the average opinion of the race, and
wrong would be anything contrary to the average
opinion. But all systems of ethics that base the moral
sense upon custom are unsatisfactory failures. We
clearly recognize a difference between the right and
the average opinion. The martyr finds the right to be
something very different from average opinion. The
principles outlined in the preceding chapter could
never have produced martyrs. We certainly recog-
nize a difference between the right and that which
appears expedient, or between the right and that
which would meet the approbation of our compan-
ions; and we recognize in conscience something
which demands obedience, even though it means
sacrifice of life. Natural selection may have pre-

94

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 95

served those clans that developed codes of morals,
leading to unitj^ but could it have developed a moral
sense which urges one to sacrifice himself, his home,
and even his country to an ideal?

But it is exactly such a feeling that must be ac-
counted for in explaining the moral sense. Upon the
question of the development of codes it is not likely
that there would be much difference of opinion.
That man's idea of what is right and what is wrong
has been subject to a gradual elevation is simply a
matter of history, attested equally by secular and
religious grounds. The real question comes when
we ask for the origin of the impulse that impels man
to do right, whatever be the consequences. It has
generally been held that however low the stage of
moral codes among savages, they always possess a
moral sense. AVhile savages regard as right many
acts which we condemn, still they do recognize some
acts as right and some as wrong, and hence have a
moral sense. In this they are in sharp contrast to
animals, for among the latter the moral sense is
admittedly absent. To what extent is it possible to
account for the origin of this moral sense as a social
inheritance, and hence as acquired by each individA
ual, and to what extent must it be attributed to or-l
ganic inheritance and therefore innate? '

This question is evidently twofold, for it resolves
itself into the two questions; (1) How did the moral
sense arise in primitive man? and (2) How does the
moral sense arise in the individual? Certainly, the
babe is born to-day without any conscience, and
equally sure is it that conscience develops in the
growing child. If we accept the theory of a natural
origin of man, it follows also that at one time in

96 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

his early history man must have been without that
which we call moral sense. How came mankind to
develop it later? These two questions are clearly
very closely associated. If it should appear that
the moral sense develops in the child as the result of
social inheritance, it would follow that a similar
explanation must have held in previous generations ;
while if it should appear that this distinctly human
attribute has come by organic inheritance, that it is
innate rather than acquired by the individual, then it
must find some other explanation of its origin than
social inheritance. In our discussion it will not be
possible to separate completely these two questions,
since they are so closely interwoven. It will be our
clearest line of thought to consider first the question
of the origin of the moral sense in primitive man.

The Moral Sense in the Primitive Family

Evidence as to the condition of the moral sense in
the human families of prehistoric times is quite lack-
ing, and our only approach to it is in the study of the
customs and traditions that literature has handed
down to us. So little does this give that we can prac-
tically neglect it except as confirmatory to the con-
clusions reached from other sources. The only
source of evidence open seems to be the study of the
life of the lower races of man still living, and the
endeavor to reconstruct from their habits of thought
the method by which what we call conscience in the
higher races has been developed.

Moral Sense in Low Races. — The chief characteristic
of the moral sense is that it is an impulse to obey
certain laws or customs, no matter what the result.
Even the lowest families of mankind show some

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 97

customs which the members of the family implicitly
obey. But what sort of a feeling is it that urges
obedience? Is it a sense of duty, that is, a moral
sense, or is it some other impulse? Some of those
who have tried to analyze the lives of savage races
tell us that in low tribes of man there is nothing that
can properly be called a moral sense, not even in
rudiment; and that these savage families are not con-
trolled by any idea of right and wrong, but by quite
different motives. Fear of punishment, pride and
love of approbation, as well as dread of disapproba-
tion, love and sympathy, together with pleasure in
one another's company, constitute the real motives.
The idea of right and wrong, we are told, does not
exist. Such impulses do not particularly separate
man from animals, for the higher animals are influ-
enced by each of these motives. A tribe of monkeys
lives in harmony and is ruled by customs which are
obeyed a;nd apparently obeyed from exactly these
motives of fear, pride, etc. If there are no other
motives than these among primitive families, there is
no great distinction here between man and animals.
Such motives are surely innate, and are implanted in
the human nature, as in the nature of animals, by
organic inheritance. Primitive man differed from
other animals in showing an unusual power of form-
ing lasting unions ; but if the motives underlying the
customs adopted were only those of fear, pride, love,
etc., he was not in this respect much better endowed
than the animal world.

Motives Involved. — Here, then, is a fundamental
question. Is it true that such people are actuated
only by these impulses, or do they have a real sense
of right and wrong? If the guiding principle is only

98 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

fear or love, then we cannot say that such peoples
have any conscience; but if there is any sense of
oughtness present, independent of expediency, then
we must admit the existence of a moral sense, even
though weak and undeveloped. It is extremely diffi-
cult to answer this question. Of course, concerning
primitive man, we can say absolutely nothing, for we
know nothing about him. Our only evidence must
be obtained by the study of those races of men that
stand lowest in the scale of civilization, and even this
must commonly be based upon chance impressions of
travelers, who are generally incapable of answering
such a delicate question; indeed, travelers are usu-
ally ignorant that such a question even exists. That
the members of the lowest savage races are impelled
to certain lines of action by some kind of impulse is
clear enough. But what that impulse is, and whether
it is different from fear or love, it is impossible to
answer. One visitor who sees the looseness of sex-
ual relations among certain races reports that there
are no rules in this respect, while another finds
among the same people definite regulations in this
matter, which are adhered to even more strictly than
are those of the civilized races. One traveler, see-
ing a savage father, in a sudden fury, dash out the
brains of his child who had displeased him, concludes
that parental love is nonexistent, while another, who
studies the lives of the same savages, concludes that
the family life is full of affection for the children.
One person, noting the prevalence of infanticide, con-
cludes that parental love is very weak; another
insists that infanticide is a means of showing par-
ental love, since it is the only method thej^ know for
preventing the lasting suffering which would come

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 99

upon their living children by allowing the family to
become too large, and that they are thus actually
instigated by a love for their children rather than
by a lack of parental affection.

It will probably never be possible to determine
whether it is proper to call by the name of moral
sense the rather weak impulse that leads the savage
to recognize certain obligations. A European, who
is himself filled with high motives of duty, will be
likely to read his own motive into the actions of these
savages when he comes to live with them. He will
conclude that they are influenced by feelings of right
and wrong even when they follow lines of action
which to him seem wrong. Such a person would tell
us that the savage is just as truly following the dic-
tates of conscience when he kills his infant child as
was Abraham of old when he offered Isaac for sacri-
fice. Perhaps this is correct, but all that we can say
positively is that some motive urges him to the
action. Another man visiting the same tribe, finding
them so lacking in what he regards as a sense of
wrong, and finding such freedom of robbery and
murder, and perhaps such an absolute lack of hon-
esty, concludes they are destitute of moral sense and
act only under the influence of fear, pride, and greed.
He, again, may be right. Even if we were thor-
oughly acquainted with savages, it might be impos-
sible to determine what sort of impulses influence
them, and whether their moral sense is anything
more than that which impels a dog to obey his
master.

Thus even among the races which stand at the bot-
tom of the scale some coercion to certain lines of
action is evident ; but it is significant to notice that it

100 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

concerns only sucli acts as affect the members of the
immediate family. An animal is commonly impelled
to do what is pleasing to him and to refrain from that
which is unpleasant. Man, as a member of a family,
is occasionally impelled to check his personal im-
pulses and to do something for the good of the family
rather than for self. That the interests of those
outside his family should influence his actions never
enters the head of the low savage. If he has any
sense of right and wrong, it is confined to his own
family. A Bushman, when asked to mention a bad
action, said it would be bad for some one to steal his
wife ; when asked to mention a good action, he said
it would be good to steal the wife of some one else.
Eobbery from another family is praiseworthy since
it increases one's possessions; but the idea is wholly
self -centered and does not extend beyond one 's imme-
diate f amilv.

Upon this point of motive must hang the issue of a
moral sense among savages. So far as concerns
obligations to others, the step from the highest animal
societies to the lowest human family is a slight one,
but it is one upon which depends the permanency of
the family. Those human families were preserved in
the struggle for existence in which there was the
greatest amount of mutual reliance and unity, and
this occurred only in such families as taught their
children obedience. The child, during his early years,
when the brain is plastic, learns the few customs
upon which the preservation of the family is based.
Love of approbation urges him to follow the habits
of his elders and it is inevitable that he should come
to manhood with a mental nature in which these
habits have become a part. He followed these habits

Unlwrtlty "^-^
'vo TtrMito S^ I

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 101

blindly, just as in our communities we follow fashion
in regard to our clothing; and it is possible that such
adherence to custom on the part of the savage in-
volves no more of moral sense than does our own
habit of wearing clothes according to the prevailing
fashion. All that we can affirm positively is that
among the low races of men there is some sort of feel-
ing that imperatively commands the individual to
adhere to certain customs, and the customs thus
enforced seem calculated to produce the most har-
monious results. Families in which this adherence
to customs does not occur could make no headway
against the unity of action of the harmonious family,
and natural selection would soon leave only those in
which such impulses have played an important part.
Although the original content of this feeling may not
be certain, we must consider in succession various
impulses which have doubtless contributed to it, no-
ticing how the lower emotions eventually grade into
the higher ones. Fear and pride we have noticed,
and we come now to emotions more distinctly human.
Sympathy. — Although it does not by any means con-
stitute a satisfactory foundation for ethics, sym-
pathy has played a prominent part in the growth of
the moral nature of man. Whereas animals, as a
rule, respond only to the pleasure of the moment and
occasionally to remembered or anticipated pleasures
and pains, man has learned to respond to the pleas-
ures and pain of others. He has acquired the habit
of acting in such a manner as will give pleasure and
happiness to others even at a sacrifice to self, and he
has learned more and more to repress actions that
give unhappiness to others. This feeling of sym-
pathy was doubtless at first confined to the members

102 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

of one 's own family, as may be recognized from the
attitude of the Bushman above mentioned ; but later
it broadened out to include other families, and it has
finally expanded to include more or less forcefully all
mankind. To-day we speak of the common brother-
hood of man, and we are sending our shiploads of
food to the starving people of Russia or China,
recognizing as our brothers those who live on the
other side of the globe as well as those on the other
side of the street.

As this sympathy has broadened it has also deep-
ened. The pleasure we take in the happiness of
others and the sorrow we feel in their sufferings have
become more and more keen. This growing sym-
pathy has by no means reached perfection even yet.
Even to-day it is insufficient to prevent the oppres-
sion of the poor by the rich, or to prevent the corre-
sponding marks of enmity of the poor against the
rich. But it has been growing constantly, and in
spite of the glaring evils which appear in society,
leading to antagonistic class organizations, to strikes
and lockouts, still, on the whole, the wealthy class
has to-day a greater sympathy for the laboring
classes than at any other time in the history of civ-
ilization. This growing sympathy has organized
hospitals, which were formerly undreamed of; it has
organized numerous institutions of charity; it has
improved the condition of woman. It is to-day bring-
ing the wealthy to recognize the existence of ''the
other half" and to endeavor to improve their condi-
tion. It has led to the highest phases of the ethical
nature that have been yet developed. It is true per-
haps that with this developing sympathy there has
hitherto been an unfortunate tendency to substitute

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 103

charity for justice. We sympathize with the ' ' other
half" and try to alleviate their discomforts without
striking at the root of the evil and removing the
social conditions that make that ''half" a possi-
bility. Our social conditions too frequently deny to
our brother what he has really earned, and we have
been content to try to make this up to him by giving
to him some of the things which we happen to have
in our possession, though we ourselves may never
have earned them. Our courts are frequently
travesties of justice; and recognizing this, we try
sometimes to compensate by giving to the unfortu-
nate what he has not earned and perhaps does not
desire. But all this is simply an indication that we
are far from having reached perfection even in the
matter of sympathy, and one cannot be really ac-
quainted with history without realizing that each
century has seen an advance in these respects. But
while the grade of morality of the higher races
surely stands on a higher plane to-day than in any
earlier century, it is also a fact that our ideals ad-
vance faster than the race can apply them. As a
result, in practical morals the race seems farther
from its ideals to-day than ever, since those ideals
keep so much ahead of practice. Consequently,
we not infrequently find those who tell us that
the world is growing worse instead of better. If
such persons would compare the actual conditions
of to-day with the actual conditions of earlier cen-
turies, instead of comparing them with the will-o'-
the-wisp ideals, no conclusion would be possible
except that there has been and still is a constant
advance.

The Sense of Duty. — Neither fear, love, pride, nor

104 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

sympathy, nor all these together, constitute a moral
sense, even though they may have been the founda-
tion emotions upon which it was built. In some way
and at some time there was taken a new step which
led eventually to the sense of duty and the idea of
right and wrong. Of course we can, from the nature
of the case, have no direct evidence as to when or
how this new conception first made its appearance
in the early history of mankind. We can only study
how it develops in the child and make certain deduc-
tions from this and other data which may lead us to
a fairly clear-cut theory upon the subject. The dis-
cussion as to the origin of this moral sense or con-
science has long been a favorite one for philosophy,
theolog>% and science as well, and it is hardly pos-
sible to add much to the discussion. But in the light
of our general subject certain aspects of the discus-
sion need restatement and reapplication.

We can best present the phase of the matter which
bears upon our subject by first trying to analyze the
method by which the idea of right and wrong arises
in the growing child. At the beginning of a child *s
life he is, of course, without any moral attributes.
He does not even have sense enough to obey any-
thing, simply trying to gain the satisfaction of his
desires. As his mind begins to develop he early
learns to obey his parents. The impulses that urge
him to this are clearly twofold. He is partly influ-
enced by fear of punishment or the displeasure of
his parents and partly by a love for them and a de-
sire to please. Clearly enough, in the very young
child no idea of right or wrong exists. The very
methods adopted by the parents to teach obedience
prove this. Sometimes the fear of punishment is

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 105

held before him; sometimes he is told that it will
make his parents "feel badly" if he does a certain
thing; sometimes he is urged to do it "to please
mother"; but the young child is never urged to
obey because it is right. By these means he slowly
acquires a feeling of some forces outside of his own
inclination that guide his actions, a feeling that
in earlier life he did not have. One of the next steps
in this development is learning to imitate a model.
To imitate their elders seems to be an instinct im-
planted in all children, and very early each begins to
imitate unconsciously the actions of those around
him. Naturally his first model is likely to be his
mother, with whom he is best acquainted. She thus
becomes an ideal and the argument that "mamma
would not do it if she were you" begins to have
strong force with him, so that he comes to pattern his
life after hers. A little later he is likely to choose,
quite unconsciously of course, a model outside of
his family, always, however, one with whom he is
brought into more or less close contact. This model
may be a school teacher, a Sunday school teacher, a
soldier, or, indeed, any other person that attracts
his admiration. But each model in turn proves
unsatisfactory as his intelligence grows, for uncon-
sciously he finds flaws in them all. Then he begins to
substitute an imaginary model for an actual one.
Perhaps it is a historical character in regard to
whom only a few facts are known, so that ample room
is left for his imagination to fill out the remainder
and thus create out of the personage just the kind of
bundle of characters he pleases. Sometimes the
model has no basis even in history, but is pure fiction,
a pure ideal, or, as he sometimes calls it, "his other

106 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

self." Of course he does not think of these indi-
viduals as patterns to be imitated ; but in the life of
a child this is certainly the method of the develop-
ment of the conscience, for conscience is that feeling
within, which tells him to do as his model would under
like circumstances, whether that model be his mother,
his teacher, his inspired writer, or his God.

It is, of course, manifest that in time the idea of
right and wrong comes to be applied to the different
tyioes of action. The method by which this new
thought arises seems to be fairly simple. As the
child matures he inevitably comes to recognize cer-
tain lines of action toward which he is impelled by
the various influences which are at work forming
his mind, and another set of activities which these
same influences forbid him to perform. In other
words, he comes to feel that there are some things
which are to be done and others that are not to be
done. He is then taught by parents or others that
it is right to do the one and ivrong to 'do the other.
These are at first only words, of course, and are
applied simply to the lines of action which he has
been taught to follow or to shun. He certainly does
not at first recognize in them any of the meaning that
he subsequently puts into them. To the very young
it may be thought just as wrong to dress unfashion-
ably or to soil one's clothing as it is to tell a lie, since
both actions bring a reprimand. But his teaching
gives him a more and more definite thought of a
right that should be done and a wrong that should
be avoided; and from the time this idea is firmly
fixed the further development of the moral nature
consists in the refining of the conception and the
classification of actions in one or the other of the

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 107

two classes. The method of classifying actions into
right and wrong is widely different in different men.
The differences are primarily due to environment
which produces one type of classification for a boy
of the slums, another for the millionaire's son, one
classification for the Englishman and another for the
Turk. But in each case whatever is eventually
placed in the category of right has tlio imperative
demand of conscience for its support.

The Development of the Moral Sense in the Race

The method of the development of a moral
sense in the child may clearly serve as a guide
toward an understanding of its development in the
race. Each individual at present certainly acquires
his ideas of right and wrong by being taught. Our
problem is therefore to account for the race con-
science, or, more specifically, to account for the fact
that men ever developed any ideas of right and
wrong at all, which they could then hand on to their
children by teaching. Data as to the development of
this conception of right and wrong among primitive
peoples come partly from recorded history, partly
from the customs of low races, and partly, we must
recognize, from pure theoretical argument as to what
seems the most probable. The most natural explana-
tion of the origin of the moral sense seems to be
something as follows :

The start, of course, must have been the family
duties already mentioned as necessary to produce
family harmony. The strength derived from unity
preserved certain families more and more perma-
nently, and the individuals in the families thus came
to pass a long life under one another's influence.

1

108 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

The child of primitive man, from the time that the
family became lasting, was from earliest infancy
placed under the influence of his elders, who became
his teachers. From the dawning of his intelligence
and during all the early years when his mind was
most plastic he was sure to be molded by the influ-
ence of those around him. During these years one
great lesson was both consciously and unconsciously
taught him, namely, that he must ohey not only the
commands of his parents, but must yield to the public
opinion of the tribe of which his family formed a
part. From very early infancy the child, like the
animal, was influenced by expressions of praise ^d
blame and, since public opinion praises one line "of
action and blames another, the child, even among
primitive peoples, must have been urged to follow
one line of action and avoid another. By imitation
he learned to act as his parents acted, and later as
others around him acted.

In this way the child soon learned the force of
authority, finding through his slight experience that
in his family all yielded to the family head. Later he
found that the family head yielded to the commands
of the tribal chief, and all these facts so molded his
growing mind that by the time he had become an
adult the idea of obedience to authority was thor-
oughly impressed upon him. He gradually devel-
oped the notion of submission to authority, perhaps
the most important mental trait controlling his evo-
lution, and constituting the foundation of ethics and
religion; for conscience is surely founded upon the
recognition of the necessity for obedience.

Sympathy and love were internal forces, and per-
haps the willingness to yield obedience may have

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 109

been an instinct, and hence due to organic inherit-
ance. But when primitive man began to yield to the
impulse to obey there began to be exerted upon him
external forces urging obedience, and thus social
inheritance began to exert its influence in molding
him. Furthermore, since this pressure came from
without, it inevitably grew to extend beyond the
limits of the family as soon as the family became a
member of a clan or tribe. The individual first
learned to obey the family head, resenting the inter-
ference of outsiders. But, as the tribe developed
customs which served to keep the peace between fam-
ilies, the individual would inevitably feel the same
influence impelling him to obey tribal customs. If
his family had decided to accept a payment for a
murder instead of adopting the more primitive
method of retaliation, there would be exerted upon
the individual a most powerful tribal influence com-
pelling him to adhere to the family agreement. The
same feeling of authority impelling obedience would
be felt, and in time the simple agreements which
were entered into by families to preserve themselves
against their common enemies would receive the
same sanction that had been at first given to the
family relations. Since he felt himself forced to
obey all these customs, the individual would inevit-
ably in time develop a sense of obligation, that is,
duty, in connection with them. Hence would arise
the impulse to obey public law which would, however,
always be less keen than the impulses to obey family
rules, because they would be less frequent of appli-
cation and less remote from his daily life, besides
having been acquired at a later period in his life than
that at which he had developed his ideas of family

110 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

duties. Such a condition appears universal in all
savage tribes, for there is none that does not show
this sense of obedience to authority to some extent.
Whether there is always any sense of moral obliga-
tion connected with it is not by any means sure, and
very likely at the outset such a feeling is founded
upon love, pride, fear, and coercion. But although
obedience may have at first been thus produced, just
as soon as it became imperative and binding it would
in a measure change its nature. The sense of coer-
cion would become a sense of duty. Out of the must
would come the ought — two feelings which were
probably at first indistinguishable in the race, as
they certainly are indistinguishable in the mind of
the growing child.

Origin of Conscience. — Such a force could not raise
the individual above the average of his race. It
would lead him to imitate others, and to follow the
dictates of general opinion or the command of a
superior, but his private conscience could not rise
above public custom. Now the very essence of con-
science is that it may act independently of public
opinion, and demands obedience not infrequently in
direct opposition to the customs of the race. If the
sense of duty which arises from coercion, fear, love,
or sympathy cannot rise above average opinion,
something more is evidently needed to explain the
moral sense in its higher forms. We may under-
stand, from what has gone before, the origin of tribal
customs and a sense of obligation to obey law; but
how arose that conscience which impels one to stand
against the opinions of the race, to resist law in favor
of what he thinks to be right, even at the expense of
suffering, and which, in short, fills us with the belief

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 111

that right is something wholly superior to custom,
law, and, indeed, to any human standard"?

The answer to this question would seem to be as
follows : There is no such thing as race conscience in
any proper sense, only a conscience in each individ-
ual. The race has never developed a moral sense,
but each individual has developed his own, since he
is born without it and shows none in his early years.
Hence the question of the origin of the race con-
science is only the question already discussed of the
origin of individual conscience. The children of the
earliest races which formed families, just as the chil-
dren of to-day, must have found themselves subject to
criticism from their superiors, and must have early
learned that there was some standard of living which
they did not reach. For some things they were
blamed, for others commended, and they inevitably
perceived that there was one standard to be con-
demned and another to be commended. What this
standard was they doubtless did not know nor even
consciously recognize its existence. But since the
father or the chieftain or the family patriarch was
the one to receive obedience, they came to be the
embodiment of the standard to be followed.

How long it was before any further steps were
taken in the development of the moral sense we have
no conception. But in time the higher stages of con-
science began to be possible as the social condi-
tions advanced and became more complicated. When
man isolated this standard even unconsciously
from any actual person, and made it an ideal to be
imitated, the step forward toward what we now call
conscience was a great one. This ideal would then
embody all the actions which his growing mind urged

112 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

him to obey for any reason good or bad. He would
from that time begin to criticize self, to feel self-
respect when he followed this imaginary model and
experience shame when he failed to do so. So vividly
has this model come to stand in the conception of the
higher developed races that the individual comes to
speak of it as his other self, his alter ego, by which
phrase he means, when we analyze it closely, simply
an ideal embodying all the characters which he
thinks really belong to the best citizen that he can
imagine. The other self is nothing but the imaginary
ideal that actually would do the things which he feels
that he ought to do but does not. From this point the
moral sense acts wholly from within. The individual
would now be impelled not from fear of punishment
but because his other self commends his actions.

This is an immense step in advance and opens a
new world of motives. The individual is now his
own judge and criticizes himself according to an
ideal. His own judgment of himself is much more
rigorous than that which he gives to another, since
he can judge himself according to his motives. His
sense of duty now insists that his motives should con-
form to an ideal.

Right and Wrong. — The universal tendency of man
is to form abstractions. From the consideration of
blue, red, and yellow objects he forms an abstract
notion of color, and this greatly aids thought. From
the thought of many beautiful objects he makes the
abstraction beauty. Neither color nor beauty exists
in nature. In considering this line of actions, toward
which he feels impelled by conscience, he adopts
the same method. Feeling impelled to do certain
things and to refrain from doing others, he has

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 113

come to recognize two classes of action, one which
he is impelled to perform, and another from which
he is to refrain. It makes no difference whether
the impelling force was at first fear or love, whether
it was from within or without, the two classes are
distinct. Recognizing the two classes, he inevit-
ably names them and thus forms the abstraction
of right and wrong. The content of right and wrong
concerns moral codes, but the recognition of these
ideas, together with their authority, constitutes the
moral sense. From this time these two notions
more or less dominate life. Man feels himself
bound to do right, and wrong is repellent to him.
He seldon tries to analyze the reason why he should
do right, any more than a child reasons why he
should obey his mother. He simply feels that some-
thing within him impels him toward one line of
action and repels him from another. The right
action then becomes the reason for its own exist-
ence. Eight conduct appears before him as the
action of the ideal, and his knight is the man who,
under all conditions, follows this line which he calls
right. The relation is now reversed. The supposed
actions of his ideal gave him his first notion of right ;
but now the right has been abstracted from his ideal,
and this ideal becomes henceforth the person who,
under all circumstances, does the right. Right action
has become an end in itself. The highest stage of the
moral sense has been reached.

When this stage is reached the individual may fre-
quently go far in advance of the average of the race.
That which is customary may no longer appear to
be right to him. He has a classification of actions,
and into one of two classes he places every act.

114 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

While the majority of men at any period in history
will place in the category of right actions those which
the general public approves, the individual may fre-
quently make his classification differently. Consid-
ering the variation in the mental attributes of man,
their different conditions and education, there is no
dijficulty in understanding why some individuals
make classifications of actions differently from
others. Most people believe amusements a necessity
for healthful mental activity, but some, brought up
under special environments, class all amusements in
the category of wrong. Just as soon as the indi-
vidual makes his classification his conscience impels
him to follow his ideals. If he has classified amuse-
ments as wrong, his conscience will tell him to shun
them with the same kind of repulsion which his
neighbor feels for falsehood. If he has classified a
lie as wrong, while his acquaintance, a man of the
slums, because of his different environment, has
regarded murder as sometimes justifiable, he will
feel a greater loss of self-respect from telling a lie
than the man of the slums will feel from committing
murder. This murderer has a different classifica-
tion of acts, for he may have an equal repulsion
from certain actions which he classifies as wrong,
as, for example, the betrayal of a companion in
crime. Indeed, when the right is looked at as a
thing in itself and man groups actions in two cate-
gories, as right and wrong, there is ground for
endless variety in action. Now we see how some may
be far in advance of the average opinion of the race.
We see how the spirit of the martyr is accounted for,
and we see how conscience may come now to lead the
race onward instead of following it.

the evolution of the moral sense 115

The Content op Eight and Wkong

One further question remains : If the ideal which
embodies our ideas of right is simply an imaginary-
one, why is it that men's ideals should agree? The
answer to this question is simply that they do not
agree. The knight of the twelfth century was a
totally different person from the knight of the
twentieth century, and the ideal of the Chinaman is
very unlike that of the German. It is true that in
some respects there is an agreement among widely
different peoples as to the attributes which belong to
this ideal, and this agreement can be readily under-
stood when we notice one fact. Among all national-
ities and at all ages the ideal individual is the one who
conforms best to the social ideas of his day. He is in
general the best social individual, the one who best
conforms to that class of actions that best fits him to
be a member of his social organization. Impulses be-
come moral only when directed toward society, since
a hermit can be neither moral nor immoral. Now,
certain fundamental factors are universally neces-
sary if there is to be any society at all. A certain
amount of truth and faithfulness toward one 's allies
is an absolute necessity if there is to be any union;
and so we find that faithfulness to one's friends is
universally one of the attributes of all people's
ideals. Beyond some few fundamental conceptions
of this sort, we do not find agreement among differ-
ent people as to what is considered right and wrong.

Moreover, our opinions as to what constitute the
best types of society are also changing, and it follows
that our moral standards are also changing; for the
ethical standard is always the conception of the best

116 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

member of society. Our alter ego is a watchman
^ ' charged to restrain the anti-social tendencies. ' ' As
society becomes more complex with each century
this ethical ideal is constantly acquiring new attri-
butes, and these new attributes are mostly along the
general line that we call altruistic. The ethical
standard is coming constantly to have more thought
for others. Compare, for example, the ideal of the
ancient Hebrews with our own of to-day. Their
highest teachers, their loftiest ideals committed
massacres as merciless as those of the Turks, and
these acts received the highest approbation of that
race which has been the teacher of the world's
religion. A similar action to-day would strike
horror into the whole civilized world.

The ideal of any man at any age is always the
embodiment of the characters which "his set" ad-
mires and regards as the best for the race in gen-
eral. His set may be a large one and thus give him
an average opinion of the race, or it may be a small
one, like some small religious sect, and this would
give him an ideal totally different from the aver-
age opinion of the race — sometimes lower and
sometimes higher. But the fact that the ideal may
change concerns the development of moral codes
rather than the evolution of the moral sense. Con-
science tells man to imitate his ideal. Whether
our ideal be a knight of the African savage, the
knight of the mediaeval ages, or the knight of
the twentieth century is dependent upon the acci-
dent of our birth; but this has nothing to do with
the motive that actuates us. The anarchist who
commits outrages may be as truly driven by con-
science as the missionary ; and in both cases their con-

THE EVOLUTION OP THE MORAL SENSE 117

science has arisen first from the feeling of coercion,
which later was felt as obligation. While the model
differs with different races and different centuries,
man is impelled to imitate that model by the same
sense of duty.

It may possibly seem that thus to explain the
origin of conscience deprives it of all its imperative
force. But this position indicates only a superficial
view of the matter. The fact that conscience is
known to develop in the individual while it is
absent in the child, does not in the slightest degree
decrease the cogency of the oughtness when it is
developed. All individuals certainly begin life
without conscience, and all develop it. "With the
adult the appeal to one's conscience forms com-
monly the most powerful of motives. It is the
motive that will generally influence man when all
appeals to expediency and reason fail. It will lead
him to sacrifice his happiness and his life, and it has
been the cause of most revolutions in history. It
forms the strongest motive in legislation and, as we
shall presently see, has been at the foundation of
civilization itself. It does not make this motive any
less significant to know that the individual is born
without it and develops it under the conditions of
his childhood. The fact that as a babe he had no
conscience, and that his mother not only taught him
to do right but even taught him that there was a
right, does not make his conscience any less a part
of his nature. Does it not follow that conscience is
equally cogent for the individual and the race, even
if we should accept its development in the race by a
series of steps such as outlined in the previous
pages? The conclusion that conscience has devel-

118 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

oped in the race as well as in the individual does not
make its dictates any less imperative.

The Moral Sense Started as a "Spontaneous

Variation ' *

One final question remains for brief considera-
tion. What has been shown in this outline is that
we can find numerous grades between the highly
developed moral sense of to-day and the lowest
condition among savages, and other intermediate
grades between this and the condition of social
habits among animals. It has been made evident
that the early families in which this ethical prin-
ciple developed would be the ones to survive, but it
has not been shown how it happened that any fam-
ilies did develop this new phase of character. If
some families in early times did develop these new
methods of action while others did not, we can
understand the survival of the former. But what
caused any of them to start in this new line? Per-
haps it may have been useful to man to make for
himself a model, and then to pattern his life after
this model to avoid the loss of self-respect, but this
does not explain how he ever came to form the habit
of creating such a model. The elimination of races
with the lower stage of development of the moral
sense does not explain the origin of races with that
sense highly developed. In order that this char-
acter should grow there must have been constant
departure from race habit, since a repetition of
custom could produce no advance. If each genera-
tion simply learned what it was taught, and thus de-
veloped a moral nature like its parents, advance
would be impossible. Some individuals must have

THE EVOLUTION OP THE MORAL SENSE 119

been in advance of the average. What was the
cause of these advances which placed some ahead
of the race?

This question is plainly akin to that of the origin
of variations in general, a question which still re-
mains one of the puzzles of biology. Living on the
same street we may find those whose conscience is
so highly developed that they will sacrifice life to
their ideal of honor, and others in whom the sense is
largely lacking. What makes the difference? Educa-
tion doubtless explains it to a degree but not wholly,
since two individuals with identical education may
develop different grades of conscience. The moral
sense is not even to-day wholly a matter of social, but
must be in part a matter of organic inheritance.
Still more true must this have been in regard to
whatever of this instinct primitive man possessed
before the formation of society, but the possession
of which enabled him to form society. Somewhere
back in human history there must have occurred
some new impulses among men which led toward
a willingness to sacrifice self-interest. It may have
started in such a small way as to be only a sugges-
tion, or it may have come suddenly like what the
biologist calls mutation. It was this phase of the
subject which Huxley had in mind when he stated
that it was necessary to attribute the ethical nature
to a "spontaneous variation," a statement made
before the modern ideas of mutations had dawned.
Mutations occur in other characters, and may surely
have occurred on these lines also. We must recog-
nize in human nature some internal law furnishing
successive variations along the direction of impulses
to sacrifice self-interests which have formed the

120 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

basis for the development of the moral sense, varia-
tions which have constantly produced individuals
standing ahead of the average of the race.

Here more than anywhere does it become evident
that the elimination of the unfit does not satisfac-
torily explain the origin of the fit ; the elimination of
lower grades of moral sense does not explain the
origin of the higher. The lower grades have not
been exterminated, but the higher have developed
just the same. If it is necessary anywhere to find
some forces to explain the origin of variation, which
shall act prior to selection, even more necessary
is it here to find something, to explain why mankind
ever developed these successively higher grades of
moral sense which could be subjected to the law of
elimination. Throughout animals this principle of
self-subordination, except in connection with repro-
duction, is hardly apparent and never becomes a
factor in animal evolution. From the beginning of
human history it is the central factor which has
controlled the evolution of civilization, and has been
directed not simply to reproduction but to a greater
part of human affairs. Certainly, we cannot rest
satisfied with an explanation which simply shows
that the moral sense has developed by successive
stages. The study of the development of the moral
sense unquestionably throws much light on human
history, but it hardly satisfies us as to the origin of
the different grades of the moral sense which have
been subject to the selection law.

To meet this point it is necessary to insist that the
nature of man is such that variations along this
line of increased love, sympathy, and self-sacrifice,
of altruism, are constantly appearing. This would,

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 121

of course, make the moral sense the result of organic
rather than social inheritance. Inborn with the indi-
vidual, it is a part of the innate characters with which
he starts into existence. This position is akin to that
of the intuitive philosophy, but it differs in the
fact that it insists that the conscience of both the indi-
vidual and the race have come into existence by a
series of slowly progressing stages and not full-
fledged at the human creation. The first human
beings had no moral nature; and from such a con-
dition the modern races, with their highly devel-
oped consciences, have been derived by selection of
those families or races showing higher and higher
grades of love, sympathy, and altruism, which has
resulted in what we now call the moral sense.

The Moral Sense and Social Heredity

It may be that some will be inclined to deny that
the moral sense has had any such origin as that
sketched out in this chapter. Some perhaps will
insist with the intuitive philosophers that it did not
have a natural origin at all, but has been implanted
in the human race from the start by supernatural
rather than by natural processes. To theistic
science of to-day, however, there seems to be very
little difference between the natural and the super-
natural. Theistic science makes the fall of a stone
to the ground just as much of a miracle as is
the creation of worlds. The birth of a babe by
natural processes is just as deep a mystery and
just as incapable of any explanation as is the cre-
ation of the universe. A natural origin for the
moral sense, therefore, such as is outlined above,
just as truly demands the action of supernatural

\

122 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

powers as does the formation of the earth with its
mountains and valleys and rivers. To teach that
the moral sense came through the working of nat-
ural laws does not make it any the less necessary to
admit the inadequacy of the finite mind to com-
prehend it. Nor does the belief in the origin of the
moral sense given above destroy in the slightest the
imperative nature of the demands which our ethical
sense forces upon us. The demands of the moral
nature constitute the central factor in human his-
tory and form the key to an understanding of civ-
ilization. But whether or not some may differ from
the conclusion expressed in this chapter, all will
certainly agree that moral codes have been a matter
of education, and that these systems, which repre-
sent the moral condition of any nation at the pres-
ent time, have been slowly developed since the earli-
est records of mankind. This conclusion of a slow
development of the moral nature is all that is really
necessary to warrant the deductions which will be
reached in our general discussion. This will justify
the following analysis.

What shall be our final conclusion as to the origin
of the moral sense, viewed from the standpoint of
science 1 Has it been the result of organic or social
heredity? Clearly, it partakes of the nature of
both. The impulses which lie at its foundation are
surely matters of organic inheritance. So far as
concerns the feeling of love, pride, fear, sympathy,
and possibly also the instinct to obey authority, and
other similar motives, they are without doubt
innate, and are bom in us as part of our natures.
So far as conscience consists of these alone it is
inborn and controlled by the laws of organic hered-

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 123

ity. So far as a failure to develop conscience is due
to a lack of these feelings, each generation is at the
mercy of the inexorable laws of heredity, which are
so persistently forced upon our attention by the
eugenists of to-day. Data which have been col-
lected in recent years show beyond much doubt that
some people and some families are largely lacking
in these innate inherited instincts, and thus that a
defective moral nature in many instances may be
traced to organic heredity.

But from the conclusions of our analysis these
innate impulses do not constitute the whole of the
moral sense, and they do not in any degree consti-
tute what we call moral codes. The latter consist
really of a complicated and marvelous structure,
most valuable to the human race, which has been
reared upon the fundamental feelings above men-
tioned, by the action of society on the individual.
To a considerable extent also the moral sense itself
seems to have been the result of the action of the
environment upon the growing mind of the child,
for it is perfectly clear that the idea of right and
wrong is instilled in every individual partly by edu-
cation. Whether or not this is true of the moral sense,
it certainly is true of moral codes. Just as language
is an artificial structure erected upon a substratum
of physical and mental powers, so conscience, at least j
as concerns its application, is an artificial structure,
built upon a substratum of innate feelings. Just as
the moral codes are the result of the society in
which any group of men is living, so the moral sense
itself is in the same way, to a certain extent at least,
the result of the training which the child receives in
habits of obedience, together with his distinctly

124 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

human powers of abstraction of ideas from concrete
incidents. From being forced to obey lie forms an
idea of some superhuman influence, demanding his
obedience, and this creates his idea of right and
wrong. In this way, the idea of morality is an arti-
ficial creation, handed on by social inheritance. If a
child were brought up apart from other human be-
ings, where he was responsible for no one and no
one responsible for him, we can hardly believe
that he would spontaneously develop conscience,
and probably no sense whatsoever of right and
wrong. If this be true, the moral sense, though

' based upon true innate characters, is essentially
acquired anew by each generation from the teach-
ing of the last, and thus is the result of social rather

^ than organic inheritance. This conclusion we may
accept without denying that different individuals
inherit by organic inheritance these fundamental
instincts which alone make conscience a possibility,
and that they inherit them in different degrees in
different families.

It is not necessary for us to try to decide whether
this attempt to explain the development of the
moral sense by natural methods will be substanti-
ated by the study of future years. Beyond ques-
tion there are many points concerning it which need
further light, and while it seems a natural method
of explaining the origin of this fundamental human
attribute, a final conclusion concerning it may be
well left for the future to decide. One thing, how-
ever, is certain: the human race now possesses an
ethical nature, one which has been undergoing a
slow but constant development during the period of
human history, a nature which calls upon mankind

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 125

to sacrifice self-interest, and which demands greater
sacrifices today than ever before in the history of
the world. This ethkaLnatUEg has become the most
important characteristic which separates man from
animals, and this it is that constitutes the founda-
tions of civilization. That this last statement is
well founded now remains to be shown, and this
must be done by a study of the evolution of civiliza-
tion, to which we now turn our attention. We shall
try to trace the steps by which the social organism,
or civilization, has been developed to its present
condition. In this attempt we shall first review the
successive steps by which this evolution has taken
place, and after thus obtaining a picture of the
events we shall try to discover the fundamental
principles and laws that have been concerned in
bringing it about.

CHAPTER V
THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION

The Significance of Social. Organization

'Tis not bones, muscles, nor even brain, but so-
ciety that makes the man.

The physical difference between man and his clos-
est allies is comparatively slight. The mental dif-
ference is greater; for while there may be found
numerous links connecting the mental powers of
animals with the mental powers of man, there is a
sharper line of demarcation between man and
animals mentally than physically. But, after all,
that which really separates man from animals is
neither physical structure nor mental powers.
Mental powers are, indeed, of the utmost impor-
tance, for without them mankind could have never
developed a civilization and could not have played
any greater part in the world's history than animals.
But without civilization, without organized society,
his intelligence could never have accomplished
much more than that of the animal. Perhaps this
may be best realized if we try to compare that which
can be accomplished by an exceptionally intelligent
savage with that which is within the power of a
monarch ruling over a civilized nation. The one
can accomplish little or nothing of lasting moment.
His only power is that of controlling the actions of
a handful of savage warriors. After his death his
influence ceases, his life having had hardly more
influence than that of the buffalo that he has killed.

126

THE BEGINNINGS OP^ SOCIAL EVOLUTION 127

Contrast this with the possibilities within the reach
of the ruler of a nation. The monarch may by a
word change the face of nature by decreeing that a
canal shall connect two oceans, and the history of
the world may be deflected in one way or another by
the will of the leader of a powerful nation. What is
it that gives him this power? Not his intelligence
necessarily, for, while possibly there may be more
intelligence in the monarch than in the savage chief-
tain, no one would claim that this explains the dif-
ference between the powers of the two individuals.
"Whether Frederick the Great, when he decided to
claim Silicia, was more intelligent than a warrior
chief when he plans an Indian raid is a matter of
no special concern, for there can be no question
that the reason why the one altered the history of
the world, while the other accomplished nothing,
was not because of the difference in intelligence of
the two leaders. Civilization had placed in the,
hands of the one immense forces to wield. The sav-
age had little to aid him except his own individual
powers. The one, by means of the forces placed in
his hands by his ancestry, turns the destiny of the
world with a word ; the other has an influence hardly
extending beyond his own vision.

A man standing alone can do little, no matter
how intelligent. Imagine the most intelligent man
living as a hermit, absolutely without contact with
his fellow men. He would accomplish nothing, and
his life would be simply an existence. But the same
man placed in a civilized community may do a work
that will live for all future history. Man owes his
powers not simply to what he is himself, but, rather,
to the fact that he is living in the midst of other

128 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

individuals who may be relied upon to combine with
him in accomplishing any plan of mutual utility. It
is human civilization rather than human intelli-
gence that makes the extraordinary contrast be-
tween animal and human life.

It may be that the intelligence of man has de-
veloped since the time when he first appeared as
man. But it is also true that the difference in intel-
ligence between man of the twentieth century and
the man of primeval days is vastly less than it
seems to be. The chasm that separates twentieth
century civilization from that of four thousand
years before Christ is a vast one, but no such chasm
separates the mind of the twentieth century man
from that of his early progenitors. Indeed, some
insist that, within historical times, man has really
not advanced in intelligence. They tell us that the
Grreek, at the time of the glory of Greece, possessed
an intelligence equal to if not surpassing that of the
twentieth century. We need not here attempt to
decide whether or not this position is correct. Even
without admitting the claim, it is clear that the
great difference between the Caucasian of to-day
and the Greek of old is less in his innate capacity
than in the tools with which he has to work. If we
could give the Indian, from his infancy, all the facil-
ities of civilization, and if, on the other hand, the
Englishman should be given only the advantages
which the savage now has, the Indian would beyond
question accomplish vastly more than the English-
man, and would appear the more intelligent.

The fact is that man is the only animal that has
built his own environment. Of all animals he is the
only one that has surrounded himself with artificial

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 129

conditions, and inasmuch as the environment controls
evolution, we may say that man has thus artificially
controlled his own evolution. This fact, rather than
intelligence, is his distinctive attribute. Man has
some attribute that has enabled, or rather forced
him to organize society. "Without it he might, in-
deed, have become an intelligent animal, but with
it he becomes man and dominates nature. It is our
purpose next to look for the force or forces that
have produced society, and which, therefore, most
distinctively separate mankind from the animal
kingdom.

Before we can consider the question of the laws
that have produced social evolution we must try to
get before our minds the salient features of that
evolution. The history of social evolution has been
nothing more than the history of mankind, and to
attempt a universal history is, of course, not our
purpose. But it may be possible in a comparatively
brief space to extract from that history enough of
its prominent features to get a tolerably fair picture
of its broad scope. At all events, it will be the en-
deavor of this chapter to present a bird's-eye view
of the rise and development of the social organism.

Family Life Among Animals

As already noticed, the family was the start of
human civilization. The question of family life
among animals below man is one of interest, but one
concerning which we have no space to give extended
discussion. Among the invertebrates there are no
traces of anything that can properly be called
family life, unless colonies of insects may in a modi-
fied way be considered as representing it. These

130 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

are, however, so clearly based on instinct that they
cannot be called in any sense families. Among the
vertebrates we find practically no family life until
we get to some of the very higher. Fishes show no
tendency to unite in families, though there are a
few cases in which the male parent has a watchful
care over the eggs produced by the female. Among
amphibians and reptiles there are no more indica-
tions of family life than among fishes. The method
by which the young are protected in these groups
varies somewhat, and occasionally the parent has a
more or less temporary interest in the eggs that are
produced; but there is no approximation to family
life. Among the birds there is the closest approx-
imation to the family that is found anywhere among
animals below man. Here, however, the indications
of family life are confined to the highest type of
birds. The majority of birds show no interest in
the young, and nothing approximating toward
the family. Among the higher birds, however, the
two parents remain together for a considerable
time, and continue associated until the eggs are
hatched, and then join in the care of the young. In-
stances of the interest of the father and mother
bird in their brood of young are too well known to
need any emphasis. Family life as shown here is
the closest approximation to the family life of man-
kind that is found anywhere. It is, however, inter-
esting and important to note that among birds this
family life is fleeting, and lasts only as long as the
young are helpless and require the care of the par-
ents. Among mammals in general the family life
is on a lower grade than it is in the birds. The
lower orders of the mammals, like the Rodentia

THE BEGINNINGS OP SOCIAL EVOLUTION 131

and Insectivora, and some of the others, show
scarcely a trace of association into family life.
Among the higher mammals, however, we do fre-
quently find individuals living in large groups
where there may be a monogamous relation. But
there is nothing here like the association of individ-
uals with each other to form a family union. The
male has usually no interest in the mother, and no
interest in the offspring, although there are some
rare and uncertain exceptions to this rule. Through-
out the great group of Ungulata there is a general
absence of a mutual interest even in the sexes for
each other. Among the Carnivora the family life
is, if possible, even less developed. Maternal love
is seen, it is true, and is a very strong influence in
animals of this order. The readiness with which a
mother tiger will sacrifice her own life for that of
her offspring is proverbial; but the male does not
associate with the female for any great length of
time, and in most of the groups the father has no
interest in the offspring. No organization of the
family is known, even on the scale on which we find
it among birds.

Indeed, among the mammals the male parent does
not share in the parental love until we reach the
higher order of primates. Among the monkeys there
is sometimes an approximation toward family rela-
tionship. As a rule, monkeys live in large or small
groups and do not break up at the close of the
breeding season. In such groups the children ap-
pear to belong to the mother, or to the group, but
not to any particular family. Occasionally among
monkeys there is somewhat lasting union of the
sexes, and we begin to find that the offspring are

132 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

a matter of interest, both to the males and females,
who unite in defending them. Among the highest of
the primates, the apes, the evidence in our posses-
sion at present is a little uncertain, but such facts
as we have indicate that a true monogamic relation
is commonly developed. The individuals associate
in pairs beyond a doubt. It is claimed by some that
the father takes an interest in the young similar to
that of the mother. If this is true, it is the only in-
stance among mammals, outside of man, where this
occurs. Certainly, the sexes remain in a quite per-
manent association, the offspring remaining with
them for some time. This is the closest approxima-
tion to family life, such as is found among man, that
occurs among the mammals outside of the human
race.

The Origin of the Human Family

The organization of family relations is practi-
cally universal among men. The human family dif-
fers from similar relations among animals in at
least three salient features : 1. The human family is
always more or less lasting, at all events, more per-
manent than the animal unions. 2. In the human
family the bond of union is an interest in the off-
spring, whereas among all lower animals, except
some birds, the bond of union is sexual passion. 3.
In the human family a large factor is the desire for
a household and the possession of property. Animals
have no foresight and no notion of property. With
man this idea has been a very important factor, con-
tributing to the permanent union of individuals to
form the family.

There is still more or less difference of opinion as

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 133

to the condition of the primitive human family.
Whether it was at first polygamous or monogamous,
or whether the family was at the outset communal,
with no rules regulating sexual relations except
caprice, are questions over which there has been no
little dispute. There is no definite agreement on
the matter to-day, although there is a growing ten-
dency to believe that the human family was very
early monogamous.

It is clear enough, however, that the most prom-
inent feature of family life is the regulation of the
sexual relations. Among the lowest animals there is
no regulation. Among the higher animals, below
man, various methods of regulation are found, com-
munal, polygamous, promiscuous, etc. Among the
higher primates, man's closest allies, there is a ten-
dency toward monogamous relations. The individ-
uals live in family groups or small parties, and to a
certain extent the mating is such that each male has
his own female. If such a sexual relation occurs
among primates, it is likely that monogamy was the
first type of family relation among men. This con-
clusion is gradually being adopted to-day as probable.

Be this as it WlSlj, it is known that there were two
powerful forces combining to form the primitive
human family. The first was the sexual instinct.
This instinct, that impels the sexes to seek each
other, is one of the most potent, if not the most
potent force influencing the higher animals, and it
always tends to bring about an association of indi-
viduals. Among all higher animals the sexual in-
stinct produces temporary unions ; among some birds
and apes it produces associations which approximate
those of the human family, but among animals such

134 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

unions are rarely very lasting. In most animals the
period of sexual excitement depends upon the season
and lasts only a few weeks. As this excitement
wanes the bond of union is apt to be severed and the
associations formed during the breeding season are
generally broken up at its close. Occasionally, it is
true, the unions may be more lasting, but it is the
exception for them to continue after the season of
sexual excitement is passed. With man, however,
these instincts are not limited to any season, but
serve as a bond for uniting the sexes in permanent
union. Whatever influence this instinct may have
had upon the family in later ages, it is unquestionable
that it was one of the primitive forces which pro-
duced the family, and has been one of the forces
which has kept the family institution in existence
during all the vicissitudes of the centuries, in spite
of all the attacks made upon it. The sexual instinct
must be recognized as one of the most potent influ-
ences, for both good and ill, underlying the develop-
ment of civilization.

But this alone has not been sufficient to account
for the organization of the family. Among many
savage tribes the sexual passions are unbridled, free
indulgence is permitted, and there is no need of
family institutions for their gratification. Yet even
in these tribes the family is developjed. Hence the
permanent bond that unites the family cannot be
found in the sexual passion. The second force which
has contributed to the organization of the family is
the desire for a household and the possession of chil-
dren. This is based upon two emotions — love, or
affection, and pride. The latter is the lower and the
more primitive. The desire for a household must

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 135

have been a part of a universal desire to have as
much as possible of the world's good things at the
lowest price. A family, with its children, furnishes
the parents with assistance and gives them greater
power and influence. In the life of savages this is
the strongest factor contributing to the formation of
families, at least among tribes where the sexual
instinct is allowed free indulgence.

After all, the most powerful influence contribut-
ing to the permanence of the family, even if not to its
original formation, is the bond of affection for the
offspring. This love for offspring is doubtless found
far below the grade of man. Mother's love is fre-
quently seen among animals, and it is usually strong
enough to make the mother ready to sacrifice her
life for her young. But among animals this love is
fleeting, lasting only a few weeks at most, and always
disappearing as soon as the young are old enough
to be independent. Moreover, such a thing as pater-
nal love among animals is almost unknown. As a
rule, the father knows nothing of his offspring, even
among the higher animals. Rarely does he remain
with the female till the young are born, and he fre-
quently takes such delight in destroying the young
that the mother must perchance defend her offspring
from their own father as vigorously as against an-
other enemy. There are exceptions to this rule, espe-
cially among birds and the higher primates.

Now, with mankind these elements of parental love
expand into an affection which supports the human
family. Various factors have contributed to this
end. Two prominent ones are the small number of
offspring and the long period of helplessness of the
young. Where a dozen young are produced at a time

136 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the parental interest in each individual cannot be
very great; but when the number is reduced to one
the intensity of the affection is vastly increased.
With all higher animals the mother's love lasts dur-
ing the period of helpless infancy, and since the
human offspring is dependent upon its mother for a
period of helplessness lasting many years, the
mother's love becomes deepened and produces a
lasting influence on her life. This lengthened child-
hood also tends to arouse paternal affection. The
father remains associated with the mother for a
longer time, and the helpless child appeals to his
affections as well as to those of the mother. Seeing
his children constantly before him and feeling their
dependence upon him, knowing also their possible
future value, he acquires an affection for them.
Travelers among the lowest savage races tell us that
the children gain a great hold upon the affections of
their parents. The savage may, it is true, in a fit of
petulance dash out the brains of a child who dis-
pleases him, but nevertheless in his soberer moments
he is willing to undergo sacrifices for the child.

Thus it came about that the family was built
around the love of the parent for the child. This
feeling was earlier than the affection of the husband
for the wife, for they were primitively brought to-
gether by passion, a desire for a household, or for
children. The feeling of affection is said to play
absolutely no part in the marriages of primitive
peoples, as illustrated by savages; a condition of
things which is still more common among most races
of civilized men than marriages for affection. But a
union made from such motives, in civilized as well as
savage races, is subsequently cemented into a per-

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 137

manent bond by the children, who become an object
of common interest to both parents. Among savages
marriages are readily dissolved if there are no chil-
dren, but after the birth of children the dissolution of
marriages is rare. The child with its long period of
infancy was really the cause of the permanency of
the human family. The long period of helpless in-
fancy of the human babe is thus not a weakness, as
it seems at first to be, but has been the source of the
greatest strength, since it has developed the human
family, which was the first step in social evolution.

The Conditions of the Primitive Family

All evidence points to the conclusion that these
primitive families lived in a state of constant war-
fare. We sometimes like to think of the conditions
of the early family as a sort of ideal from which
modern civilization has departed widely for the
worse. Some have tried to believe that after man
had made himself master of the animal world there
ensued a period of peace before fraternal warfare
began, and the primitive family is represented to us
as a simple loving relation between parents and chil-
dren, without the mutual hostilities that have arisen
later. But for such a conclusion there is not a shred
of evidence. On the contrary, all evidence tells us
that from the beginning till to-day human history
has been one of continual warfare. It is difficult for
us to-day to realize the conditions of unremitting
hostility that must have existed between the families
of early peoples. But such a condition existed and
is still found among modern savages. "Warfare is
the normal condition of life among most savage
tribes; they frequently have no word for ''friend-

138 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ship," and hospitality is unknown. A stranger is
always an enemy, and they feel that the only thing
to be done when they see a stranger is to kill him.
Under such conditions the individual could only
exist when protected by his family, and the severest
punishment that could be inflicted was to be ''cast
out" of the family, for this meant speedy death at
the hands of some enemy. We have abundant evi-
dence that this was the state of society in early
times. So intense has this hostility between families
been that even among tribes where there is a certain
amount of friendship we find the egoism is so great
that one family will actually refuse to assist in build-
ing a wall to prevent disaster from flood, simply on
the ground that it will help their neighbors as well
as themselves.

Not only did families thus continue a mutual hos-
tility to each other, but even within the family condi-
tions were far from ideal. The savage families are
steeped in selfishness ; egoism rules almost as abso-
lutely as among animals. Three fourths of the chil-
dren die in infancy. While the savages are fond of
their children when young, there is abundance of
evidence that the children are to-day and always
have been frequently killed at the caprice of the par-
ents. The older members of the families in turn
are frequently made away with whenever the
younger members see fit to perform this act. The
relations of the members of the family have been
those in which selfishness has been the basis of all
action. Many children were born, but few were
reared. The early family was a loose, crude attach-
ment of individuals which, though showing a certain
amount of mutual affection, was most easily broken

THE BEGINNINGS OP SOCIAL EVOLUTION 139

down under the influence of circumstances ; an attach-
ment which was based upon an affection that was
slight and never very lasting. Instead of being an
ideal condition, evidence shows that the life of the
primitive families was only a step in advance of the
brute whose law of life was the law of struggle and
extermination.

Such a condition was hardly an advance over that
of certain animal societies. Animals, as well as men,
are ruled by fear and pride, and, to a certain extent,
by mother's love. Those who have observed the
natural life of monkeys, for example, tell us that
the families or groups live in harmony and that the
children are forced by fear of punishment to obey
the will of their parents or the leaders of the groups.
The males protect and lead the family, and the two
sexes are as faithful to each other as they are in the
low races of mankind. The primitive human fam-
ily certainly occupied a higher position, since its
customs were more definite and were enforced by
language. But the difference could not have been
very great, certainly not sufficient to indicate that any
radical break here separated mankind from the rest
of the animal world. It must be emphasized again
that such a low condition of the human family is not
simply a matter of scientific imagination. It is actu-
ally found among many savage races of to-day, and
historical records plainly point to a time when it
represented the life of the ancestors of the races that
have later developed into the highest nations. Such
a condition was found, for example, among the Aryan
race in its early history.

Within these families the relation of the members
to each other showed considerable variety. Whether

140 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

there was ever a time wlien all members were equal is
uncertain and unimportant, for the equality did not
remain. Some members inevitably gained suprem-
acy. Even in the family relations of the most prim-
itive savages we find a variety of methods of indi-
vidual subordination. Sometimes the mother be-
comes supreme, and her will dominates the family,
this being the only law. But as a rule it is the father
who is looked upon as the head of the family, and all
members yield to him. Under such conditions filial
reverence for the father is sometimes developed to an
extraordinary extent, as was the case among the
ancient Romans or the modern Chinese. In other
great races of man the head of the family was com-
monly he who had strength to obtain and hold his
position. So long as the father possessed a master-
ful mind he remained its head, but as soon as an-
other acquired greater influence, the family head was
changed. From this it followed that the eldest son,
upon his marriage, was usually looked upon as the
real head of the family, instead of the aged father.
The important principle in such races was that the
head of the family could change with circumstances,
and this principle underlies the whole subsequent
history of the development of the Aryan race, having
had, as we shall see, a most extraordinary influence
on the history of the development of civilization. In
families where the head of the family was simply the
strongest, filial reverence became slight and was
sometimes entirely wanting. In these races the older
members of the family were frequently killed when
they were no longer useful. Daughters were not
desired, and female infants were exposed to the
weather for the purpose of getting rid of them.

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 141

Women were frequently cast out of the famih" to
care for themselves, and after the death of the hus-
band the wife was forced to sacrifice her life at his
grave. It is, however, unnecessary to dwell in detail
upon the vicissitudes of the early family life. Such
a diversity is not surprising, and, indeed, was inevi-
table. In all races the particular form of family life
was adjusted by custom, although in later centuries
it was regulated by law.

Under these conditions it is clear that only those
families in which harmony and unity were main-
tained would continue to hold their own in the strug-
gle. Families in which there was a well-developed
mutual dependence and willingness to yield individ-
ual interest to the general good would be able to
present a united front to their enemies, while those
in which indi\ddual interests were placed before
family interests would break to pieces and soon dis-
appear. In this way customs of obedience to the
family head would tend to be preserved and become
binding uj^on the family ; that is, they would become
duties. It is clear also that these duties would be
confined to the members of the family and not extend
to strangers. Within the family, custom would allow
each to do as he wished only so far as this was pos-
sible without interfering with the rights of others;
but in his relations to strangers or enemies he could
do absolutely as he willed.

But loose as was the family attachment, uncer-
tain as were its relations, the family nevertheless was
the foundation of advance, and marked the first step
in the rise upward from the brute nature toward
civilization. The beginning of the family was a
revolution of vast import; for while families, in a

142 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

limited way, did exist among lower animals, nowliere
else than in man has the family contained a prin-
ciple wliich led to further development and further
organization. From the time of the establishment of
the family the unit of selection is changed. Hitherto
natural selection was directed toward the preserva-
tion of the best-fitted individuals. From now on the
struggle for existence is directed toward the preser-
vation of that combination of individuals which
forms the best famil}" unit. This change in the
center of evolution has been the basis of all modern
advance. Even at the present time the family is, in
a large measure, the unit toward which the great law
of nature is directed — the law of natural selection
and the survival of the fittest.

The Permanence of the Human Family

The family has continued to remain the founda-
tion of society through all the vicissitudes of the roll-
ing centuries. It has had many attacks made upon
it, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.
Plato in his ideal republic attempted to overthrow
the family organization. In later centuries various
sects have attempted to produce the same result.
The Anabaptists and Shakers are sects organized
with the endeavor to overthrow the family, and ever
and anon other religious sects have appeared with
this same purpose. Sometimes the family organiza-
tion has been almost overthrown. At the time of the
Eoman empire the immense development of wealth
and the attendant corruption reduced family life to
its lowest ebb, and almost destroyed it. To this
destruction of the family life in the Roman empire
not only the wealth and corruption of the ruling

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 143

classes contributed, but also the abject poverty of
the dependent classes ; and under the magnificence of
the one class and the grinding poverty of the other
the family nearly disappeared. But a few centuries
later the family was reorganized with redoubled in-
tensity. In the feudalism of the Middle Ages the
family principle was elevated to a plane never before
and never since attained. The famih^ became, under
feudalism, the center of stability, the center of power
and property. The church too made marriage a
sacrament, thus putting its powerful religious seal
upon the family. But after feudalism disappeared
another principle began to undermine the unity of
the family. The priesthood degraded it and largely
destroyed it. The last few centuries especially have
seen the growth of another influence against the
family, which we call individualism. Under its influ-
ence the individual again comes to be the center
toward which government and progress are directed.
This individualism began, or at least received its
greatest impetus in the Reformation that occurred
under Luther, for at this time the conscience and
intelligence of the individual was proclaimed as
the guiding principle in religious belief. Individ-
ualism has been immensely fostered in recent cen-
turies by the growth of Protestantism, and so fast as
it gains the upper hand just so fast is there a ten-
dency toward undermining the significance of the
family. In modern life the family does not mean
what it meant in many centuries of the world's his-
tory. Our modern society, with its social and club
life, and its great and increasing tendency toward
divorces, is again aiming heavy blows at the exist-
ence of the family. Our scientific studies have also

144 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

tended to undermine the family influence. Eugenics
is pointing out to us in no unclear light that, what-
ever may be its social value, the family organization
as it exists to-day, at least, in modern civilization, is
not adapted for breeding the best type of men. The
conditions of civilization, instead of producing suc-
cessive generations better and better equipped, are
fostering weakness. The marriage customs of civil-
ization tend to transmit disease and produce in the
human race a general tendency toward retrogres-
sion. This testimony of science is another attempt
to overthrow the force which has been the guiding
principle in civilization.

But in spite of all the scientific, political, and
social forces which tend to disintegrate the family
interest, the family, though sometimes almost dis-
appearing, has again and again come to the front and
still remains as the unit of organization in our jores-
ent civilization. Since the family has been able thus
to resist all of these adverse tendencies of the cen-
turies, since it survives the rise and fall of empires
and nations, since it survives the corruption that
comes from success and the misery that comes from
failure, since it survives the insinuating effects of
individualism and of scientific argument, it is very
clear that there are some mighty forces underlying
its organization, forces which are greater than the
exigencies of politics or of science, forces which have
clearly been guiding principles in the development of
mankind through the ages. These forces that bind
together the family, that reorganize it anew upon
the ruins of old civilizations and enable it to with-
stand all of the attacks made upon it, must be funda-
mental forces lying at the basis of civilization. These

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 145

forces are, first, the fact that the family is a natural
unit arising from reproduction; second, social in-
stincts; third, desire for protection and power that
comes from union ; and, fourth, the interest and love
of the members for each other. These together make
a combination that no exigency of religion, politics,
or science has been able to overthrow.

The Formation of Societies

Animal Societies. — The family life is only the begin-
ning of organization, and we next turn to consider
how larger associations than families have been
formed. Even among animals there is a very evident
tendency in this direction, for animals, though living
in a state of competition and struggle, do not live in
such a constant hostility as to keep them wholly
isolated. On the contrary, it is the common rule to
find them associated in groups of various kinds. The
general facts are well known to all who have read
anecdotes about animals, and we need do no more
than give the briefest reference to them.

Some of the best-known animal societies are those
among the colonial insects, like ants and bees. But
these seem to be founded upon a different principle
from that noted in the societies of mankind, and we
will not dwell upon them. Of more significance is
the tendency to form societies that is found among
vertebrates. Pishes very commonly associate in
schools, sometimes for protection, sometimes for
hunting, and sometimes for migration. Amphibians
and reptiles show less tendency toward societies,
although occasionally lizards and snakes may be
found in companies. Among birds the examples of
societies are extremely numerous. Flocks of ducks,

146 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

geese, pigeons, sparrows, crows, partridges, quails,
gulls, etc., are well known. Indeed, the tendency to
associate is so widely distributed among birds as to
be well-nigh universal. Some species, it is true, are
commonly unsocial, but even these, like eagles, buz-
zards, etc., form temporary associations. Some
which, like marine birds, seem to have no special
interest in each other, occasionally combine in great
numbers for common defense. Others, like the
swans, although seeming to take no special interest in
each other, nevertheless form societies which exclude
all strangers. Most birds, however, form associa-
tions where there is a manifested pleasure in each
other's company, and in some cases, like the parrots,
they form great societies and station sentinels for
guards. In this instance there is a semblance to
actual organization and a clear advance toward
society.

The mammals are, however, the most interesting
for our purpose. Here we find all grades of organ-
ization. Among the lowest of them no societies
whatever are formed. This is true of the Monotre-
mata, Edentata, Insectivora, and most of the Mar-
supialia. Among the Eodentia, while some live soli-
tary lives, many live in companies. Rats and mice
frequently form societies, and rabbits in the same
way associate together. Marmots and prairie dogs
live in communities, and the wonderful colonies of
beavers are proverbial. Marine animals, like whales,
dolphins, porpoises, live almost universally in
schools. Carnivora, which are in general flesh hunt-
ers, do not ordinarily show a tendency to form
societies. Their kind of life is, in general, calculated
to prevent individuals from living in companies,

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 147

since hunting can, as a rule, be better accomplished
alone. But even among these we learn of packs of
wolves and wild dogs. Leopards are sometimes met
in groups of six or eight. Jackals sometimes hunt in
companies ; polar foxes may be found in packs, and
the social habits of seals are known to everybody.
Among the Ungulata societies are almost universal.
Buffaloes, deer, antelopes, and all the rest are nearly
always found in herds, sometimes of such size as to
baffle comprehension, as illustrated by the American
bison of earlier days. Elephants are usually found
in herds ranging from ten to two hundred, and the
whole list of hogs, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses,
also commonly live in companies of varying sizes.
Among the primates solitary life is exceptional.
The lemurs, the true monkeys and the apes all gen-
erally agree in living in societies. Moreover, we
find that the grade of organization in these societies
is frequently on a high plane. The band is usually
under the control of some old male, and the habits of
the tribe are well regulated by custom. They aid
each other in various ways ; they hunt in companies
with posted sentinels, and even make preconcerted
attacks on enemies, apparently under the leadership
and generalship of the old males.

An almost endless list of examples illustrating
animals' societies might be given, but the above will
suffice to show that a tendency to formation of
societies is very widely distributed even below man.
The instinct that underlies these societies is doubt-
less varied. It is commonly for protection, or for
better success in offensive attack on enemies. It is
hardly possible that the combinations for these pur-
poses are made intelligently, for we cannot believe

148 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

that animals understand enough to realize why they
thus unite. They obey a blind impulse to act to-
gether; they act from simple instinct, and then
the advantage thus afforded by unity of action
preserves those animals which have such social in-
stincts. Beyond doubt, however, another impulse
often underlying these societies is the mutual pleas-
ure in each other's company, which we call the social
instinct. That this social instinct is widely distrib-
uted among the higher animals is very evident. The
birds and higher animals most clearly find great en-
joyment in each other's society. Indeed, it is only
among the social animals that we find any especial
evidence of enjoyment in life. Social birds sing,
social mammals play, and such habits, which are our
chief indications of enjoyment among animals, are
confined to those animals among which the tendency
to form societies is best developed. While we must
recognize that the added strength which comes to a
band of animals from their unity explains the preser-
vation of such habits, we must also recognize that the
impetus that leads to their formation is most com-
monly the social instinct which causes one individual
to take pleasure in the company of another.

The Expansion of the Human Family The lowest type

of the human family, as exhibited by savages, and
hence probably by primitive man, is perhaps only
a slight advance over that found among some an-
imals like birds. With some human races organiza-
tion has not progressed beyond the stage of the
family. Among the Eskimos, for example, there
are no such things as tribes or villages, no laws, no
chiefs or leaders, but each family is quite independ-
ent. Practically the same conditions exist among the

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 149

Fuegians, for there too no higher association than
the family seems to exist. Among some savages
customs are such as to prevent further organization.
The children, as they become adults, leave the family,
separate from each other, and then completely for-
get their early life, having no more thought or affec-
tion for the members of their original family than
for any other savages they may meet as enemies.
Among the Bushmen the organization of associa-
tions larger than the family is hardly possible, and,
at all events, does not occur. The members of the
family, with their descendants, live together for a
.while, but soon the body becomes too numerous to
continue to subsist upon the scanty support of the
country in which they live. Without more knowledge
of obtaining a living from the land than they possess
the organization of a large community is impossible
in the barren lands that form their home. The result
is that when the family grows large it breaks to
pieces and the groups separate at once.

But the human family differs from that of the
animals in that the family is the lowest rather than
the highest stage of civilization. Except among the
few lowest tribes, there has been almost universally
a tendency among the human races to unite in groups
larger than the family. The method by which these
early groups were formed is still uncertain, but we
do know that nearly everywhere families organized
into clans. Within the clans all persons were re-
lated to each other, and clans should, therefore, be
regarded as the growth of single families. This
appears to be true of the Scottish clans. But clans
organized again into tribes, where two or more clans
might be associated with each other for some pur-

150 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

pose, but where blood relationship was no longer
apparent. Whether these tribes have resulted from
growth or secondary union we cannot say. It is
more natural to think of them as the result of growth,
for by simple reproduction groups of hundreds or
thousands of men would be quickly produced, all
descended from the original stock, although all evi-
dence of close relationship would soon disappear.
Such a group would form a tribe. It is also con-
ceivable that different clans, belonging to entirely
different family groups, but located in each other's
vicinity, may have combined temporarily for the
purpose of repelling attacks of enemies or of mak-
ing mutual conquests. Such early unions may have
been temporary and, after the emergencies had
passed, the different clans probably as a rule sepa-
rated each to his own interests. Thus from the first,
warfare has been the great organizing force. Peace-
ful savage tribes have little organization and no
chieftains. The Eskimos are a peaceful race and
have no organizations. Warfare always demands
union and leadership, and this has been equally true
of primitive savage races and civilized man.

But although these primitive organizations were
undoubtedly temporary, it is certainly a fact that
as the ages passed they became more and more per-
manent. Clans associating originally for mutual
defense or for mutual contests failed to separate
when the emergency was passed, and for a long time
remained united. In this way arose the larger tribes
and the early kingdoms, and by a constant combina-
tion the kingdoms increased in size to form the em-
pires. From this point the history of civilization
has been one of constant progression toward in-

THE BEGINNINGS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 151

creasing organization and a constant growth of
organized communities.

If the low races of men are divided in accordance
with the grade of their civilization, this division is
parallel to the size of the groups of men that remain
associated together. The divisions of civilization
generally recognized are three: savagery, barba-
rism, and civilization — different stages indicated by
the development of the arts and the general intelli-
gence possessed by the groups. But it is striking to
find that, after having once made these divisions,
they are easily designated numerically, and even sub-
divided according to the size of tribes. The savages
which are regarded as the lowest savages roam in
groups composed of no more than from ten to forty
members. Middle savages in groups from fifty to
one hundred. The higher savages are in groups of
from one hundred to five hundred. Among the lower
barbarians we find associations of from one thousand
to five thousand men. The middle barbarians, with
a little higher grade of civilization, may be grouped
in numbers as high as one hundred thousand.
Among the higher barbarians the associations may
rise to five hundred thousand. When we turn from
these to civilized races we find in successive stages of
civilization the nations of men ranged from a
million up to the hundred or more millions that con-
stitute the nations of modern times. Of course it is
not meant to imply that the grade of civilization of
the higher nations is strictly parallel to the size of
the nations, for after the numbers reach into the
many millions other factors besides numbers have
an increasingly important influence. But it is
clearly no mere accident that the grade of develop-

152 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ment of the race is parallel with the number of indi-
viduals associated to form a system. It is certain
that from the beginning of the organization of the
family the progress of civilization has been con-
stantly in the direction of the organization of larger
and larger numbers of individuals into systems. Of
course there have been many side currents to the gen-
eral stream. Small nations have sometimes been
ahead of larger ones, and many a great body of men
has broken to pieces under the emergency of condi-
tions. But in spite of all seeming disintegration it is
perfectly clear that the general trend of the stream
of advance has been constant and uniform. Civil-
ization has progressed toward greater and greater
organization with a, force that has been absolutely
irresistible.

CHAPTER VI

THE GROWTH OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF ORGANIZA-
TION

Recognizing that social evolution has been founded
upon a constant increase in the size of organizations,
we may next inquire into the methods by which these
organizations have been brought about.

Organization Centered Around Individuals

One of the most important factors in this develop-
ment of organization has been the influence of indi-
viduals. The first indication of a higher organiza-
tion than the family is the appearance of a chieftain
who exercises authority over a group of men among
whom he lives. Among the lowest tribes there are
no real chieftains such as are found among the
higher tribes, although here it may happen that some
individual, by virtue of his greater physical strength,
his greater cunning, or his greater intelligence,
makes himself influential. Indeed, the natural differ-
ence in ability of individuals inevitably gives to
single men exceptional influence over others. Such
a person, while he retains his vigor, is listened to,
obeyed, and becomes the leader of the tribe in opera-
tions for offense or defense. But such an individual
is only a temporary chieftain, and loses his authority
as soon as another arises who, by means of superior
genius or as the result of the waning strength of the
first chieftain, can force himself into authority. We
can understand that in all tribes a chieftain is a

163

154 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

necessity in war. If a tribe of one hundred men is to
defend itself against enemies, or to make a war of
conquest, some one must lead and orgranize its
actions, otherwise the result of the war is extermi-
nation. We can understand too how the power of
such a chieftain inevitably grows. If he leads a suc-
cessful attack upon an enemy, he comes home with in-
creased authority over his warriors. This means an
authority over the tribe, which he will be able to hold
for some time. Moreover, it will inevitably follow
that the chieftain, in virtue of his greater power, will
obtain a larger portion of the spoils that are taken
in these wars. This will give him still greater influ-
ence in the commimity when the war is over.

If the tribe, by successful contests, grows in nimi-
bers, the chieftain becomes more and more a neces-
sity, and in time a permanency. While ten men
might fight ten others with no special need of a
leader, ten thousand men cannot wage war against
another ten thousand unless properly led. When
great bodies of men come in contact with each other
the success in the battle is dependent almost wholly
upon a proper leader. The necessity of a chieftain
grows, therefore, with the growth of the tribes ; and
in all races of men above the lowest tribes it is uni-
versal to find a leader. As the need for such a chief-
tain increases, so his power grows. We can readily
understand how. as a tribe increases in numbers, the
authority of the chieftain grows until it becomes that
of a king or despot. This principle has been dom-
inant through history. The development of civiliza-
tion down to the present time shows us that nations
have, in nearly all cases, been concentrated around
individuals. It is the powerful chieftain that makes

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 155

tlie powerful tribe. It is the great leader that draws
together the people of a nation into a solid, compact
unit. It was Julius Caesar who made the Komau
empire. It was Mohammed who organized and made
powerful the Mohammedan nation. It was Xapoleon
who united into a system a shattered nation, broken
to pieces by bad conditions, and enabled it to make
front against all of the combined power of Europe.
It was Washington who united the settlers into a
Union. From the beginning to the end of history
great men have been the centers around which
nations have develo]:>ed. Individuals have been the
nucleus around which organization has crvstallized.

This great influence of individuals is one of the
unique features of human civilization. In organic
evolution the individual rarely counts. His influ-
ence upon posterity can be only through leaving
a more numerous and more vigorous ofl'spring. The
influence of his life is nothing. With man, owing to
new relations and new powers, the individual counts
in evolution quite independently of offspring. His
life has its meaning and not his children only. This
will be discussed later, but demands notice here
where we first see the influence of personality as a
uniting center among men.

At this point there is a diversion in the history of
races of man, a diversion which has dominated the
development of two radically difl:'erent types of civ-
ilization since the earliest historical periods of
human life. From the very outset two different rela-
tions can be seen between the chieftain and the people
over whom he has influence, and these two relations
form the foundations of two widely divergent types
of civilization. One was the patriarchal relation,

156 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

leading to despotism or stagnation which character-
izes the nations of the East ; the other was the com-
munal relation, tending to democracy and the energy
which characterizes the nations of the West.

It must not be assumed, however, that the types
of civilization referred to have always been clear and
sharply distinct. They represent two principles, one
of which has, as a rule, been adopted by different
types of man and different nations. But frequently
the two types are mixed, and not infrequently over-
lap each other. In many of the great nations, these
two principles of government have been in competi-
tion with each other, first the one and then the other
gaining the supreme control. In some of our modern
nations we can see clear evidence that a nation orig-
inally founded upon the communal system has had
ingrafted upon it later the patriarchal system of
government. But although these two systems of
government are thus more or less mingled with each
other in late history, they are nevertheless quite dis-
tinct from each other, and have marked two types of
social development.

The Patriarchal System and its Development

Based upon the Family. — The foundation of this
system is the fact that the chieftain and the head of
the tribe owes his position to his hereditary rights,!
and that the power is transferred from parent to son J
by the simple process of descent. This is nothing
more than an expansion of the system of the original
family. In the primitive family the father was the
ruler; the wife and children belonged to him as a
kind of property. Their lives were in his hands, and
he had absolute power. No one in the early days

GROWTH OP TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 1S7

ventured to question the authority of the father over
his family, a power based upon the conception that
the family was his property. As the family in-
creased in size the same principle held, extending^
from the family to the tribe, from the tribe to the
kingdom, and resulting eventually in what is called
patriarchal government. Under this system the
chieftain wasalways "a hereditary leader, and his
power was handed down from generation to genera-
tion without question. As the members of the family
recognized a complete subservience to the father, so
the members of the tribes and kingdoms recognized
the king as their common father and yielded to him
perfect subservience. The king was, of course, the
war chieftain, since none but the king could command
obedience, and his power was thus immensely in-
creased by wai;. An unsuccessful war dethroned him
and overthrew his nation, but a successful war, yield-
ing, as it did, spoils of which he, as leader, took the
larger proportion, constantly augmented his influ-
ence by progressive and increasing steps.

The King a Religious Head. — From the very first the
thought of the king as a religious leader has accom-
panied the idea of his political leadership. Religion,
as we shall see later, has been_a^yery^owerfuXfectaE
in producing organization^^ furnishing promises of
future rewards for present sacrifices, and the one
who is supposed to mediate between man and super-
natural powers naturally obtained great influence.
In a family the father was the religious head, and in
these early nations the leader was always the reli-
gious leader. In the early nations founded upon
patriarchal principles the king directed the religious
rites, and he it was who was regarded as having the

158 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

power of mediation between supernatural powers
and the world. This religious headship gave to him
a power even greater than that obtained by his
social and military leadership. In all ages men have
been more easily led by supernatural fears and hopes
than by those that concern the affairs of the world,
as most forcibly when King Henry went a suppliant
to Canossa. When these two sources of power were
combined, and the early king was regarded both as
the father who owned the nation and the king who
could mediate between his people and their gods, the
inevitable result was that such monarchs acquired
absolute authority.

The result of such conditions was the rapid organ-
ization of monarchies and a tremendous impetus
toward concentration. The greater the power of the
leader, the greater was the reverence he inspired,
and hence the closer the union of the individuals
under him. The patriarchal system became thus a
most powerful influence leading toward organization.
The reverence it inspired united all men who recog-
nized one individual as their leader, and brought
them a united band to his support. It gave the sub-
jects a valor which made them at all times willing to
sacrifice their own lives for the advantage of this
social and religious head. It was, in early ages, the
greatest force toward advance. Without organiza-
tion civilization could not have developed, and organ-
ization grew with the association of men into larger
and more concentrated bands. Unless autocratic
power had been possible in the hands of some indi-
viduals, such concentration would have been difficult
or impossible. It was this subservience to the cen-
tral head, this feeling of his religious as well as his

GROWTH OF TYPES OP ORGANIZATION 159

social authority, which served as a bond to unite the
numerous disjointed fragments which composed the
early nations. This patriarchal system was the char-
acteristic of all those nations which earliest showed a
power of advance. It led to a wonderfully rapid
organization of larger and larger groups. It led by
easy and increasingly rapid steps to the development
of an Oriental nation.

Growth of Patriarchal Nations. — Under this principle
of hereditar}'- leadership the growth of a nation was
easy and rapid. In the early periods of human his-
tory the world must have been peopled with thou-
sands of small tribes, isolated from each other, each
with its own chieftain, and in constant warfare with
one another. The love of power and the desire for
glory which have ever influenced man were suffi-
ciently powerful motives for keeping these primitive
nations in conflict. In the incessant conflict some of
the tribes would be overthrown by others. If such
tribes were simply held together by a bond of a
common chieftain, it frequently followed that when
the tribe was overthrown and its king captured the
allegiance of the common people was transferred to
the conqueror. The vanishing of a king was the
transference of a kingdom, and the victor's power
was increased, by the addition of the conquered
people to his own. The conquered tribe was some-
times reduced to slavery, but it was frequently incor-
porated with the conquerors to form a larger nation.
Tribes, bred in the notion of being subservient to a
leader, would simply transfer their allegiance to a
new leader, and a new kingdom, composed of the
several older ones, would again present a solid or-
ganization of greater size for future conquests.

160 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

But empires built under the patriarchal system
lacked the element of permanency. They were easily
built and as easily destroyed. They were created
almost at the command of a victorious general, and
they were, with equal ease, overthrown. Nothing
bound them into a firm unit, and their permanency
was slight. They were not even founded upon law,
for in a strictly patriarchal system law was a prac-
tical impossibility, and attempts to rule such nations
by law generally failed. For example, the great
Persian empire had been built by the sword of Cyrus ;
his successor, Darius, tried to unite under a system
of laws the gigantic structure built by the sword.
But although a system of laws could be inaugurated
by a wise and farseeing leader, it could not exist long
under patriarchal rule. From the nature of the case
law is here dependent upon the will of the monarch.
It is the monarch who makes the laws and has the
power of changing them. In a system that looks
upon the monarch not only as a father but as the reli-
gious head of the nation nothing can be superior to
his will. The power that makes the laws can unmake
them and, if the law is simply dependent upon the
will of the king, he can at will exempt any favorite or
any class of favorites from its action. Hence each
strives for the favor of the king in order to free him-
self from the laws which rule the rest of the nation.
Absolute monarchy is thus fatal to the enforcement
of law, for no laws can long withstand the submission
of the people to the will of one absolute ruler.

Hence it is that in a patriarchal nation competi-
tion based upon excellence is crushed out of exist-
ence. There is one person at the head and there is no
second. The subordinate officers have power only in

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 161

accordance with the caprice and will of the monarch.
Ambition is crushed. If a man is ambitious, he per-
ceives that the best means of attaining his goal is to
win the favor of the source of power, and this he can
attain by flattery as easily as by merit. This inevit-
ably invites corruption of the worst kind, and every
nation which has been founded upon this principle
has soon become permeated with what in these
modern times we call corruption. The patriarchal
system inevitably results in despotism. Monarchy
is its direct outcome ; competition is destroyed, ambi-
tion is crushed, and all stimulus to energetic life is
wanting.

The Weakness of Patriarchal Nations — In the history
of nations the result of this has been either destruc-
tion or stagnation. 1. Such nations held together so
long as valiant generals led them, and war offered
the hope of plunder and spoil ; but, as a rule, they did
not continue to be world powers. There was no
cohesion of parts and usually the great fabric fell to
pieces at the first adverse breath. Such has been the
history of most of these great nations. They became
war powers early in history. Under the influence of
the war spirit they grew to extraordinary propor-
tions, and expanded perhaps with prodigious rapid-
ity. But none of these primitive types of nations has
been able to hold its own against more powerful
forces arising from different sources, and most of
them, after having developed with great rapidity to
their zenith, broke to pieces. 2. Some patriarchal
nations, however, have not thus broken into frag-
ments, as is illustrated by the great nation of China.
Here we have the most extreme example known of
subordination in the child to the parent and all to

162 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the monarcli, and, accordingly, a most absolute
despotism has existed. But this great nation has
been prevented from falling to pieces by the fact that
it has been completely isolated from the rest of the
world. All the vigorous nations which have dom-
inated the history of the world have been in the
West, separated from the great Chinese race by
mountains and deserts. China has thus been left to
develop by itself, and under these circumstances, its
patriarchal government has expanded and has held
together a great nation. But the result has been
stagnation, for China has not progressed, and has
practically remained for centuries in exactly the
same state of civilization. The patriarchal system,
by crushing ambition, resulted in a complete stand-
still, and the great nation of China, held together
simply because it is isolated from other nations, has
remained almost unknown, and certainly unprogres-
sive. To-day this great sleeping nation has been
waked up by its contact with the communal system
of the West, and is undergoing a change so rapid
that it is impossible for us to understand its real sig-
nificance. The changes that are taking place in
China to-day are a most illuminating illustration of
the effect upon a nation founded upon the patriarchal
system coming in contact with the live, active nations
that have been developed under the influence of the
communal system of government.

The Communal System

Based upon Individual Ability. — In this type of nation
the relation of the chieftain to the people whom he
rules was originally wholly different, since he was
only a temporary leader. He obtained his position

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 163

by the sheer force of his abilities, and held it simply
because he had power to hold it. At the very bottom
it is recognized by such people that the chieftain owes
his position to the will of those over whom he rules,
and among these nations the leader was originally
elected. His power was fleeting, lasting as long as
he could hold it, or frequently only for a definite
number of years. He did not necessarily retain his
authority until his death, nor could he transfer it to
his son. Herein is the essential difference between
the patriarchal and the communal system. In the
one, the leader owes his position to his inherit-
ance from the father, and is revered as the religious
head; in the other, he owes it simply to the fact
that his people voluntarily give it to him, and
regard him as an elected leader, but not as one with
divine authority.

Among such nations two ruling forces have com-
monly developed. The reverence for the monarch,
present in the patriarchal system, was originally
lacking. The leader of such a community was not
looked upon as sacred, since he was not its religious
head. He was recognized as nothing more than the
equal of his subjects, except in the fact that circum-
stances gave him greater authority, and perhaps
greater genius. There is, therefore, wanting in this
system of nations the one centralizing factor that has
united the patriarchal tribes. The reverence, sub-
mission, and almost worship of the head of the
nation, which had been the force uniting the people
under the patriarchal system, was absolutely lacking
here. Such nations felt, however, a demand for reli-
gious leaders, but the religious authority was gener-
ally distinct from the political head, and there arose

164 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

almost universally a second power — the priesthood

independent of the political head. In these nations

we commonly find these two ruling forces in conflict
with each other; the temporal and the spiritual
authorities have, from the very first, been contending
forces in the development of the communal nations.

Centralizing Force Weak. — The communal system was
poorly adapted for creating nations. A centralizing
force was lacking and the power of the leader was
always uncertain. The leader never knew the extent
of his power ; since obedience to him was fundamen-
tally a matter of volition, he never knew how far he
could call upon his subjects to obey his will. More-
over, he never could know whether his power would
be permanent, and it was practically certain that it
would end with his death, even if it did not end long
before that time. Hence there was originally no
permanent bond to unite such people. With them
the conquering of a king did not conquer the king-
dom. Under the patriarchal system as soon as one
monarch was overthrown by another the conqueror
naturally became the monarch of the combined race,
but under the communal system, when one leader
was overthrown there was nothing to bind together
the victor and the vanquished. The conquered tribe
simply felt that their leader had been overthrown,
but inasmuch as their leader was voluntarily elected,
they could easily elect another. Thus, in the com-
munal system there was less tendency toward the
growth of nations by accretion. The feelings under-
lying the development of these tribes led to individ-
ualism, and the union of tribes for temporary pur-
poses only. The allegiance to the leader was recog-
nized as a matter of expediency and not a religious

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 165

duty, and there was thus lacking the cementing force
which has controlled the development of the Oriental
nations. Rivalries between leaders were perpetual.
Revolts from a leader who tried to exercise greater
power than his subjects wanted to give him were the
rule. Disintegration was an inevitable tendency of
the communal system.

In the purely communal system there is a strong
opposition to monarchy and despotism. The influ-
ence of individuals and the love of power have how-
ever here, as well as elsewhere, produced kings and
tyrants; but the people of communal nations have
never readily accepted a condition of monarchy. It
is true that in late centuries monarchy has been in-
grafted upon many of the communal nations, since
the monarch of a modern European nation is, in a
sense, similar to that of the Oriental nation. But we
must not fail to recognize that monarchy is new
among these nations, and has been brought upon
them in recent centuries rather by the conditions of
things than as resulting from a national condition
itself, and in the communal nations where monarchy
has developed it is practically always limited by law
and custom. In these nations, while the ruling
classes try to instill the idea of the divine right of
kings upon the nation, the people in general repudi-
ate such a notion. The nations that have arisen
from a communistic race — the whole Aryan race —
have had a tendency to found their government upon
individualism, and, in general, refuse to look upon
the reigning monarch as anything more than a man
like themselves, to whom, for purposes of proper
control of the masses, has been delegated the power
of ruling. That kings receive their power from

166 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

divine right is an idea that is repugnant to the com-
munal nations of the "West.

This lack of tendency to centralization explains
the fact that we hear nothing of the communal na-
tions during the period when the patriarchal systems
grew into great nations. They failed to advance,
and remained for long, long centuries unknown
and obscure. Occasionally, indeed, under some excep-
tionally powerful leader they became a mighty
force which could invade new countries and make
themselves powers in civilization. But these were
sporadic incidents, for they depended simply upon
the personal power of a mighty leader, and the nation
thus created usually fell to pieces after his death,
failing to preserve the influence it would have had
if the leader had been supported by the principles
underlying the patriarchal system. There were in
the early history of such people no opportunities for
centralization. Nothing but expediency united the
different tribes under one head; nothing held them
long together when they did unite.

Makes Men Rather Than Nations — Nevertheless, this
communal system contained in it the element of
greatest permanent strength. After the force of the
patriarchal system had spent itself, and the nations
it had produced had grown and broken to pieces, or
shown that they were doomed to destruction or stag-
nation, then slowly these new forces, with their less
forcible centralizing power, began to make them-
selves felt. Then this communistic race of people
began to appear as a power in the world, and from
that time on, the history of civilization has been
wholly in the hands of nations that have their govern-
ment based upon the communal idea. Perhaps a

GROWTH OF TYPES OF OltGANIZATION 167

more correct statement is that after these communal
people did finally begin to form nations, they proved
themselves universally more progressive than the
stagnant patriarchal nations, and took into their
hands the task of building civilization. This they did
for the simple reason that while the patriarchal
system builds nations, the communal system makes
men.

The Aeyan Race

The great center of this type of civilization was the
Aryan race, from which all the Western nations have
been derived. The original home of this race may
be still a matter of dispute. ^\^ether, as has been
supposed, they came originally from an Asiatic
home, extending over Europe by a series of suc-
cessive migrations, or whether, as others believe,
their original home was the European continent, need
not concern us here. The few facts that we know in
regard to the race are significant. We know, for
example, that they were in the habit of migrating,
particularly in the spring, when great hordes of
people started from their original home and
migrated to unknown regions. These migrations
were probably brought about by over reproduction
which in time rendered their original homes incap-
able of supporting all its inhabitants. Like a swarm
of bees, a migrating race started off for unknown
lands and unknown experiences. They fought their
way. Defeat was annihilation and courage was their
only virtue. We know, moreover, that organization
among these migrating hordes was quite well devel-
oped. They hung together as a unit, obeying the
commands of a leader, and so long as the migration

168 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

extended so long was this host one organized system.
But we know too that these migrating hosts broke
up at the end of the migrating period into numerous
isolated bands, and that organization practically
disappeared.

The race was an intensely warlike one, ever rest-
less, ever uneasy. "Whether this intense restlessness
was the cause of or produced by their coromunal
customs we can hardly say. So uneasy and restless
were the people that they could not and would not
long endure the controlling power of one authority.
This intense warlike nature led them into a condi-
tion of constant hostility to all around them. Within
the limits of a family there might be peace, but out-
side of these limits constant hostility was found.
Tribe was ever at war with tribe, a condition of
affairs that lasted long through the centuries, indeed
almost to the present era. The Ayran language orig-
inally possessed no word for "friendship," since
there were no friendships ; no word for ' 'hospitality "
is found in their original language, since they knew
not the idea. All this indicates the intense warlike
spirit of an ever-warring series of tribes. We know
too that the filial reverence, so prominent a factor
among the patriarchal nations, was to a large extent
wanting. It is true that the family of the Aryans, as
in other races, was commonly held together by pa-
ternal authority, and they commonly remained
together as a unit until the numbers reached perhaps
sixty or thereabouts. In these clans the members
were all related to each other; but the only visible
sign of their common relation was in the head of the
family, the patriarch, the house father.

To him undoubtedly all of the members looked

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 169

with a certain amount of reverence, and his word
was the bond, the only bond that united the mem-
bers of the family into a unit. All of this, of course,
is quite similar to the conditions of things under
patriarchal government. But we find among the
Aryans a new feature. The patriarch of the family
was to be obeyed only so long as he showed himself
capable of wielding his power and exercising it with
judgment. In the Aryan family the elder son not
infrequently assumed the headship upon marriage,
and the father lost his prestige and power as the
head of the family. He was frequently, indeed, espe-
cially if troublesome, put to death or cast out from
the family circle, which amounted to the same thing.
Under these conditions a patriarchal reverence, such
as has been the basis of the development of the patri-
archal nations, was not and could not have been
developed.

When such tribes did unite they elected a chieftain.
The man who held the position of ruler held it by his
might, and his power depended upon the voluntary
allegiance of his followers. Allegiance to such a
chieftain was more or less compulsory, according as
the chieftain showed himself capable of exercising
power; but at the basis it was voluntary, and could
be given or withheld according to the general wish of
the people. Among the Aryans the chieftain was not
looked upon as an intermediary between man and
God, and there was therefore no religious feeling
which impelled the early Aryans to give their obe-
dience to their chieftain. Obeying a chieftain was
with them never a religious rite but a matter of expe-
diency.

The effect of the communal system upon the char-

170 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

acter of the people was great. The patriarchal
system produced sluggishness of the people and
stagnation of the race. Communism made the people
restless and produced a race overflowing with activ-
ity. The possibility that each might become a leader
made men ambitious, and universal ambition pre-
vented growth by accretion.

Centralization Among the Aryans — But in spite of this
disintegrating tendency, the forces leading toward
centralization were too strong to be checked even
by the communism of the Aryans, and even in this
race nations grew out of tribes. The formation of
modern as well as ancient nations has been due to the
irresistible force of concentration and increasing
organization, for they are both founded upon the
principle that power comes from union. But in the
Aryan nation this centralization was a more volun-
tary one. These communities purposely com-
bined for their own common good. The first associa-
tion of this sort of which we have any record, and
perhaps the first in existence, was that which the
Greeks called the Amphictyon. It was a meeting of
numerous Grecian tribes, collected together for the
purpose of regulating common warfare, either of
offense or defense, and regulating the matter of
ancestor-worship, which was the basis of their reli-
gion. In this union each tribe counted as one, no
matter whether large or small, and the actions which
the tribes took were merely for the common good of
the tribes as a body. It was a union which did not
prevent the different tribes from being thoroughly
independent of each other in practically all of their
actions. The Amphictyon, however, was the begin-
ning of the voluntary union of isolated independent

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 171

tribes, and was thus the beginning of the modern
nation.

Growth of Aryan Nations — We cannot follow the his-
tory of the modern nations as they have gradually
grown from the unions of such isolated fragments.
It may make our search after principles clearer if
we survey a few of the salient features which stand
forth prominently in the development of communal
nations. The condition of independence of the dif-
ferent tribes, and the fact that their leaders were
elective, produced in Greece a race of men all of
whom were upon an equality with each other. It
gave rise to a people each man of which was capable
of being a leader. A handful of this class of men,
each a master in himself, overthrew the great hosts
of the Persian armies, in which every man was
merely a piece of a big machine, controlled by one
individual to whom all were slavishly subservient.
The difference between the power of the Greek and
the Persian was due fundamentally to this difference
in the type of man that develops under the system of
communism and that which develops under the
patriarchal system. The whole history of Greece
was a constant struggle to retain this system of
equality. For it is the inevitable tendency of war-
fare that one man gains power, either by his genius
or by his oratory, and power is so sweet that the
attempt is constantly made to extend and to perpet-
uate it. Hence in Greece there was a constant
struggle between this tendency toward a one-man
power and the determination on the part of the
people that such power should not continue. Greece
was great only so long as she prevented the one-man
power from becoming fixed upon the race, and her

172 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

glory waned as soon as Alexander made himself her
master.

The Romans too belonged to the Aryan race and
owed their strength during the time of Rome's vigor
to the type of men that resulted from a refusal to be
servilely obedient to any one power. In its early days
Rome was nominally ruled by kings, but kings of
limited power and short history. During the period
of its growth into the mighty world nation, its lead-
ers were constantly elective, and hence were men
capable of leading and ruling. The highest office
was open to the ambitions of all, and every Roman
citizen felt the possibility of becoming a leader. The
attempt was early made to separate the Roman
people into two classes in accordance with their
wealth. But the people refused such a division, and
during the early history of the nation, during the
time when its power was expanding, this constant
unrest of the people was manifest, as shown by the
long series of struggles between the patricians and
plebeians. As long as this condition for individual
equality continued, the nation continued to grow
and retain its pristine vigor. But its success as a
war nation created an army, and as the army became
its ruler in later years, the original vigor of the race
disappeared. Nominally, even in the later history of
this nation, the emperor was elective, as he had
been originally in all the Aryan races ; but the army
comprised the electors, and the Roman army, not the
people, ruled the Roman empire. From that moment
its power as a nation declined. The dominant influ-
ence of the army led to the same conditions that are
found under the despotism of the Oriental nations.
It brought about corruption and led to all of the evils

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 173

that result in all nations from the unresisted power
of some one central force. Rome soon died of decay,
in almost the same way that the patriarchal nations
of the East have died under the influence of despot-
ism.

The fall of Rome left Europe filled with numerous,
disjointed peoples, wholly lacking in cohesion. The
North was filled with the tribes of the Goths, the
Franks, the Angles, the Danes, the Germans, and
hosts of others, divided into an indefinite number of
isolated bands, each band warring for itself, and
owing no allegiance to any central authority. They
comprised a miscellaneous mass of tribes, with no
centralizing force except an occasional brilliant
leader. For some centuries following, this condition
of chaos existed throughout most of Europe. There
was a kaleidoscopic series of unions and disintegra-
tions, presenting at one time a strong combination,
and perhaps in the next century isolated fragments
of broken combinations. Slowly out of this chaos
can be seen in the later centuries the emergence of
the nations that have come to occupy modern Europe.
The history of the growth of these nations shows
wide variations, but there is one general principle
which is concerned in them all. In every case there
has been either slowly or rapidly developed a central-
ized organization, controlled by some centralizing
force. In some countries this centralization has been
fairly early ; in others it has remained for later cen-
turies to bring it about, and in some instances the
final centralization has occurred only within the last
few decades. The central authority around which
the organizations have developed has been quite
varied in the different races. In some cases it has

174 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

been a king, or an emperor. In some cases it has
been the power of the Roman Catholic Church. In
some cases it has been certain cities that have col-
lected around themselves various peoples, and have
controlled the organization. Again, it has been a
combination of a king, together with the power of the
nobles, and subsequently the power of the people,
that has joroduced the centralization, for even in
democratic England, centralization has been pro-
duced around the Parliament, which of course in a
way represents the people themselves. Whether cen-
tralization shall be develox)ed around the power of an
individual, a king, or an emperor, or whether it shall
develop around some other authority, has been
largely a matter of incidents of history.

However varied have been the histories of the dif-
ferent races of modern Europe, they all illustrate the
same fundamental principle ; for they show that even
in the communistic Aryan races there is an irresist-
ible tendency toward centralization and organiza-
tion. This has occurred everywhere, although the
center around which the kingdom has been organized
has been different in each nation. In the Aryan as
well as in the Oriental races there has thus been some
dominating force at work which has led toward cen-
tralization. In the Oriental nations this centralizing
force was primitive and was a part of their system of
ancestor-worship, which demanded a subservience to
the king as the father of all. In the Aryan races,
however, centralization was contradictory to their
original customs, since the communal system does
not lend itself to centralization. But in spite of this,
in the Aryan races which have continued to exist
this principle of centralization has ever forced itself

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 175

to the front. While the circumstances which have
built the nations have been as varied as the nations,
the building of the nations around some center has
been universal.

Centralization a Source of Weakness

Centralization has thus been the keynote of prog-
ress in the Aryan race as well as in the Oriental
races. It must be noticed, however, that among the
Aryans it is a source of disturbance and weakness as
well as one of strength. Whenever this centraliza-
tion has reached the conditions found in Oriental
nations and become so great as to lead to despotism,
there is shown an element of weakness which soon
results in revolution and disintegration. As soon as
the army with its generals ruled Rome the empire
fell into decay and died. When the monarchy be-
came a despotism in France the result was chaos.
Spain and Italy became servilely obedient to the
Roman Church and passed rapidly and surely from
their position as world powers. Germany, until its
recent history, has resisted to a considerable extent
this centralizing tendency, and as a result has re-
tained its vigor. The result of its present centralized
but limited monarchy is yet to be seen, for it is too
early to determine its influence upon the people.
England has persistently refused to be ruled by a
central despot, and this refusal on her part has led
to her becoming the widest world power, with influ-
ence that extends over the entire globe. The United
States, which also persistently refuses to recognize a
permanent central power, has rapidly become a
world nation. Thus the nations that have retained
world influence are those that, along with certain

176 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

centralizing tendencies, positively refuse to recognize
a centralized authority sufficient to produce despot-
ism. Russia is an instance of a communal Aryan
race upon which the patriarchal idea of absolutism
has been secondarily engrafted. To-day it retains
much of its absolutism and still remains a great and
powerful nation. But Russia up to the present time
has not been a great force in the world 's history. We
are to-day wondering as to the future of this great
nation, and sometimes ask if it is to become the
world power of the twentieth century. But our ex-
pectations on this score are based upon the fact
that it is a nation of so many millions of people.
Judging, however, from the past history of thei
Aryan race, and, indeed, from the past history of
the world, no nation which has been under the control
of an absolute monarch has long been able to hold its
own in the struggle for existence with other Aryan
nations. This race has refused to submit perma-
nently to absolutism. Hitherto absolute monarchy in
Europe has contained seeds of failure; and Russia,
since she is an absolute monarchy, is by no means
sure of remaining a world power. Its absolutism is
an inherent weakness and has produced already the
internal corruption which, hitherto, has always been
the beginning of decay. Russia's chance of ruling
the twentieth century would be much greater if all
authority had not become so centered as to crush
out the individual.

We thus reach two seemingly opposite conclusions.
We learn that centralization and organization are
influences of irresistible power which have produced
all the strong nations, since no nation that has
refused to be centralized has long continued to exist

GROWTH OF TYPES OF ORGANIZATION 177

nor had any lasting influence in the world's history.
As an opposite conclusion we learn that centraliza-
tion has within it the inherent weakness that it leads
toward revolution and chaos, at least among the
Aryan races.

CHAPTER VII

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS

We are now ready to approach tlie center of our
discussion, and we try to disentangle from this brief
survey of the history of civilization the principles
that underlie it. In our effort to comprehend social
evolution it is principles rather than details that we
are after. In this kaleidoscopic series of changes it
is by no means easy to determine the fundamental
principles concerned in the phenomena, but if we
compare animal evolution, as it has been disclosed by
study during the last half century, with the evolution
of man, we shall be able to extract from the various
investigations a few salient features which are begin-
ning to stand forth more and more prominently.

A Universal Teistdency toward Centralization

The most patent fact in human history is the uni-
versal tendency of civilization in the direction of
increasing organization and centralization. This has
been marked from the beginning by a continual
growth in the size of the combinations of men asso-
ciated with each other. History has been a constant
triumph of union over disunion, a constant destruc-
tion of types incapable of union. Starting with the
family, this increase in the size of organizations pro-
gressed regularly until it has reached the twentieth
century world, divided into a few great nations,
together with a number of small, unimportant ones

178

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 179

destined soon to be swallowed up in the larger. This
general progress toward increase in size has, how-
ever, been bj no means uninterrupted. The tendency
toward concentration has been replaced at intervals
by disintegration. Nations have been formed only
to be broken to pieces again. Even in the last two
thousand years great nations have repeatedly been
built and broken down. But although the progress
is by no means regular, it is none the less certain, and
as we look through the whole history we see that the
most potent feature of civilization is an increasing
tendency toward the formation of larger and larger
bodies of men, united for common purposes. The
force of centralization is irresistible. It is seen
equally in the organization of the primitive family
and in the growth of the modern industrial trust or
the labor union. It may be guided and, in a measure
controlled, but can no more be checked than can the
rising of the tide.

As we examine this history more closely we find
that it has not been a constant progress toward cen-
tralization, but, rather, that it has been the result of
two quite opposite tendencies. From the first, while
the impulse toward organization is patent, it has
been more or less sharply opposed by the opposite
tendency toward individualism or disintegration.
The development of civilization is to be explained as
a constant struggle between these opposing forces
of centralization and individualism, first one and
then the other coming to the front. The fundamental
characteristic underlying organization is the subor-
dination of the individual, while that underlying dis-
integration is the exaltation of the individual. Each
must be considered by itself.

180 social heredity and social evolution

The Subordination of Self

It is this feature which most sharply differentiates
man from animals. Man is the only animal that has
felt the necessity of being governed. Throughout his
history the individual is constantly called upon and
is always read}^ to yield some of his own interests to
those of others. While this is the most distinctively
human attribute, it is not wholly confined to man. As
noticed in a previous chapter, combinations exist
among animals, and in these combinations there is
always more or less subordination of the individual
to the leader. In a troop of monkeys a leader is
always found, usually an old male, who enforces his
will upon the rest, and the members of the troop
yield obedience to the leader. But although thus
occasionally found among animals, the principle is
universal among men. No tribe is known where some
subordination of self-interest is not manifest. "With
man it is the central force of development, since this
alone has determined the growth in the size of human
organizations. The willingness to yield self-inter-
ests to those of the family and community has been
the factor which has held together the bodies of men
that have formed the nations. Without this willing-
ness to yield self-interests civilization would have
been impossible. Its absence, in anything but a
rudimentary condition, has prevented organization
among the lower animals, and its universal presence
among men has made possible the creation of nations.

Throughout human history self-subordination has
been the foundation of organization. But the object
toward which self-sacrifice has been directed has
been by no means a constant one. In the lowest

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 181

family relations of j)rimitive tribes self-interest
simply yields to the authority of the father. A little
later in history the individual yields his interest not
simply to the father of the family but also to the
family patriarch, a man whose influence extends
over several connected families. Later still individ-
ual interests yield to the chieftain, whose influence
extends more widely and includes numerous collected
families. Subordination to the feudal lord of the
Middle Ages was essentially the same thing, for here
the lord of the manor held control over a large
number of families who comprised his vassals. As
centralization increased it became a king who ob-
tained the allegiance of the chieftains, and, through
them, of their vassals. As his power increased a
wider and wider extent of territory became sub-
servient to the central leader. The most striking
phase of this yielding to central authority is seen in
the relation of Europe to the Eoman Church. Com-
mon people, chieftains, and even kings and emperors
were, by a series of incidents, brought wholly under
the control of that church, which became the one
central force ; and willingly or unwillingly, all grades
of mediaeval society came to yield self-interest to
this one gigantic centralizing power. Later, in most
European nations, the king and the church have, for
various reasons, lost some of this blind allegiance of
the subjects, but this simply means the transference
of that allegiance elsewhere. To-day it has become
commonly a fictitious something to which man yields
obedience. The idea of a nation is, of course, purely
a matter of imagination. The nation can experience
no pleasure or sorrow at the allegiance of its citizens ;
but nevertheless in our modern days the interests of

182 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

individual, family, and race yield to the glory of the
fatherland. What influence is stronger than patriot-
ism, and what is patriotism except willingness to
sacrifice for one's native land? Millions of men
to-day will sacrifice everything they hold most dear
to defend from attack that fiction which they call
their country. But a country neither demands nor
appreciates sacrifice, and since it is easier for men to
yield self-interest to the demands of an individual
than to the fiction of a nation, even with our modern
nations and our great change in ideas of obligations,
the allegiance is commonly centered around a person.
The soldier fights for the king or the queen, and even
in republican nations it is frequently the love and
admiration for an individual statesman or general, or
sympathy with an oppressed people, that brings out
the heroic self-sacrifices.

Centralization is possible only where self-interests
are subordinated to some central power, be it a man,
a church, or an idea. From this it follows that the
fundamental necessity for the development of civil-
ization has been some impulse that leads man to yield
some of his interests to others. This principle must
contain the secret which underlies the evolution of
human society. The question is not whether man
will yield allegiance to authority, but simply to what
he will yield allegiance — to a king, a church, a nation,
a party, a trust, a labor union, or some other cen-
tralizing force.

Centralization Means Loss of Individual Freedom

Among the lower orders of nature the individual
counts for absolutely nothing. Of course each indi-
vidual, so far as his own struggle for life is con-

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 183

cerned, is interested in his own survival, but from the
broader aspect of nature he counts for nothing what-
soever. The struggle for existence aims at the
species and not the individual. When a Daphnia
may produce millions of offspring in the course of a
summer, the survival of any one is a matter of no
concern. It is only the species and its continuation
which is of importance, and to this the interests of
the individual are ruthlessly sacrificed. For the
benefit of the colony the individual soldier ant is
sacrificed without hesitation. Throughout the lower
orders of animals this principle holds, and it holds
more or less forcibly in all animals below man.

Even with early man we find no advance. With
primitive man and savage races the individual counts
for scarcely more than in the community of ants.
The wars of savage races take no account of the life
of the individuals. Each man is ready to sacrifice his
own life in these combats for military glory, fame, or
even the simple love of combat, and the chieftain
does not regard the individual life as of value.
Throughout savage races, and even the lower races
of barbarians, a man's life is of no value. It is only
the life of the family or the tribe that is of signifi-
cance, and toward their preservation is directed the
sacrifice of individuals.

In considering the relation of the individual to his
conditions two distinct factors are to be considered.
The first is his independence of action, that is,;
freedom; the second is the value and breadth of his
life. As concerns the first, it is clear that centraliza-
tion, with the growing size of organizations, has
always taken place at the expense of individual free-
dom. The savage alone has absolute freedom, and

184 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

he only so long as he lives a life untrammeled by
the rules of a family or a tribe. If he lives alone in
nature, he can follow his own will wherever it may
lead him, and he is thus absolutely free, except in so
far as he is limited by the laws of nature. But no
sooner does he take the first step toward organiza-
tion, even to the extent of having a family, than his
freedom disappears. He is no longer able to do
exactly as he pleases, for his actions must be influ-
enced by the interests of his family. This being the
case, absolute freedom is practically never found
among men, for with mankind the family organiza-
tion is universal.

Beginning with the checks demanded by family
life, the freedom of the individual to follow his own
inclinations is more and more curbed with every step
in the organization and concentration of society. It
is true that freedom and liberty have been the great
cry around which have centered most of the advances
of civilization ; but it is the giving up of freedom in
its literal sense that constitutes the very essence of
progress. No people have perfect freedom, and no
nation wants it. Independence of action inevitably
disappears with the organization of nations. Among
early nations little or no attention was paid to the
individuals of whom a nation was composed. It has
not been with people that history has concerned
itself. The early empires of the East, under the
patriarchal system, dealt simply with kings. Their
warfares were with other kings and with generals.
Their treaties were with rulers, and each ruler made
such treaties as he could to suit himself, with appar-
ently, so far as we can judge from records, no con-
sideration for the people under him. In Greece, it is

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OP PROGRESS 185

true, the individual possessed great powers, but he
lost them after a little when the empire began to
expand under Alexander. The Eomans too were a
republican people, but throughout their long history
they dealt only with conquered cities and conquered
armies, while the interests of the conquered people
were hardly considered. The ruling powers in early
nations did not recognize that the individual man had
any special rights. It was only the mass that
appealed to them, while the benefit of the compo-
nents was a factor that rarely entered into considera-
tion in the settlement of international difficulties.
Among all earlier nations the individual was conse-
quently always crushed under the weight of organiza-
tion. With Rome the greater the glory and the higher
the rise of imperial power, the more completely was
the individual swamped, until, in the height of the
Roman empire, the citizen was practically crushed
out of existence, was of no more significance than the
ant in its colony. It was the citizen who made early
Rome. Pyrrhus recognized that he was defeated in
his attack upon Rome not by the Roman generals but
by the Roman farmers. To the greatness of the indi-
vidual did Rome owe its pristine vigor ; but with the
empire all was changed. The glory of the central
organizations, the development of the money power
crushed the ambitions of the people. The individual
became lost in the greatness of the empire, and the
downfall of Rome was inevitable. For man as man,
the Roman empire had no interest. The worker
became too poor to live; the nonworker alone, with
his wealth, had ease, and both ceased to multiply. As
the value of the individual disappeared the empire
crumbled to pieces.

186 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Freedom must necessarily disappear with organ-
ization. Every advance in centralization makes the
individual more dependent, and every law enacted by
the nations undermines further his independence.
The anarchist demands the abolition of law in order
to restore primitive freedom. But there is another
side of the individual's relation to society. Though
the man becomes less free with the growth of organi-
zation, the breadth of his life becomes greater.
Among Oriental nations the idea of the value of indi-
vidual life seems hardly to have dawned, even to the
present day, as is proved by the cheapness of life
among the Chinese and Turks. But among the West-
ern nations the individual has refused to allow him-
self to be swallowed up by the glory of the organized
nation. His refusal thus to submit may perhaps be
traced to the influence of the communal system ; but,
at all events, it has been the stimulus that has pro-
duced the restless organization and reorganization of
the European peoples. We can easily trace this idea
through the history of the last two thousand years,
and we l^arn that the advance in civilization has been
confined to those nations where the value of man has
been most clearly recognized. European civilization
has been dominated by the principle of liberty, and
liberty means simply the right of the individual in
contradistinction to the rights of the society or the
king. Throughout the whole history of Western civ-
ilization the individual has ever been refusing to
sacrifice himself to the central organization, and it is
this refusal that has been the cause of the ceaseless
disintegration and organization which have char-
acterized European history for the last two millen-
niums.

the general direction op progress 187

Exaltation of the Individual

Althougli centralization curbs freedom, still, with
advancing civilization, a different phase of society
has been developing, by which the individual is less
and less called upon to sacrifice himself for the
benefit of the community. Far down in the scale of
animals the production of offspring results in the
destruction of the parent. Most low animals die as
soon as they mature their eggs. Each animal is
sacrificed to the necessity of perpetuating the species.
Eeproduction is the end of life. Even among the
low races of savages this is, to a large extent, true,
especially for the female sex. The savage wife sacri-
fices all her individual interests to her one duty of
rearing children. But as we pass through the stages
of civilization we find that the necessity for this sacri-
fice becomes less and less. In the higher stages of
society we no longer recognize that such a necessity
exists at all. In modern society the perpetuation of
the race is an incident, but not the end of life. The
individual counts for more than the offspring. In
modern society the purpose of existence is life, not
reproduction.

In still another direction are less frequent calls
made upon the individual for the sacrifice of his
interests. Whereas with savages and with ancient
nations the king had the right, universally recog-
nized, of demanding the life of his subjects, in
modern times, among all Western nations, this right
is no longer recognized. Even the absolute monarch
of Eussia is no longer in a position where his word
is regarded as sufficient excuse for the execution of
his subjects; it must at least have a semblance of

188 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

legalitv. Little by little, as the centuries have
passed, the people have demanded and obtained for
themselves a recognition which in early centuries
they did not receive. Modern civilization tells us
that the individual is supreme, and that the purpose
of government is to carry out the will of the people.
Sometimes the monarch, or the capitalist, tries, and
for a time succeeds in disregarding the individual;
but not for long. The people of the Aryan race
refuse to allow this to continue. In the modern
nation it is not the glory of the nation or the love of
the king that is the reason for government. Human-
ity is placing the greatest good of the greatest
number ahead of all other objects. The interest of
the people is a mightier force even than patriotism.
Under these conditions the general position of man-
kind is almost reversed. Whereas in earlier ages the
people existed for the benefit of the government and
its leaders, now the government exists for the benefit
of the people. The will of the king is of significance
in modern nations only as it works out the welfare
of the people.

The IxDivrDUAL versus Society

Thus in the history of civilization there has been
a parallel growth of two opposite principles. One
is the growth of society resulting from centraliza-
tion; the other is the increasing value set upon the
individual. These two principles are apparently
opposed, the one falling as the other rises. Society,
at least in the form in which it has actually devel-
oped, seems to have been ever trying to curb the
individual. Society has constantly tried to make man
its slave. The individual, on the other hand, has no

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 1S9

less constantly been trying to exert his own person-
ality, trying to raise himself above the condition of
slavery, trying to lift himself out of jDoverty, trying
to obtain his share of the good things of the world.
But in spite of this opposition, perhaps because of it,
the two princiiDles have developed simultaneously.
Throughout all history there has been a constant see-
saw between these two forces, now one and now the
other getting the upper hand.

The Persistent Demands of the Individual. — Let us illus-
trate this fact by a brief reference to the important
events of the last two thousand years. Everywhere
kings have built their thrones by the might of the
centralizing power, and just as universally have the
kings found their thrones undermined by the rising
and restless spirits of the individuals whom they
rule. In the Roman republic the individual reigned
supreme. In the Roman empire centralization almost
crushed him out of existence. Rome fell because the
individual was crushed, and Rome was conquered by
a race of people in which the individual reigned
supreme. There was hardly ever a people where
there was less centralization than among the bar-
barians who camped down on the land that formerly
composed the Roman empire. But although origi-
nally free and equal, it required only a few centuries
after the fall of Rome to bring the masses under as
crushing a despotism as ever the Romans had expe-
rienced.

The new conditions were, however, very different
from the old. Feudalism was, in one sense, an ex-
treme of decentralization, but nevertheless, so far as
concerned the individual, it was a complete loss of
freedom. The value of the man wholly disappeared,

190 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

except as he might be deemed a fighting machine for
the benefit of his feudal lord. Justice was nonexist-
ent, and the only rule in the land was the will of the
feudal lord. It is difficult to realize to-day the evils
of such conditions among the people in those times.
A slight indication is suggested by the so-called truce
of Grod, established in the eleventh century. At that
time the Roman Church, realizing the evils that af-
flicted the people, made an attempt to remedy it in
part by checking the ceaseless strifes which agitated
the people. Finding thi« impossible, a simple means
was tried by the establishment of the * ' truce of God. ' '
This was merely the endeavor to use the authority of
the church to reduce the number of needless strifes
between the nobles, by proclaiming that there should
be three days of each week when warfare should
cease, the other four being given over to the normal
condition of warfare. Even this modest attempt
failed. Now, when we remember that, though the
lords enjoyed these quarrels, and, shut up in their
castles, suffered little from them, the people, not thus
protected, were constantly exposed to the horrors of
raids and robberies, it becomes evident that, under
feudalism, the condition of the individual descended
to its lowest ebb. A man was of less value than a
lord's war horse.

But the laws of progress brought the inevitable
change, and once more came an exaltation of the
interests of the individual. The first step toward
breaking away from the condition of feudalism came
from the rise of cities. These cities were groups of
people, largely merchants, who were not serfs of the
feudal barons, and who united by a compact to live
or die together independent of the feudal lords.

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 191

Thus united, they made some headway against feu-
dalism, and they occasionally obtained charters which
placed their members upon a better footing in rela-
tion to the feudal lords. But simultaneously a still
more powerful influence tended toward centraliza-
tion. Royalty began to absorb more and more power
at the expense of the lords. But it is extremely
important to notice that royalty gained its power and
increased its authority by acting in the interests of
the people. In France it was the king who gave the
people safe roads for travel, by establishing a guard
which protected them from the ravages of the neigh-
boring barons. He espoused the cause of the cities
against the barons, thus again working for the inter-
ests of the common people. He instituted courts of
justice in which even the feudal lords were brought
to the bar and compelled to answer charges — a very
distinct gain for the people. By thus espousing the
cause of the individuals he obtained their allegiance,
and they gladly gave him the power which could come
from their support, enabling him thus to form, for
his use, that sword of kings, the standing army.

Among the Western nations the right of the indi-
vidual man has been the rallying cry of advance,
while centralization has constantly represented stag-
nation. Freedom has been the battle cry of civiliza-
tion, and this demand for freedom has been keener
and louder as the centuries have passed. The United
States was founded upon the individual; its very
organization was based upon the statement that ' ' all
men were created free and equal," and through their
whole history the individual has been the ruler, in
name, at least. This same spirit underlies the feel-
ing of unrest seen in our advanced communities to-

192 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

day. The anarchist is simply the man who carries
individualism to extremes, insisting that the individ-
ual counts for more than society. He claims that
each person should be left to obtain for himself all
that his powers enable him to obtain, uncurbed by
artificial law. The anarchist believes that the whole
creation of law and custom has robbed man of his
natural rights, and he would make man absolutely
free by abolishing law. Socialism too, from a dia-
metrically opposite standpoint, has the individual
as its foundation. The socialist also places man
before society, and he believes also that the laws as
they have hitherto developed in civilized commu-
nities, instead of benefiting man, have benefited the
rulers only, resulting in the enslavement of the great
mass of the people, in an industrial if not in a polit-
ical slavery. He would remedy the condition, how-
ever, by a method the opposite from anarchy, since he
would still further increase the power of society.
Thus socialism would produce by increasing the law
what anarchism would produce by abolishing all law.
The results would, to be sure, be vastly different,
but both are actuated by the desire to increase the
rights of the individual. Socialism would remodel
society in such a way as to place the welfare of the
individual foremost, and would do this by making
laws that would prevent the accumulation of prop-
erty, in this way making it impossible for the one to
gain possession of the products of the labors of the
many. In all modern nations where there are any
active opinions upon public affairs the foundation of
all agitation is the claim that our present civilization
has robbed man of his rights as an individual, and
the demand that these rights should be restored him

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 193

by a social revolution — a demand which is growing
louder with each century.

The Irresistible Force of Centralization — But although
we see this spirit of individualism making more and
more emphatic demands, we can see with equal
clearness that the opposite tendency is working with
no less force. The tendency toward absorption of
individual rights in a central authority is as strong
as that toward individualization, and in reading his-
tory we are impressed equally with the significance
of centralization and individualism. It is true that
Rome fell because the individual lost his rights, and
that this placed the destinies of the world in the
hands of a people to whom individual rights were
primary. But it is equally true that it required but a
few centuries for feudalism to enslave once more the
individual. When feudalism fell, under the attack
of the rights of men, it was actually overthrown by
the force of centralization, for the king used the
rights of man as an excuse for centering upon him-
self greater central authority. Thus, though the
French monarchy was built originally upon its
appeal to justice and the welfare of the people, it
required but a few centuries for this centralizing
power to throw off all disguise of justice, and to rule
by might, crushing the people beneath its weight of
intolerable taxation. Founded upon the rights of the
people, the monarchy soon existed for itself alone,
and ruled autocratically, leaving the people in as
deep a misery as that from which it had rescued
them. It required the French Revolution to rescue
the individual once more. Having again come to the
front, the individual yielded again to centralization
under Napoleon.

194 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

In the United States, the nation founded npon the
individual as its corner stone, the same history is
repeating itself. The political right of the individ-
ual is firmly enough established, but the tendency to
centralization cannot be resisted. Political parties
have arisen, and these parties have, little by little,
swallowed up the independent political power of the
voter. In its century and a quarter of history there
has arisen by comparatively rapid steps a condition
of things in which the few rule the many almost as
truly as under a system of monarchy. In this case,
however, the ruler is not hereditary, and is subject to
change; but those who control the political parties
hold the people unconsciously in obedience. The
voter thinks he is voting independently, but he is
absolutely obliged, if he votes at all, to vote for many
things he does not approve. In most recent times
still, a different phase of centralization is appearing
as a result of industrial centralization and labor
unions. The primitive right of the individual to
work where he pleases has disappeared under our
industrial system almost as completely as it did
under feudalism. The industrial corporations regu-
late when the man shall work and industrial com-
munities regulate how a man shall live. The indus-
trial corporations of recent years, called trusts, have
obtained a control over the lives of the people as
absolute as that possessed by the monarch of the
European nation over his subjects. It is doubtful
whether among the Euro])ean nations any monarch
in any age possessed the power which is held to-
day by some of our gigantic industrial corporations.
On the other side, the laborers are organizing labor
unions which are none the less autocratic, and com-

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 195

monly less wise in their actions. Under the guise of
organization for the benefit of the individual, his lib-
erty is taken away from him, and the member of the
labor union to-day is anything but a free man ; he is
almost as much of a slave as the serf of feudal days.
He must work or be idle, according to the dictates of
a few irresponsible leaders of the central organiza-
tion. Thus, even in the country that was founded
upon the individual, the irresistible force of organi-
zation and centralization is rapidly obliterating indi-
vidual freedom.

Centralization Not Opposed to Individual Value

The history of civilization has been a constant see-
saw between the rights and demands of man as man,
and the powers of some central authority. We can-
not understand civilization without understanding
that here are two gigantic, opposing forces. One is
the persistent demand of the individual, and the other
the irresistible force of concentration. Civilization
could not have developed unless the individual had
been advanced, nor could it have developed unless
centralization had made possible a constantly widen-
ing organization. A race of slaves could never have
developed civilization, nor could a lot of isolated
geniuses. Throughout history these two forces have
been in constant conflict, and if either had won a
permanent victory, civilization would not have re-
sulted. The triumph of individualism would have
been barbarism; the triumph of centralization would
have been stagnation; the contest of the tivo has pro-
duced civilisation.

But, after all, centralization and individualism are
not necessarily opposed. It is true that centraliza-

196 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL. EVOLUTION

tion is opposed to individual independence, but it is
not opposed to the second phase of individualism,
that is, the individual's welfare. This becomes clear
when we compare the condition of the man of to-day
with that of earlier centuries. Greater nations exist
to-day than ever before. Society is more highly
organized, and more centralized at the beginning of
the twentieth century than at any previous era in
human history. But it is equally true that the indi-
vidual stands on a higher plane than ever before in
the history of the world. The man has greater rights,
greater comforts, greater luxuries, and his life has
a larger value than ever before in history. Greater
independence he does not have, but his independence
is replaced by greater worth. A high state of organ-
ization is absolutely necessary for the development
of the highest value of the man. Absolute freedom is
incompatible with the highest good of the individual.
The individual and society are benefited, each by
the development of the other. On the one hand, it is
impossible that there should be a highly organized
society composed of men who have not themselves
reached a high stage of mental development. Among
low races an organized society is impossible. Sav-
ages cannot hold together to form any sort of society,
nor can centralization alone make civilization. The
Aryan race has become the dominant race in civil-
ization, not because it had the strongest tendency
to centralization, for the contrary was the fact. The
fundamental reason for Aryan civilization is that
their communal system first developed the man, and
when, in recent centuries, centralization made its way
into this race, there could arise a society of highly
developed individuals. The height of civilization of

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 197

any society is, then, dependent both upon its organ-
ization and upon the units of which it is composed.

On the other hand, the individual benefits equally
from the organization. The man of the twentieth
century possesses a vastly larger share of good
things than the man of any previous century. Civ-
ilization has placed in his hands a power which he
could not have possessed as an independent indi^ad-
ual. Even the poorest classes to-day have a greater
amount of comforts than did the well-to-do in the
earlier ages. The very lowest classes, the ignorant,
are still pressed by want. This has always been the
case and perhaps always will be. But the next higher
stratum of society has advantages never dreamed of
in earlier centuries, and these advantages have come
from civilization. Organization has raised the plane
upon which the mass of the people stand. While
society benefits by the advance of the individual, the
individual benefits even more from the advance of
society. The individual has always suffered more
from disintegration than from centralization.
Clearlv, there is no inconsistency between the ad-
vance of man as man, and the advance of society,
even though the two forces are constantly opposed to
each other.

Although the central authority has been constantly
increasing its power, it has done so only by changing
its nature and by giving more and more attention to
the interests of the individual man. Slowly but
surely has appeared the conception that the object of
government is the benefit of the people, and this con-
ception has resulted in an almost complete change in
the aim of government and law. Under centraliza-
tion in the crude form of the early centuries the gov-

198 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ernment existed for itself and the benefit of the few
who governed. The people existed for the benefit of
the rulers. But gradually there has come about the
idea that the government exists for the people, and in
all advanced nations of to-day this idea overshadows
all else. With but few exceptions modern civilized
governments are, ostensibly at least, founded upon
the recognition of the fact that the object of the gov-
ernment is neither for glory nor conquest, nor simply
for defense, but to produce a condition of things in
which the individual has the best opportunity and the
highest welfare. Laws are made now for the benefit
of the people, and not simply the rulers. It has
become very clear that those nations are to dominate
civilization in the future that place before all men
equal opportunities for welfare and happiness. The
condition of civilization has become such that it is no
longer possible for one man to think of class interests
alone. If we forget our neighbor, then the taxgath-
erer discovers us and compels us to care for him at
greater cost. The government that forgets the wel-
fare of its subjects in time finds its foundations
thrown down by revolution. Running through the
whole of modern society is this principle, that the
individual is to be protected and cared for, that his
interests are to be so guarded as to give him the
greatest opportunity for welfare, and it is for this
purpose that most laws are placed on the statute
books.

How is the parallel advance of two such opposing
forces reconciled? Clearly by compromise. It is cer-
tain that centralization does take away the freedom
of the individual to follow his own caprice, since such
absolute freedom is possible only to the man living

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 199

alone iu nature. But his freedom of opportunity in-
creases with society. Organization furnishes him
with a vastly wider range of possibilities. The
hermit, it is true, can follow his caprice, but there are
very few things that he can do. The member of the
civilized community cannot follow every caprice,
but he has far greater possibilities than the hermit
with his absolute freedom. In the society he is
still free to follow his own will, provided this will
be in accordance with certain rules which have been
determined as best for the mutual advantage of all.
These rules are generally made by the central author-
ity, frequently by the despot for his own purpose;
but as man is gaining political power he makes rules
for his own government. With organization, then,
his freedom of following caprice is lost, but his
freedom of opportunity is immensely increased.

Society Offers Opportunity in the Place of License. —
Thus, while the individual's independence has dis-
appeared, his welfare has advanced, and, though cen-
tralization has been constantly increasing, it is less
and less at the expense of the interests of the individ-
ual. This has been the history of the past few cen-
turies and is to-day seen in every political move. It
has been seen in the destruction of older absolute
monarchies and equally well in the building of new
monarchies out of the fragments of the old. Both
have been, ostensibly at least, for the masses. We
see it in all political moves which endeavor to estab-
lish democracy. We see it again in the attempts to
debase the currency by paper or free silver. All
these, and hosts of other political moves, have as an
underlying principle the feeling that the individual is
suffering at the expense of the favored few, and each

200 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

political doctrine is advocated as a means of putting
all men more upon the par of equal opportunity.
This feeling lies at the base of modern Socialism,
which tries to institute a system of government
which shall be compelled to care for the welfare
of each individual. In all the seething and turmoil
of to-day we see this principle ever coming up
afresh. Underlying all political agitation of the
present time is the feeling that the interests of the
individual are suffering because of centralization,
and everywhere the individual is demanding that
legislation should be devised which shall produce a
condition of things in which all will have an equal
opportunity, an equality which shall be actual and
not merely political fiction. The goal toward which
society is tending is to furnish equal opportunities
for all.

There is, thus, no contradiction in the advance of
both centralization and individualism. Each devel-
ops to a higher and higher grade as the centuries
pass. It has been the special significance of modern
history, particularly since the Reformation, to
reconcile the advanced value of the individual with
the increasing organization of society. Each century
sees greater centralization and each century sees the
value of the individual raised higher. In the life of
the primitive savage each individual was almost com-
pletely independent and free. With the development
of the family and society he became successively sub-
ordinated to the commands of some central author-
ity— a chieftain, a prince, a king, an emperor, or a
church. Centralization, as it advanced, changed the
individual more and more completely, until his loss
of independence was entire. Then began a period of

of
oror

THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 201

enlightenment which slowly changed the condition
of things. The individual has not been made free
again, like his primitive savage ancestor, but he has
been given in return for his lost freedom that which
is much better — the accrued advantages of civiliza-
tion. Civilization has presented him, in the place of
freedom, a vastly larger life and greater powers.
Just as fast as these two contradictory principles
develop side by side, just so fast, and no faster, does
civilization progress.

Here is one of the most distinctive contrasts be-
tween man and the lower animals. Through the his-
tory of man we can see an increasing centralization
and an increasing value placed upon the individual.
Among animals, while there are some traces of cen-
tralization, the individual never counts for anything.
Each has what he can personally seize and hold, but
there is nothing in animal organizations that pro-
tects the welfare of individuals. With mankind the
mighty bulwark of society has grown up around the
individual, both protecting him and giving him won-
derful advantages, which he never could have pos-
sessed without society, but which force him, in return,
to sacrifice some of his independence. It forbids his
acting wholly from caprice, but in return furnishes
him an opportunity to use the wonderful forces of
civilization.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Having thus obtained an outline picture of the
course of social evolution, we are prepared to con-
sider the more fundamental question of the nature
of the forces that have been concerned in the process.
Since human social evolution has been so sharply-
contrasted with the evolution of animals, we may
naturally expect that the principles concerned may
be quite different. In the pursuit of this question
we may best develop the matter by the consideration
of two general topics: 1. What phases of human
attributes have been responsible for this peculiar
development of society? 2. What general laws of
nature have directed and controlled this evolution ?

Human Evolution Has Been Mental Rather than

Physical

In trying to determine upon what phase of human
nature his evolution has been founded we must first
make a further contrast between the development
of man and that of other animals. If we try to
remove ourselves from the scene of action and take
a view in perspective, we find the contrast a most
extraordinary one. In regard to any other animal
the history of the species appears merely an incident
in the history of organic evolution. Species have ap-
peared, developed for a little, obtained a temporary
prominence and perhaps a local mastery over rivals,
distributed themselves more or less over the earth's
surface, and then vanished. No species of animal
seems to be anything more than an incident in the

202

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 203

history of the world. But with man we seem to have
something radically different. He has distributed
himself not over a narrow region but over the whole
earth. He has become dominant not only over inan-
imate but over animate nature as well. He must be
looked upon as more than an incident. Other species
appear and disappear, leaving no permanent trace,
but man is changing the whole face of the globe. He
is learning to control all nature, and he has gained
such mastery over all conditions of life on the earth,
that he promises soon to leave in existence only such
creatures as he may choose to protect. Other species
of animals have fought a petty battle with rivals;
man has dominated all nature. This wonderful dif-
ference between the influence of man and all other
races of animals has inclined some students to put
man in a kingdom by himself. When judged by flesh
and bone man is certainly a primate, but when judged
by achievement, he cannot be classed with animals
at all.

Recognizing this extraordinary contrast, we must
ask, What is the distinctive character of man upon
which this great contrast has been based? The char-
acter which we are after is clearly not physical. It
is true that mankind has certain advantages over
animals in some physical attributes, chiefly the effi-
ciency of his hands. But this is certainly not the
explanation of human evolution. His physical power
is weaker than that of his near allies. His offensive
and defensive weapons are less efficient than theirs.

The Intellectual and Instinctive Natures of Man

It must follow, then, that the distinction of which
we are in search lies along the lines of man's mental

204 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

attributes. But this does not answer our question,
for there are two very distinct classes of mental attri-
butes. These two classes we are accustomed to call
the intellectual and the instinctive. Although both
of these classes of actions are fundamental!}'- mental,
the more they are studied the more sharply do they
stand in contrast with each other. The one leads to
actions on the part of the individual, with a definite
purpose in mind. When man acts from intelligence
he recognizes the end he has in view, recognizes the
relation of the means to that end, and directs his
action from the beginning with the distinct purpose
of accomplishing definite results. Intellect acts
slowly, and comes into force little by little as the
man learns by education and experience. This is a
distinctive attribute of man, although perhaps he
shares it with the higher animals to a slight extent.
But the instinctive nature is widely different. An
instinctive act is the result of impulse and not argu-
ment. Most prominent among these instinctive acts,
for our purpose, stands the ethical nature. By this
it is not meant to imply that the moral sense is simply
an instinct, but only that its acts are of the nature of
impulse rather than reason. When man acts in ac-
cordance with his moral sense he acts without debate,
and follows what we are in the habit of calling
impulse. This does not mean that his conscience acts
without reason, but simply that the force that impels
him to do right is instinctive and not logical. He
feels that he must follow certain lines of action
because they are right, and this feeling impels hun
to act, wholly independent of arguments which may
be brought up as to the results of his action. Nay,
more ; this impulse rules him against his own argu-

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 205

inents, and impels him to do what he feels is right,
even though his intelligence tells him that the result
of the action will be disastrous to himself. This feel-
ing of oughtness is not equally strong in all men.
With some it is very slight. But a certain amount of
it is found in all normal individuals, and when found
it always urges action upon certain lines, irrespec-
tive of argument. The two phases of mental action,
intellect and the moral sense, are then in the sharpest
contrast with each other. The one is based on reason,
while the other overrides reason, although it may
contain an intellectual factor. The one is calculating
and slow, the other impulsive and quick. The one is
certainly based upon social heredity, the other is the
result of organic inheritance. In making this last
statement we must clearly recognize that it is only
the primary impulses of ethics that are thus based
upon organic inheritance and not the educated con-
science. The latter, which really represents the ethi-
cal nature of adult man, is largely a matter of the
action of the environment upon him. But the funda-
mental impulses which underlie ethics are inherent
and thus due to organic inheritance.

Since then there are two radically different types
of mental action the question for us next to consider
is, "Which of the two types has laid the foundation
of the evolution of society and which has built upon
that foundation the superstructure which we call civ-
ilization! Has social evolution been intellectual or
ethical?

Of course no doubt can be raised that both phases
of mental activity have contributed toward human
evolution. The intellectual side of man has been at
work in legislation, in the formulation of laws, in the

206 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

development of customs, arts, and industries, with-
out whicli modern civilization would have been im-
possible. On the other hand, the ethical nature in-
volves the whole series of religious beliefs, and these,
manifestly, have been gigantic factors in the evolu-
tion of civilization. It is, however, a matter of im-
portance to determine which has been fundamental.
If it should prove that civilization had been based
upon intelligence, then, clearly enough, the proper
course for man to adopt, either for the purpose of
advancing civilization, or of remedying its ills, would
be to adopt every means for developing the intellec-
tual side of nature. Education would then be the
requisite for the future. If, on the other hand, it
should appear that civilization is dependent upon
ethics, then the development of the future would
surely be dependent upon conscience, and our hope in
the future would lie, not in education, but morality ;
not in schools alone, but in churches. The question is
a fundamental one and certainly worthy of the clos-
est attention.

To answer this question, we inquire first as to the
foundation of the immense power in the hands of
twentieth-century man. What difference between
civilized man and the savage explains the mighty con-
trast between them? The answer to this question is,
clearly, Organization. Without organization civil-
ization had been impossible. The truth of this con-
clusion is evident enough if we compare the power
that is in the hand of a savage chieftain with that
which is in the hand of the emperor of a modern
nation. Even though the intellectual power of the
two be exactly the same, the actual power of the one
is vastly superior to the other. Organization is the

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 207

foundation of civilization, and if we search for the
controlling principle of evolution, we must ask what
it is that has made it possible for him, century after
century, to advance into higher stages of organiza-
tion.

The Foundation of Organization

The growth of nations has been the result of a
struggle between two opposite tendencies. It is no
more evident that there has been a tendency for sepa-
rate groups of men to unite than it is that there has
been a corresponding tendency for the groups thus
formed to break to pieces again. To understand
social evolution we must ask why men unite and
why the combinations so universally show a tendency
to break to pieces. This search immediately resolves
itself into two other questions : 1. What are the forces
which bring about increasing centralization and
organization? 2. "What are the forces that hold these
organizations together and whose absence results in
disintegration? These two forces, as we shall find,
are radically different, for the influences which bring
men into organizations and the forces which hold
them in lasting compact are by no means the same.

Forces Which Produce Union — The forces which pro-
duce a tendency toward organization are so apparent
as to need only the briefest notice. At the outset it
is certain that the social instinct of man must have
been an important impetus toward union. Mankind,
as well as other animals, shows a pleasure in the com-
pany of other beings of the same species, and this
social instinct very likely lay at the foundation of
the first combinations of men into families and small
groups of families. But other factors even more

208 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

forceful have, even in early time, played an impor-
tant part. The necessity for protection against en-
emies, either wild animals or men, has undoubtedly
been a great factor in the building of early organiza-
tions. To what extent this has been a conscious
factor need not now concern us ; but its influence has
sometimes been even greater than that of the
struggle for individual existence. Again, the great
advantage that men acquire in obtaining food by
being combined in companies, contributed to the
formation of early organizations. The individual
man has a greater difficultj^ in caj^turing wild animals
and obtaining food from nature than does a combina-
tion of men united for the common jDuri^ose. A de-
sire for conquest was a factor of no less significance.
The war spirit seems inbred in human nature, and, so
far as we can judge from the evidence, war has
always been a prominent factor in human action,
more prominent, even, in the lives of primitive man
than in recent years. In the warfare of man with
man greater conquests are always possible for bodies
of men than for individuals, and this war spirit and
war habit, universal among low races, was perhaps
the most potent force of all in producing organiza-
tion. Organization for war purposes inevitably pro-
duced the chieftain, and with the chieftain came the
desire for military glory, for power, and for riches.
The chieftain and his aids would always obtain a
greater share of the spoils of war, and, since the
desire for riches and power is an appetite which
grows with exercise, it becomes more and more
potent with every increment. Personal ambition is,
then, a most potent factor in producing centraliza-
tion and organization.

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 209

All through history the story is the same. The
stimuli which have led most powerfully toward cen-
tralization must be regarded, in general, as selfish
desires. Greed has been the potent influence. This
has elevated the leaders of men above their fellows,
and has also clustered the people around the leaders,
inclining or forcing them to yield to their authority.
The desire for personal glory and power has built
tribes out of families, kingdoms out of tribes, and
nations out of kingdoms. Nations have almost
always been built by war. Persian and Assyrian
nations were founded upon war, as well as other
ancient nations. The warfares inaugurated by the
Crusades started the tendency toward union which
began in the Middle Ages and out of which our
modern nations emerged. Warfare against foreign
enemies has always been a stimulus to bring about
closer unions. Instances of this sort are so familiar
to all students of history as to require no further
illustration. Universal peace has commonly meant
stagnation. Organization in general has sprung
from that class of motives included under the terms
selfishness, egoism, greed, love of glory, ambition,
etc. They are all among the lower classes of motives
influencing human action. But they are powerful
motives nevertheless, and have been the primary
forces producing centralization of authority in the
hands of a few individuals.

The Forces Which Produce Disintegration. — Organiza-
tions fall as well as rise. Centralization of power
has ever been followed by decentralization. How
striking it is to see the ease with which compact
Rome overcame the many enemies which surrounded
her on all sides ! But more curious still is the fact

210 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

that these enemies allowed themselves, one after the
other, to be overcome without making any apparent
effort to form organizations which would enable
them to make a front against a common foe. The
suicidal tendency toward splitting into small sections
was the ruin of the peoples with whom Rome fought,
and unity was her force against them. The reason
for all this was that the enemies of Rome were
absolutely incapable of forming any unions which
could hold together long enough to oppose victorious
Rome. The Indians of North America formed many
a coalition against the white invaders, and these
coalitions were sometimes wide in extent and force.
But while the Indians were able to combine, and felt
the necessity for combining, they could not hold to-
gether; for no sooner did such combinations appear
than they broke to pieces again. If they had
remained intact and presented a united front against
the few white invaders, the results of the European
invasion would have been different. But to hold
together was a simple impossibility among them, and,
breaking to pieces, they disappeared before small
but compact force of the invaders. What was it that
enabled Rome to make such headway and rendered
it impossible for her enemies to combine against
her *? What was it, a few centuries later, which made
it possible for the new nations to arise out of the
disjointed fragments of European peoples? What
gave the few white men their victory against the
hosts of North American Indians 1

We have already sufficiently indicated where we
must look for the disintegrating forces of society.
They are to be found in what we have called individ-
ualism. As the powers of central authority have

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 211

grown, the governed people have become restive and
finally thrown off the yoke of the central authority.
We need not dwell further upon this which is so
apparent in all history. But one of the most signifi-
cant features of the development of society is the
fact that these disintegrating forces have been con-
stantly diminishing as civilization has been advanc-
ing. The gradual diminution of this disintegrating
force is shown by the increasing size of organizations.
Among low savage races it is rare to find more than
forty individuals remaining together. They have
hardly any adhesive power. The barbaric races are
on a higher plane of civilization and have a corre-
spondingly higher power of adhesion. Among them
we find tribes of men ranging as high as half a mil-
lion in numbers. With the civilized races this ad-
hesive power is vastly stronger. Among them mil-
lions upon millions of men succeed in remaining in
more or less close compacts, to form the modern
nations. Evidently, the forces which bind these
great organizations together are more potent than
they are among savages.

But the forces which lead to organization are not
more potent in the one case than in the other. Sav-
ages are constantly combining for purposes of com-
mon advantage, but they are just as constantly dis-
integrating under the influence of other forces.
Among civilized races the tendency to combination is
no more universal, but the tendency toward disinte-
gration is lessened. The really significant question
is, therefore, not what makes centralization, but what
holds combinations together. What is it that enables
the millions of our modern nations to remain in
union, but the absence of which makes it an impossi-

212 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

bility for savage tribes to unite in combinatious
which include more than a few hundred individuals ?
What is the cement that holds nations together and
prevents disintegration?

Society Not Founded upon Intelligence

The force which preserves organization is not the
same force that produces organization. Savages
have a love for glory and power equal to that of the
members of the great nations. The necessity for
combination is with them even greater than it is
among civilized races. The whole series of selfish
stimuli which produce organization for offense or
defense are even more active among savage and bar-
baric nations than they are among civilized races.
But the savages simply cannot hold together, no
matter how many unions they try to effect. To a
savage it is a matter of amazement that a great
nation, composed of numbers that his mind cannot
calculate, is able to remain united under the rule of
one person or of one central power. Such a thing
is an impossibility in his conditions of life, and he
is unable to comprehend the conditions that control
the growth of the great nations.

Further, the force that holds organization together
is not intelligence. Of course it is not for a moment
questioned that intelligence is a factor, and a mighty
factor, in producing the great nations. Great nations
are certainly impossible except where intelligence is
highly developed. But intelligence is not the pri-
mary factor that binds the nations and makes com-
pact unions possible. Looking at the rise and fall of
nations in history, we find that this has taken place
almost independently of intelligence. Sometimes it

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 213

has been the intellectual nation that has overcome the
one with less intelligence; but just as often it has
been the nation with the less intelligence that has
overcome her more intellectual foe. When the Per-
sians became masters of Egypt it was an intellectual
nation yielding to one less intelligent, for the intelli-
gence of the people of the Nile certainly surpassed
that of their Persian conquerors. But presently the
history was reversed. Of all the nations of early
times none surpassed the G-reeks in intelligence.
This race quickly overcame the Persians, giving us
an instance of the intellectual nation conquering one
less intelligent. But presently Greece herself yielded
to the cohorts of Eome, a nation which was clearly
her inferior in intelligence. Even the Romans them-
selves recognized this inferiority, and soon the vic-
torious Romans learned to depend upon Greece for
their masters in education, art, and literature, and
always recognized the superiority of Greece in these
respects. A few centuries later this same Rome,
that had by that time become the one intellectual race
of the world, was overcome by the barbaric races of
the north, among whom hardly the rudiments of
intelligence had appeared, and education was un-
known. That it is not the intelligent races that win
is illustrated by examples in abundance. The cul-
tured, wealthy Byzantine nation failed to be a force
compared to the crude Teutons. The brilliant and
intellectual Spanish nation yielded to the rough,
almost uneducated inhabitants of the Netherlands.
Even in more recent times it is no less evident that
the intelligence of the race does not give it a domi-
nating influence. The Latin peoples of Europe have
always been the intellectual races, compared with

214 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the slower Teutonic races. These Latin races have
to-day lost none of their intelligence, none of their
quickness or keenness, and none of their mental
power; but they have lost their control of the des-
tinies of Europe, which have been assumed by races
in which the intelligence certainly has not, in the
past, been upon an equality with that of the Latin
races.

All of these facts show clearly enough that we
must look for something besides intelligence if we
are to find the adhesive power that holds people
together and makes the victorious nation. In fact,
too much education has a tendency toward disinte-
gration rather than organization. With high grades
of intelligence, each individual is apt to come to
place his own interests too highly, lose his willing-
ness to sacrifice his own pleasures or his own rights
for the advantage of others, and especially for the
advantage of his nation. Among the highly intelli-
gent there is frequently a diminution of that feeling
of patriotism, of love for the king or a country that
is needed to make a strong nation. The intellectual
classes are not the quickest to recruit the armies.
Clearly enough, then, we must conclude that the
force that makes the nation and holds organizations
together is not intelligence. Again we are forced to
ask, "What is this force 1

We must now notice again that impulses to action
are twofold. Sometimes, indeed, we speak of man as
a combination of two distinct beings. The first is the
being of habit, of routine, or of instinct. Many of
our actions are controlled largely by a class of im-
pulses which we speak of as instinctive. Some of
these actions are inherited, like the sucking of the

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 215

infant, and thus truly instinctive. In otlier cases
they are simply methods of action adopted by the
individual and followed so long that they actually
become part of his mental machinery. These, though
not inherited, are, like instincts, due to the structure
of the nerve machine. Such modifications of nerve
structures arise in the individual who follows, dur-
ing his life, certain definite types of action. The
presence of such machinery enables man to act
quickly, without the necessity of any decision. The
involuntary and even unconscious winking when a
particle of dust enters the eye is an example of this
class of actions. The other side of human action we
call the initiative, and is controlled by intelligence.
The individual reasons out a line of action and com-
monly adopts it. With each action he puts himself
on new ground, and the line of action which he fol-
lows in the future is not necessarily the same as he
has followed in the past under similar circumstances,
but is what his intelligence points out to him as best
at the time. This initiative side of action enables
man to adapt himself to new conditions. But its
action is slow and can rarely be depended upon to
enable one to make a quick decision in an emergency.
Nevertheless, it is upon this initiative side of our
nature that we especially pride ourselves. It is here
that we find one of the sharpest distinctions between
man and animals. Man is largely controlled by
the initiative side of his nature, animals almost
wholly by the instinctive side. Among animals the
initiative side of the nature is only slightly devel-
oped. An ant or a bee in a colony shows no power
of initiative action, but simply follows the instinc-
tive impulses which it inherits. A newborn chicken

216 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

does many wonderful things when first appearing in
the world, but all chicks do the same thing under the
same circumstances. With man the initiative phase
of action becomes far more prominent and assumes a
larger control over action.

Nevertheless, though provided with great initia-
tive powers, man too is largely ruled by the
instinctive side of his mental nature. In his early
infancy, of course, it is this side of his nature alone
that controls his actions. It requires years of slow
teaching of experience before we begin to see in the
human child even the glimmerings of the higher side
of his nature. Very slowly does he free himself from
the routine and instinctive phase of action. Even in
his adult life the routine rather than the initiative
side takes precedence in ordinary life. Our daily
actions have become such a part of ourselves that
they are pure routine. After patiently learning
to form letters with a pen, at great labor to ourselves,
we finally train our nerves and muscles to this task,
until our writing becomes a matter of routine. We
no longer think of the movements of the fingers,
rarely indeed, of the letters which form the words.
This impulsive or routine side of nature not infre-
quently overrides reason. A soldier leads a forlorn
hope, recognizing that it is to be at the expense of
his life. The man who sits down to reason it out will
let another go in his place. Two men break down in
health, one from overwork, the other from dissipa-
tion. Eeason tells us that both are equally to blame.
But our impulses tell us the contrary, and, while we
blame the one in unmeasured terms, we commiserate
the other, or perhaps even commend him. Thus, in
the human race, as well as in animals, it is the

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 217

instinctive side of the nature which frequently con-
trols our actions. After our habits are once formed
we follow them unthinkingly for the rest of our lives.

Civilization" Founded upon Instinct

It is evident that man has not reasoned himself
into civilization. He has simply drifted, sometimes
forward and sometimes backward. Sometimes the
race drifts backward in spite of the strenuous efforts
made by the intelligent individuals to keep it pro-
gressing. It is instructive to see how clearly the
Romans in the days of the later empire understood
whither they were drifting, and how well they knew
they were going down to destruction. But intelli-
gence, combined with such laws as legislation could
devise, could not check the tide. The French nation
of to-day, as it reads its own statistics and notices
its decreasing birth rate, clearly understands that
it is in a similar position, and is making strenuous
efforts by legislation to stem the current which is
leading it downward. That it will succeed is at least
doubtful, for such great currents of progress have
never yet been stopped by legislation. The other
European, as well as the American people of to-day,
are recognizing a similar problem.

Equally true is it that man has not reasoned him-
self into advance. Nothing is more certain than that
the force that urged man toward organization has
not been the conception that such organization raised
him to a higher plane. He has been stimulated to
combine with his fellow man by various influences,
but an intelligent comprehension that combination
produces an advance in civilization has not been one
of them. It is impulse of one kind or another that

218 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

has produced organizatiou. It is easy to rule a man
by impulse, but very difificult to rule him by reason.
It is easy to appeal to his emotions and get him to
perform any action we may choose, but to get him to
follow a line by appealing to his intelligence is a
very difificult task. The general actions of the race
are not controlled by intelligence, but by emotions
and instincts. In all crises the action of the race is
mob action. A mob frequently acts diametrically
opposite to the course which the wisdom of each
individual would tell him to follow, for it is never
controlled by logic, although it may be controlled by
enthusiasm. If a leader can take hold of the emo-
tions of a mob, he can lead it where he will; not
infrequently the whole action of a mob may be
changed by raising a laugh. Certainly, logic plays
no part at such a time, while emotion and enthusiasm
are supreme.

Most crises in history have been controlled by
impulse. The leader may try to rule, but unless he
can get hold of the emotions of the people he is
powerless to produce great events. Among prim-
itive people the individual yields to the chieftain, not
from a sense of logic, but because of an impulse
that tells him to obey his leader. If we ask what, in
the last few centuries, has led to the heroism of the
soldier and the great conquests which have changed
the facts of history, we find it was commonly love for
the king, or that unintelligible something called loy-
alty. The obedience which the soldier gives to his
officers is the result of impulse, not intelligence. He
has been drilled and drilled until his whole nervous
mechanism is so molded that it will respond to a com-
mand just as would a machine. It is this machinery

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 219

that urges him to obey a command, even at the price
of certain death. Even in our modern, free countries
the citizen is controlled more by impulse than reason.
He thinks he votes intelligently ; but no one can fail
to recognize that the vast majority of people vote
for a certain party simply because their parents
voted for it, or because some leader, who has won
their admiration, tells them to do so. Most of us
follow blindly the custom of those around us. We
shut our eyes to logic and act from instincts and
emotion.

Rome conquered her enemies because her soldiers
acted together. Her enemies lost because they were
unable to hold together; but this inability did not
come from any lack of intelligence. Highly intelli-
gent Greece perfectly understood the necessity for
unity of action. As nations have disintegrated one
after the other, it has not been from any lack of
appreciation of the results of disintegration, but
because of the inability to hold together. After the
complete disintegration of the European peoples
which followed the inroads of the barbarians into
Italy, there was, for a short time, no centralizing
force. But soon the tendency to centralization ap-
peared again, as the Roman Church, little by little,
gained control over the barbarians of the north.
This power stretched its influence over tribe after
tribe until it had underneath its sway all the races
of Europe. But the church thus gained its influence
through its appeal, not to their intelligence, but to
their emotions. It was the religious instincts of men,
their feeling of the mysterious, their purely emo-
tional nature, that enabled the papacy to gain con-
trol over Europe so completely that at its bidding

220 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the people would give up their allegiance to their
king. How evident it is that emotion caused that new
series of events which produced the crusades and
resulted in the modern nations! The wild enthusi-
asm excited by Peter the Hermit drew hundreds of
thousands into a hopeless cause, which the slightest
reasoning power would have shown to be suicidal.
But these emotions changed the face of Europe and
founded the modern nations. The French Eevolu-
tion was a most extraordinary burst of emotion ; and
it was, again, another kind of enthusiasm which gave
to Napoleon his control over the lives of his soldiers
and thus over the history of Europe. Even in these
modern days the same is true, for every war must
start with an appeal to the impulses of the people.
The intelligence of the leaders may bring about a
condition of things demanding redress; but unless
the emotions of the masses are aroused, the conduct
of a war is impossible. Slavery could be argued
indefinitely, but a war which ended it in the United
States was possible only when emotions were excited
by Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the feeling of patriotism
had been aroused by the firing on the flag. Masses
of men are ruled through their emotions and
instincts. It was the intensity of the emotions of the
masses in behalf of the Cubans that made the
Spanish-American War possible, whatever might
have been the logic of the leaders. Arguments could
never have produced the results had not the narra-
tion of the events kindled the emotions of the people.
The English people were not ready for a South
African war so long as the matter was treated by
argument ; but as soon as the South African Republic
declared war against them, the nation arose almost

FUNDAMENTAL FORCES IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION 221

to a man. They forgot the justice or injustice of the
case and were simply controlled by love for country.
It must not be inferred, however, that intelligence
has played no part in the development of civiliza-
tion. Nothing could be more absurd than such a
claim, for intelligence has ever been a most potent
factor. It has constantly aided in determining the
direction in which the emotions are turned. Even
the emotions of the mob are determined in consider-
able measure by intelligence. A mob in an educated
nation will behave differently from a mob of savages,
and their intelligence formulates the impulses of the
masses. It trains the minds of individuals, and indi-
vidual training is a primary factor in determining
the direction in which emotions tend. Intelligence
likewise makes laws and creates conditions — two im-
portant factors in guiding emotions. Reason, when
highly developed in an individual, may be paramount
in its power. Intelligence may be supreme in tell-
ing the standard-bearer where to place his standard,
although it is emotion which brings the army flock-
ing around the standard. While ethics is based upon
emotion rather than reason, it is clear that, were it
not for the influence of intelligence, the ethical nature
could not have advanced. It is intelligence that
shows to one person the evils of slavery and enables
him so to work upon the emotions of the masses as to
arouse a concerted action which will crush the evil.
It is reason that shows the general how he can suc-
cessfully use the force which the allegiance of his
army puts in his hands. It is intelligence that en-
ables the one individual to see what it is that the
working class should demand from their employers,
and that enables him to make himself a leader in

222 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

demanding reform. But it is unthinking enthusiasm
which binds the masses together, filling them with
blind confidence in their leader, and a willingness to
follow him in every turn. Intelligence formulates
legislation, but legislation is powerless unless backed
by popular support. Legislation follows public opin-
ion, rarely leads it, and is helpless in the face of
national impulses. Nations are led by their feelings,
not their intellects. Indeed, too often laws check
instead of lead in national progress. The law pro-
tected the slave, and to-day protects many a criminal.
Advance has demanded and still demands the over-
riding of the law by the force of public feeling. Laws
and legislation are the results, not the causes of evo-
lution. Parliaments do not make social conditions,
but these make the Parliaments.

Most certainly intelligence has been a necessary
factor in the advance of civilization, so necessary
indeed that it may be a mistake to place it secondary.
But while reason may point out the best direction for
advance, it is by appealing to the instinctive side of
human nature that mankind in general is influenced
to follow the direction pointed out. Every page of
history tells us of crimes determined by impulse;
every page tells us that while intelligence guides
civilization it does so by gaining control of the emo-
tions of the masses. History has been more under
the immediate domination of the instinctive than the
intellectual nature. Civilization has been brought to
its successively higher stages through instinct. But
since there are two fundamental instincts in man,
the egoistic and the altruistic, we are brought next
to the question as to which of these two has produced
the development of civilization.

CHAPTER IX
EOOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE

Egoism ob Altruism?

Recognizing that civilization has been founded
upon instinct, using that term in a broad sense, our
next question is to determine what kind of instincts
have been concerned. There are two quite contra-
dictory classes of instincts actuating mankind, the
egoistic and the altruistic. The first of the two runs
through living nature and is found among all ani-
mals. The second begins among the higher animals
but is chiefly developed in man. The first lies at the
foundation of the far-reaching law of natural selec-
tion. The second, to a certain extent, is opposed to
the law of natural selection. In trying to determine
the guiding forces in social evolution we will first con-
sider man's relation to the law of natural selection
and then the relation of the altruistic impulses to his
evolution.

It has sometimes been said that mankind has freed
itself from the law of natural selection. Man has so
evidently made himself master of inorganic nature,
and has so completely obtained control over his
enemies in the organic world, that the struggle
for existence which presses upon other animals
so severely has been thought not to affect him.
When we remember that the struggle for existence
which rules the animal world is based primarily
upon the fact that more individuals are born than

223

224 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

can possibly find sustenance, it becomes clear that
the question of the struggle for existence as affecting
mankind is entirely different from that question as
affecting other animals. At the present time man-
kind is far from having reached the possible limits of
population. A great part of the surface of the world
which is perfectly able to support millions of human
beings is still unpopulated. Until man has multi-
plied so greatly as to have reached, or nearly
reached, the limit of population that can be supported
on the surface of the earth, he cannot be subject to a
struggle for existence such as that which actuates the
lower animals.

Nevertheless, mankind is by no means freed from
this struggle, nor from the action of the law of nat-
ural selection. It is self-evident that those individ-
uals, those families, and those races that are not fitted
for their environment must either become fitted or
disappear, and mankind as well as animals must yield
to this inevitable law. The problems of human life
are vastly complicated by a great number of arti-
ficial factors if for no other reason. Man alone
has created artificial conditions, and with every suc-
cessive century these conditions undergo a modifica-
tion. The relation of mankind to the struggle for
existence is consequently undergoing constant
change. The problem as it affects the twentieth cen-
tury is a different one from that affecting the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, or even the middle
of the nineteenth century. Comparing the problem
of man's struggle for existence to-day with the same
problem two thousand years ago, we find that the
conditions introduced by the artificial product which
we call society have been so confusing that few facts

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 225

in the present age apply to the condition of man in
earlier times.

The Human Struggle for Existence

Originally, men were much more nearly on an
equality than they are at present. Practically equal
in physical power, with slight variations in mental
ability, and with no possibility for the development
of that power which comes from the artificial organ-
ization of society, primitive men must all have been
practically on the same plane. As such they must
have been engaged in a struggle for existence with
each other and with the lower animals very much
like that which the lower animals have with each
other. But as soon as organization began the indi-
vidual ceased to be the unit toward which the strug-
gle for existence was directed. The individual ceased
to have success independent of his family, and from
this moment selection no longer preserved the best
equipped individual but the best equipped family.
This was true in early history when the family main-
tained itself only by being able to hold its own
against other families — and it is also true in modern
life, amid the inconceivably confusing relations of
our great centers of civilization. Even in modern
society, while the ability of the individual to hold his
own amid his environment is a factor in human
struggle, it is after all only that family that can prop-
erly produce and rear its children that really suc-
ceeds in the struggle for existence. Thus from early
times till to-day the family has been the unit toward
which natural selection has been directed.

In our study of the relation of man to natural
selection, we must bear in mind that this great law

226 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

has relation only to the power of reproduction.
Those animals that are able to produce for posterity
abundant and vigorous offspring are the only ones
''selected" by this law. All secondary successes and
failures — commercial, social, political, financial — '
must be carefully excluded from the problem, and
attention given only to factors that affect man in his
powers to leave offspring. In the struggle to fulfill
this end mankind has had to contend with three dif-
ferent factors.

Struggle with Lower Animals

The first factor is the problem of man's relation
to other animals. The contest of mankind with his
larger foes in nature has all but ceased. In his early
history, when he was first learning to use crude
weapons, we must believe that he carried on a vigor-
ous, prolonged, and perhaps a doubtful struggle with
his animal foes. But that time long since passed.
Long ago he made himself absolute master of all his
noble enemies; so that our very earliest knowledge
of him as man shows him clearly superior to the
whole animal kingdom. His conquest over animals
was complete, and, while it is true that the con-
test still continues incidentally among men living in
contact with wild animals, it is no less true that
throughout the history of mankind the human indi-
vidual is the victor in the test. We can no longer
look upon the struggle with lower animals as form-
ing a factor in the problem of human natural selec-
tion.

With certain of the smaller animals the contest is

not over. AVlien it comes to a competition with

. animals whose strength lies in their great reproduc-

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 227

tive power, it is not always possible even for twen-
tieth century man to prove himself the complete
victor. Insect pests still make their ravages, some-
times almost unhindered by the most strenuous
efforts of man to check them. Some regions of the
world are still uninhabitable because of the abun-
dance of insect pests and everywhere they form the
most serious enemies of the agriculturist. Against
still lower and smaller animal enemies we are even
more helpless. We have just learned that some of our
most serious diseases — malaria, yellow fever, etc. —
are caused by microscopic organisms which are them-
selves distributed by other animals. In these direc-
tions, then, man has still a battle to carry on with the
animal world, and it may be long before it is brought
to a triumphant close.

Struggle with Inanimate Nature

The second phase of man's struggle for existence
is his contest with inanimate nature. Among the
savage races this is excessively severe. Living, as
they do, upon such fruits as they can incidentally
gather, and upon the flesh of such animals as they
are skillful enough to capture, they are many times
brought to actual starvation by lack of food. At
certain seasons of the year fruits fail them and
animal food is not to be found. Food is almost
always scarce among the savage races of man, and
starvation is a mighty factor in their struggle for
life. The scarcity of food produces the endless, rest-
less migrations of the savage tribes, which can rarely
be found for any considerable length of time in one
localitj^ as they are forced inevitably to keep moving
in search of new food supplies. The whole history

228 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

of the savage races has been one of ceaseless migra-
tion from place to place, driven by this eternal force
of starvation. Lack of food has limited the size of
the families. The impossibility of carrying a large
family of children on these migrations, together with
the knowledge that the scarcity of food will produce
suffering if the family grows too large, lies at the
foundation of the destruction of so many helpless
babes. Infanticide is to them a means of self -protec-
tion.

With the development of agricultural habits, how-
ever, man placed himself at once in a different atti-
tude toward this problem of his struggle with nature.
Agriculture has taught him to make his own environ-
ment. He has reversed the condition of life found
among animals and savages. Instead of endeavoring
to adapt himself to the conditions of the world
around him, man now tries to adapt the world to his
own necessities. This complete change in attitude
has made possible both civilization and society.
From the very beginning social progress has been
characterized by a struggle with nature, and by a
successful attempt on the part of man to change the
conditions of inanimate nature in such a way as to
make his own life larger and easier. Agriculture has
enlarged the world very rapidly. A piece of land
large enough to support a single hunter living upon
fruits and captured animals will support a thousand
agriculturists, and agriculture has thus increased the
size of the world at least a thousand times. This
change enables man to live in the same place genera-
tion after generation, with the confidence that the
land in his possession will continue to bring forth
more than a sufficiency of food.

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 229

But agriculture has not entirely freed man from
his struggle against starvation. To-day, as in early
centuries, lack of food is frequently the great stim-
ulus to advance. It has developed the colonizing
habits of those nations that, in the last five hundred
years, have been gradually taking possession of all
the good lands of the earth; for it is not until food
becomes difficult to procure at home that individuals
think of emigrating. Lack of food produced that
outburst of individualism, the French Eevolution.
Indeed, most revolutions, or, at least, most upris-
ings of the masses against their rulers, find their
immediate cause in a lack of sufficient food for the
need of all individuals. Even to-day, with our im-
proved agriculture, we have not entirely freed our-
selves from the struggle for existence with nature.
Every few years a famine in some densely populated
country like India, carries off its millions of victims ;
and the constant rise in the cost of living is a sure
indication that we are still struggling for life with
the conditions of nature. Lack of food holds in check
the process of multiplication, which even in slow-
breeding man is a power so wonderful as to insure,
if unchecked, the crowding of the world in a compar-
atively few years.

Nevertheless, the development of agriculture has
freed us in considerable degree from the struggle for
food which dominates savage tribes. With our pres-
ent knowledge enough food is produced each year for
the support of all the population in the world. In-
stead of having a smaller and smaller amount of
food for each individual, the development of agri-
culture is causing a larger amount to be produced.
Thus far, at least, the supply of food has outrun the

230 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

growth of population. Even at the times of the
great famines that destroy their millions sufficient
food is produced in the fortunate countries to save
the lives of all the famine victims, so that our prob-
lem is no longer the production of food but its distri-
bution.

It is apparent that man has thus become freed to
a large extent from the struggle for existence, so far
as concerns his contests with inanimate nature. But
this is possible only so long as he fails to fill the in-
habitable world. When the limits of population are
reached the conditions will be different. If ever the
time comes when the population of the earth is so
great that it approaches closely the limit of possible
sustenance, then will mankind be brought face to
face with a struggle for existence with nature, such
as must have been the lot of primitive man. Then
will the question as to life be determined by the same
principles as those which determine the life of lower
animals. But until this limit is reached, until the
whole of the habitable earth is covered with a dense
population, as dense as can be sustained by the food
that can be produced, until that time, man is so far
freed from the problem of the struggle for existence
as it relates to inanimate nature, that we may look
upon him as superior to that struggle which has
dominated the development of the savage tribes and
has ruled the evolution of animal nature. The
diminishing birth rate among all higher races makes
it at least doubtful whether population will ever
surpass the possibilities of food production.

Struggle op Man with Man
If we consider it in its wider sense, it is in the

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 231

relations of man witli man that the human struggle
for existence is most severe. Here the contests are
unceasing. Here it is most evident that the law of
the extermination of the unfit is even to-day in con-
stant operation. We may first notice how this law
acts in relation to human races in actual warfare,
and, secondly, how it operates among man in the
friendly relations of modern society.

Extermination by Warfare — The history of mankind
has been one of constant warfare. Among the low
races of men war is always one of extermination,
and such we must believe was the condition existing
among primitive races. In more recent centuries
captives have been held as hostages for a time, and
then generally allowed to return to their own homes.
But in all primitive warfare, as disclosed to us by
history, by archaeology, and by the study of savage
races, defeat was death. The great glory of the
savage is to have put to death as large a number
of his human enemies as possible. This constant
warfare we cannot realize to-day, and it is only as we
read incidents in history, or read the experiences of
travelers in savage lands, that we can get a glimpse
of the condition of men in early times, when eveiy
stranger was a foe, when man's only friends were
those in his own household, when outside he could
expect only enmity and death. At these times, when
life was a constant warfare, natural selection was in
full force.

This constant warring of mankind has brought
about a selection of families, kingdoms, and even
races of men. The weaker individual has yielded his
life to the stronger; the weaker family has disap-
peared before the more successful rival ; the weaker

232 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

kingdom has been absorbed by the stronger. Nations
have absorbed the kingdoms, and whole races of men
have disappeared from the face of the earth when
brought into competition with more successful rivals,
who for some reason were able to make better use of
nature's treasures. The history of the world has
been one of constant extermination of those most
poorly equipped for perpetuation. The victors in
this endless conflict, however, have not been those
best equipped for supporting their own life by obtain-
ing food for themselves and families, but, rather,
those best equipped for producing offspring and
rearing them to maturity.

The factors involved in this process of elimination
have been numerous and complex. It is not possible
to select any one which can be regarded as funda-
mental. Certainly it was not the size of the contend-
ing groups, for gigantic Persia yielded to little
Greece. It was not valor, since the Greeks yielded to
the Romans, and no men of any race have exceeded
the Greeks in valor. The American Indian disap-
peared before the white man, but it is an unques-
tioned fact that the valor, the personal bravery, and
the willingness to sacrifice life, shown by the Amer-
ican Indian, have not been surpassed by any race of
men that ever lived. The white man who conquered
the Indian was not his superior in valor, nor in will-
ingness to sacrifice his life. Nor was it intellect which
determined the victor and the vanquished, since it
was frequently the less intellectual nation that over-
came and eventually exterminated the more intellec-
tual. Nor was it reproductive power. The world is
full of instances of a small, slowly multiplying race
overcoming and taking the place of those that multi-

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 233

ply rapidly. The savage races are vastly superior in
their rapidity of multiplication to the civilized races;
they sometimes produce children at the age of twelve
years, or even younger, and the rapidity of reproduc-
tion found among the savage races is not equaled by
any civilized race in existence. But this enormous
power of reproduction does not enable them to pre-
serve their families or their tribes against the
inroads of the more slowly reproducing civilized
men. It is a combination of all these factors,
together with many others, that has determined the
survival of the individual, the family, or the race.
The one who succeeds in this long struggle for exist-
ence with his fellow man is the one who combines a
series of factors that enables him to overcome his
foes and reproduce himself with sufficient rapidity,
and in rearing offspring that will take his place at
his death.

The most potent factor in this contest has been the
power of concentration, organization, and union.
Where intelligence comes in contact with ignorance,
or great fertility with a less reproductive power, the
victor has always been the united family or race, and
the vanquished has been the one incapable of organ-
ization and union. The savages who have simply
been capable of hanging together in groups of fifty or
one hundred have gradually been driven from all the
good parts of the earth, and either exterminated or
forced to find their way by migration into the poorer
and poorer territories, until they are finally crowded
off into the southern extremities of the continents,
into the almost uninhabited regions of the north, or
on a few of the oceanic islands still left to them.
Inevitably they are doomed to complete extermina-

234 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

tion, for in the future, as in the past, union will over-
come disunion, and these fragments of peoples,
capable of no lasting combinations, capable of no
organizations, will disappear before the advance of
organization.

Change of Eace Characters. — ^While the extermination
of races has been a factor in social evolution, it has
not been the most potent one. More frequently the
result of warfare is to destroy certain types of indi-
viduals and families within the races so as to produce
a profound change in their average nature. The
manner in which this has been brought about may be
illustrated by considering the effect of migrations
upon the Aryan race.

This people was apparently, at the outset, a pas-
toral race of people, who had not acquired the habits
of agriculture. As the result of this kind of life the
natural increase in population brought about an
overpopulation. When such times came the people
were in the habit of starting out in the spring in
great companies, and migrating for the purpose of
finding new homes. Apparently, several of these
great migrating periods occurred in the early history
of the Aryans. In these migrating hordes every man
was a warrior, and, as was naturally to be expected,
each man fought side by side with his own relatives.
The people as they started out, were one race, but
during their journey great changes must have oc-
curred among such hordes of people. In the first
place, only the most vigorous, the most enterprising,
and the most ambitious individuals would start with
the migrating companies, for those who were weaker,
more home-loving, and less ambitious, would remain
behind. This first selection left in the original homes

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 235

the unprogressive portion of the Aryan race, while
the new countries received the more progressive indi-
viduals. But as these migrating armies traveled
farther and farther they met with many difficulties.
The difficulty of obtaining food was constant, and
many an individual succumbed to starvation. As
they wandered through new countries, inhabited by
other peoples, they learned many new customs, and
in this way became acquainted with the principles of
agriculture.

But a more important change was produced in the
character of these migrating people. These migra-
tions lasted many years and always the less vigor-
ous, the less ambitious, and the weaker individuals
were crowded out from the ranks and left behind
whenever a good spot could be found for the planting
of a family. It was ever the most active, the most
ambitious, and the most warlike individuals who con-
tinued the migration, and by the time they had
reached their final home, the remnant of the original
band would be composed of a selected class. It
would contain only those who had developed the
greatest personal vigor, the greatest ability to con-
tend with adverse conditions in nature and with
vigorous opponents, the most warlike, the most ambi-
tious, and the class that would be least satisfied to
settle down into a quiet life. Those who wandered
farthest would be the fiercest, like the Germans.
Thus it came about that whereas, when they started
on their migrations, the people consisted of one type
of individuals, the final companies that settled in
their new homes were composed of individuals whose
average character was very widely different from
that with which they started. The people left in the

236 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

original home — the Hindus as generally believed —
remained unprogressive and quiet, playing no special
part in the history of the world, while those who
finally occupied the Western lands — the European
races — were a restless people inheriting the char-
acter of those who had been constantly selected dur-
ing th3 long periods of migration. Thus widely dif-
ferent races of men arose, by selection, from the
same stock.

Now, while this simply represents a somewhat
uncertain story of a few prehistoric races, something
similar has ever occurred even in more recent times ;
for war has always tended to produce a decided modi-
fication of the race. Through the whole course of the
centuries warfare has ever brought one people into
contact with another, and thus spread education and
civilization. War too, at least in the days when every
man was a soldier, has led to the constant survival as
well as constant mastery of the unruly, uneasy,
turbulent spirits ; in short, to that class of men that
has been the inspiration of steady advance. Com-
pare the conditions of China with those of Eome. In
one an enormous country with immense population,
composed of people perfectly satisfied and desirous
of remaining in constant quiet ; with no great wars
during their long history, and, as a result, a stagna-
tion which has lasted century after century. Rome,
on the other hand, was made up of a turbulent
people, in constant contact with the rest of the world
through their endless wars, rapidly expanding, be-
coming mistress of the world and dominating its his-
tory. In one case stagnation, in the other constant
activity. In the recent history of European nations
the contact that comes with other nations through

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 237

warfare has ever been a primal cause that has pre-
vented stagnation.

To-day, however, the case is different. Not every
man is a soldier, even in times of war ; and the ten-
dency now is for warlike spirits to become soldiers
and lose their lives, while the quiet, peace-loving men
remain at home, thus becoming the fathers of the
next generation. Warfare, then, to-day produces
results just the reverse of those produced by migrat-
ing nations. The nations of modern times are grow-
ing more peaceful, more peace-loving — a fact due in
part to the elimination of the warlike spirits through
the results of war. But selection is still going on,
although with the highly developed civilization and
the extraordinary growth of our cities the whole con-
dition of the problem is changed. To-day the
struggle for existence affects man quite differently
from what it did in the past, even in the last few
centuries. We no longer find the migration of a
nation from one land to another, with all its attend-
ant struggle and extermination. Migrations, so far
as they now occur, are of the most indefinite char-
acter, and concern only individuals or families,
or perhaps, occasionally, a sect of a few hundred
people. The family commonly migrates now into
new territories, and when a single family migrates in
this way the inexorable law of natural selection does
not have the effect it had when great hordes of people
migrated together. Migration does not now serve as
a factor in eliminating the weak and unambitious.
At the same time, even now this same principle occa-
sionally comes into evidence. The newer lands of the
world, as they have been inhabited by immigrants
from the older lands, are, in general, peopled by

238 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

picked families that have been instigated to leave
their old homes, first, on account of want, but in the
second place by an uneasy, roving disposition. The
individuals desirous of a quiet life are the ones who
remain behind, while those who love novelty, who are
ambitious and restless, migrate into the new
countries. This it is which, in large degree, gives to
the United States and Australia the activity and con-
stant restlessness so characteristic of these two new
countries when compared with the older country
from which most of their inhabitants originally
sprang. Thus, even to-day selection and partial
elimination are producing a gradual change in the
character of the race. But this is rapidly ceasing to
be a factor in human selection, inasmuch as migra-
tions into new territories are becoming less common
because they are less possible.

Natural Selection as Affecting Peace-Loving

Races

To-day, in all civilized communities, sufficient food
is produced for all, leaving out of account such semi-
civilized people as those in India. Starvation is a
great rarity, so great, indeed, that, in civilized com-
munities, it is looked upon as a most extraordinary
exception. With actual starvation, then, the member
of a civilized land has no contest. The struggle for
food is not, with him, a struggle for actual life, for
in this struggle practically everyone is successful.
In the struggle for life every individual is a victor
who succeeds in preserving his own life, and, inas-
much as starvation among civilized men is the rarest
exception rather than the rule, it follows that, so far
as concerns this phase of natural selection, all mem-

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 239

bers of civilized countries are victors in the struggle
for existence. With each century artificial law is
checking more and more the severity of the struggle
for existence to which man has ever been subjected.
With each successive generation we find greater
attempts made on the part of public statutes to
enable each one to obtain what he needs and to force
the government to protect the individual. The
advance of individualism forces the government to
try to free the individual from this struggle for life.

Nevertheless, the struggle for existence has not dis-
appeared. If there were no restrictions placed upon
multiplication of mankind, the millennium would be
an impossibility. In spite of the attempt on the
part of man to end this struggle for existence by
artificial law, in spite of the immense expansion in
the size of his world as the result of better methods
of agriculture, the rapidity of multiplication con-
stantly threatens to renew man's contest with nature.
For a few years he may live in peace, but in time
the growing population will crowd upon the limits
of easy sustenance. Man's power of multiplication
is so rapid that had it not been checked by various
factors, the world, long since, would have been
filled to overflowing. But there are checks to unlim-
ited reproduction in mankind and these constitute
the real factors of his struggle for existence.

In the civilized community of to-day natural selec-
tion is constantly weeding out the least fit and acting
upon mankind with a certainty that is as great as in
earlier times. But the problem as it concerns the
human race to-day is rarely a struggle for the exist-
ence of the individual, nor does elimination come
from inability to produce offspring. A family or

240 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

race that fails to preserve a goodly number of chil-
dren to adult life is doomed to extermination, no
matter how rapidly it reproduces. Families are
ever disappearing through lack of reared offspring.
Even races are vanishing from the same cause. This
principle affects races all over the world. There is
a constant elimination of human families and races.
The savage races are everywhere being extermi-
nated, the barbaric races are disappearing under
conditions that we can hardly understand. Even
the Negro race in the United States, at least in the
larger cities, in spite of the rapidity of multiplica-
tion, appears, according to recent statistics, to be
undergoing a decrease in numbers, which, appar-
ently, indicates an extermination.

Selection Among the Lower Classes. — These processes
are slow, and we can hardly understand what factors
contribute to the success or failure of a family or
race to perpetuate itself in modern civilization. A
few factors, however, may be referred to as most
important, and in their consideration it must be
borne in mind that we are discussing the ability to
rear offspring, not simply to produce them. The
checks to this power of leaving productive offspring
act quite differently in the different strata of society.
People at the bottom of the scale generally produce
more children than the higher classes; but even here
the reproductive efficiency, especially the power of
rearing children, is reduced by many causes. First,
we have excessive work, for it is a well-known fact
that excessive physical labor is destructive of the
ability to leave numerous offspring. Second, the
evils of sensuality remove a large number from the
reproductive class. But more important than such

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 241

physical forces are tlie purely sociological influences.
In tlie lower strata of society in some countries the
regiment, with its brilliant uniforms, its fascination
of glory, draws the young man from the home life
and alienates him from the kind of life that encour-
ages the creation of a family. Every move toward
building up an army or navy, either by voluntary
enlistment or by conscription, is tending to draw
away the individuals, especially among the lower
classes, from the lines of life which would enable
them to leave posterity. Again, in all of our cities
social orders, clubs, lodges, etc., are becoming mighty
factors in checking the reproductive possibilities of
the race. Just as fast as the club or the lodge occu-
pies the interests of the individual, just so fast does
his interest in family life and his desire for a family
disappear ; and thus these social clubs are putting a
very decided check upon the reproductive efficiency.
The prevalence of alcoholism, together with the influ-
ence of the saloon upon the individual, is another
check to reproductive efficiency. Whatever position
one may assume on this general question of the use
of alcohol, there is no doubt that its influence upon
mankind decreases the number of vigorous off-
spring. The reproductive ability is dependent upon
the development of home life, and alcoholism de-
stroys home life. Where the saloon takes the men
away from their families, where alcohol destroys
their interest in the family, the power of rearing
offspring is vastly impaired. Again, the universal
want which is developed in the lower strata of
society has its influence in checking reproduction.
While actual starvation seldom occurs, and while
every individual, even in the poorer classes, is a

242 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

success SO far as Ms own struggle for life is con-
cerned, nevertheless the constant menace of insuffi-
cient nourishment is shown in a condition of things
which we call want. This is found most emphati-
cally in the tenement districts of our cities. The
greatest struggle for existence among men occurs
here. But the struggle is not one for personal exist-
ence, nor for producing children merely, but for the
opportunity of rearing them. In one single tene-
ment house, inside of three years, were born one
hundred and thirty-eight children. The reproduc-
tive power was great enough, but of these one hun-
dred and thirty-eight, inside of the same three years,
sixty-one — nearly fifty per cent — died. In these
tenement districts epidemics rage with greater vio-
lence than in the better parts of the community.
Even the mild epidemics, which in the better com-
munities are hardly regarded as serious, take the
lives of thousands of the children in these poorer
quarters of the city. Improper nourishment of the
children, improper care, improper air, and improper
treatment explain it all. Natural selection among
the lower classes thus affects the individual to a cer-
tain extent by reducing his power of bringing off-
spring into existence, but still more by diminishing
his ability to rear them up to maturity. Eearing
children after they are produced is the factor upon
which the life of the race is dependent. No race can
hold its own that has a large and growing class of
''les miserahles."

Among the lower classes of society mankind has
two great enemies to contend with, which determine
his struggle for existence. These two enemies are:
1. The microorganisms, which produce the epidem-

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 243

ical diseases that kill such a large proportion of the
individuals born. 2. His passions, which give rise to
the evils of alcoholism and sensualism, and most of
the other evils which weaken and sap the vitality of
mankind. Microorganisms and passions are the
fundamental cause of the wholesale destruction of
children among the poor.

Selection Among the Higher Classes At the top of

society a different series of facts tends to check
reproductive efficiency. Among the higher classes
a greater proportion of the children born are reared,
but this is probably more than compensated for by
the smaller birth rate. The number of children in
the family is commonly limited through artificial
factors. The first is custom, for in most commu-
nities the higher classes have fallen into the way of
having small families. A second factor is the great
development of social pleasure in our communities,
interfering most fundamentally with the family life,
destroying to a great or less degree the family love,
making the father almost a stranger to his children,
and even causing the mother to have so great interest
in social pleasures as to leave her children to the
ignorant care of servants. We have too the intensity
of commercial life, and the attraction of the club to
take the father from his family. All of these tend
to destroy the unity and the significance of the
family, and to decrease the probability that children
will be born and properly reared. Perhaps the most
important of all is the fact that in the higher classes
there is a tendency for marriages to occur later and
later in life. Whereas among the lowest people mar-
riages frequently occur at the age of 12 to 14, among
the upper classes in civilized communities marriage

244 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

is often put off until the twenty-fifth year, or later.
It is inevitable that a postponement of the time of
marriage will decrease markedly the number of off-
spring produced during the lifetime of an individual,
and will puL a check upon reproductive capacity.
Indeed, it is only too evident that in the so-called
higher races there is growing disinclination to
marry. An unmarried woman among the savages is
hardly found. Among civilized races the number is
constantly increasing. In the higher classes, as well
as in the lower, the passions too have a large part in
producing race suicide, since they are tending to dis-
tribute the venereal diseases, the action of which
upon the race is disastrous; for, as is well known,
these diseases tend to produce sterility among those
who acquire them.

A man and wife who fail to rear to maturity two
offspring, to take their places, utterly fail in the
struggle for existence, even though they be king and
queen of the greatest nation on earth, and are
accorded the highest honors of the greatest nation.
But the rearing of two offspring is not enough to
make one a success in his struggle for existence, for
this would only enable his family to replace the
father and mother, and in competition with more
rapidly producing families this would soon doom
his line to extinction. In our communities this grad-
ual extinction of families is always taking place. It
is going on constantly, but so quietly that we scarcely
think of it. The number of individuals in a family
becomes smaller and smaller, and eventually even
the family name disappears. If we trace back the
history of those living in our communities to-day,
we shall find them coming from a comparatively

EGOISM IN THE HUMAN RACE 245

small number of stocks. If we look through the com-
munities and find out how many individuals pass
through life without leaving behind them at least
two offspring to continue the race, we shall, perhaps,
be surprised at their number, and we shall be im-
pressed with the fact that even in our civilized com-
munity influences act upon mankind, producing the
constant extinction of lines of descent. This is
natural selection, slowly but surely cutting out lines
of descent, exactly parallel to that which occurs in
animals, even though the facts that contribute to it
are so wonderfully different.

These factors, acting in the various strata of
society, result in constant elimination of individuals,
families, and even races. But elimination is nature's
method of producing progress. Thus the human
race is by no means exempt from this law of struggle
of man with man; and among the confusing condi-
tions of modern civilized society it is as true as it
ever was that those individuals continue to exist who
are best adapted to the conditions of life in which
they live, although the best adapted are not always
the so-called higher classes. Man still lives under
the influence of natural selection. It is no longer
lack of food that eliminates from existence the indi-
vidual, or the family, or the race. It is no longer
over-reproduction that causes the struggle for exist-
ence, for with the expanding intelligence and power
of mankind the world is still large enough for all the
individuals that can come into it, and food enough
can be produced to furnish them all with suste-
nance. His struggle comes now from other causes —
from disease, sensualism, and, above all, from the
series of artificial customs which he has built up

246 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

around himself. These act as barriers to prevent
many from making a successful struggle for self-
perpetuation; they check the formation of families
or limit their size. All these factors are constantly
at work exterminating families, and they still control
the development of the human race.

CHAPTER X

ALTRUISM

The conditions under which natural selection acts
upon the human race are greatly modified and in
some respects almost reversed by the appearance of
a new factor. We have noticed in an earlier chapter
how the fundamental instinct of a "struggle for the
life of the species" has developed in man into altru-
ism and the moral sense, so that man is actuated by
this new instinct. It remains now to notice what influ-
ence this ethical sense has had upon the development
of civilization. The conclusion which we shall be
forced to reach is that modern society has been
founded upon the moral nature of man. The social
organism is ethical in its tendency and aim.

Animal Instincts

Among animals evolution is based primarily upon
two fundamental instincts, those of self-preservation
and reproduction. No other forces actuating ani-
mals are equal to these. Not even the mighty force
of hunger can compare with the imperative demands
of these two instincts. These forces are clearly
based upon instinct and not intelligence. With lower
animals, certainly, intelligence does not enter into
the problem, while with the higher animals instinct,
not intelligence, no less clearly controls the actions
here referred to. An animal, even though suffering
intensely, will contend for his life, because he is
impelled by the instinct of self-preservation; like-

247

248 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

wise, an animal in the reproductive act is not influ-
enced by intelligence, since he has no idea of its
meaning. The impulse to preserve life and the
impulse to perform the sexual act are inborn with
the individual, and demand obedience with such force
that, without a shred of thought as to their signifi-
cance, thej^ are universally obeyed by animals.
These two instincts together have led to natural
selection, which has been the foundation of progress.

The Ethical Instinct

Mankind is under the influence of a third addi-
tional force which we call his ethical nature, which
seems likely to have had its origin in the instinct
present among animals that leads to a struggle for
the life of a species. Whatever may have been its
origin, there is no doubt that it has greatly developed
during the evolution of society. Like the instincts of
animals, the moral nature of man controls his
actions, not by reason but by impulse. The individ-
ual who acts because he regards a certain line of
actions as right does not argue the question whether
he should follow the right course, and, indeed, recog-
nizes no room for argument. He may debate the
question whether he will do right or wrong; he may
argue as to the results of the action, and may use his
reason to determine which of two actions is the right
one. But the impulse that leads him to do the right
is beyond argument. He does the right simply be-
cause he feels that it is right, and at this point every-
one recognizes that logic is no longer possible. Of
course this does not mean that all men obey this feel-
ing of right, but simply that the moral sense, to the
extent to which it is developed in different men, is

ALTRUISM 249

imperative and admits no argument, although it may
not be obeyed. Moreover, we find that this new
impulse controlling man is founded neither upon
the law of self-preservation nor the instinct of
reproduction. In the martyr it certainly runs con-
trary to the instinct of self-preservation, and it
very commonly runs diametrically opposite to the
reproductive instinct. Though this new impulse may
originally have been derived from the instinct to
produce and rear offspring, to-day it has become
something quite unique in man, something radically
distinct from the other two fundamental instincts
which have controlled the development of the lower
races of animals. Mankind has, then, developed his
civilization under the influence of a new instinct,
an impulse of which only the barest rudiments, at
most, can be found among animals.

The Ethical Instinct Not Based on Reason. — We fre-
quently hear it stated that there is a force in man-
kind that leads to righteousness. It is clear that this
force is not primarily one of reason. The ethical
nature is based upon altruism and consists funda-
mentally in a willingness to yield self-interest. But
nothing is clearer than that the impulse leading to
the sacrifice of self is not based upon reason. From
the standpoint of the individual, sacrifice is the very
height of unreason. So very evident is this that from
the beginning, both in practical religious doctrines
and in the philosophical discussion of ethics, it has
ever been necessary to hold out to man the promise
of greater good in the future as a reward for present
sacrifice. When we appeal to reason there is noth-
ing which will justify us in asking a man to yield his
own interest to another, unless we offer recompense

250 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

in some way. This demand for a recompense for
sacrifice has been felt in all ages, and has led to the
general promise held out to man of rewards after
death, which shall make up for the sacrifice of the
present existence. Our ethical nature demands
sacrifice and our reason equally insists that sacrifice
should not be without equivalent recompense. This
does not particularly concern us here, beyond em-
phasizing the point that conscience, from the stand-
point of the individual, has no rational basis for its
existence.

From the standpoint of its effect on the race also
it appears at first that the force tending to righteous-
ness is not based upon intelligence. This new force
in a measure reverses that law of natural selection,
which among animals has been so necessary for
advance. With civilized man it is no longer the weak
individual that is necessarily exterminated, while
the stronger and better developed remains in exist-
ence. On the other hand, under the influence of the
moral nature, there is a greater and greater tendency
for the preservation of the weak. The erection of
hospitals all over the civilized world is a result of
the ethical nature, and they preserve the lives of
many who would otherwise be exterminated by the
rigid application of the law of natural selection.
Our inebriate asylums are designed to keep in exist-
ence as long as possible those whom natural selection
would declare unfit to live. Our jails and our plans
of abolishing the death penalty have an almost uni-
versal tendency to preserve, to the apparent detri-
ment of the race, manv who would otherwise be ex-
terminated as out of harmony with the conditions of
social life. Our institutions of charity are every-

ALTRUISM 251

where bolstering up the weak classes of the world
and preserving them, instead of allowing them to
yield to the struggle for life according to the inexo-
rable law of natural selection. The aid given every-
where among civilized races to the lower classes of
unfortunates, and extended to the weak races of the
world, has a tendency to preserve the weak at the
expense of the strong. All these factors have been
thoroughly recognized over and over again by all
who think clearly upon the conditions of modern
society. They constitute a reversal of natural selec-
tion. The ethical side of man's nature preserves
those who are least fitted to live, and then, by the
inexorable law of heredity, their weaknesses are
transmitted to the following generations.

The Ethical Sense Alone Peoduces Strong

Nations

Biologists particularly have been seriously asking
what results may be expected from the reversal of
the law of natural selection, since elsewhere in the
animal kingdom selection is required, not only to
produce, but to retain characters. Weismann has
studied this principle, which he calls panmixia, and
has shown that, among animals, it always results in
degradation and weakness. We are forced to ask,
therefore, whether such is not the law of mankind as
well as of other animals. If so, will not the inevi-
table result of the ethical law, which preserves the
weak as well as the strong, be a degeneration of man-
kind? Are not our ethical rules fastening weakness
upon the race and turning mankind downward
instead of upward? The result of such considera-
tions, in recent years, has led some of our biological

]i

:V

252 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

students to hold pessimistic views as to the future of
the human race, and to tell us that man is going
downward instead of upward, as a result of this
withdrawal of the beneficent action of natural selec-

tioji.

/in considering this statement, we must point out
that there are two factors in human evolution; the
first is the evolution of the human body, the second
the evolution of human society; and the laws which
have controlled the development of the two are widely
different. The withdrawal of natural selection may
possibly have a tendency to degrade the physical
nature of man, although upon this question it is not
yet possible to give a categorical answer. But in
its relation to society and to the development of
intelligence, altruism, even though it be equivalent to
Weismann's panmixia, is distinctly elevating. If we
look at the history of man in a broad way, we soon
learn that altruism has not, after all, led to degrada-
tion ; that in the history of the past the law of altru-
ism instead of leading to degradation has led toward
elevation. The fact is that the general laws of
nature are wider than man's feeble vision. What-
ever effect ethical custom may have on man's phys-
ical nature, nothing is clearer than the fact that
those nations in which the principle of altruism has
become most developed are the rulers of the world.
Nations in which this principle has failed to develop
have remained in a lower state of development, or
have disappeared before the growing strength of
the nations where the ethical spirit has been fos-
tered. History shows us that altruism makes strong
nations, and that only by the development of the
ethical nature can man rise in strength and influ-

ALTRUISM 253

ence. In spite of tlie manifest fact that altruism pre-
\\ serves the weak, it is equally true that only the altru-
^ istic nations are strong. Furthermore, it is evident
that each century has seen the ethical principles ris-
ing to a higher plane, and that the highest nations
are those most perfectly ruled by their ethical sense.
It is evident, therefore, that the altruistic principle
must furnish some elements of strength sufficient
to compensate for the apparent weakness which
comes from the preservation of those that are least
fit. If the application of ethics to nature would
seem to produce degradation, what can be the factor
in it that causes it to produce strong nations ? The
answer to this question is, briefly, that ethics alone
makes the development of society a possibility .\^

The history of civilization, from the beginning,
has been an attempt on the part of mankind to escape
from the continual condition of free fight which
characterized the life of animals and of early man.
It is true that this advance has been slow. It is true
that there have been many relapses, and that, while
in one century we may see great strides toward a
condition of peace and morality, in the next, per-
haps, man has become more savage than before. It
is true that, even with the beginning of the twentieth
century, we sometimes seem to be farther from the
goal than ever. Nevertheless, the development of
this principle of altruism, or love, has been a con-
stant one. If we compare the present with any pre-
vious century, we cannot fail to realize that, so far
as concerns the development of this fundamental
law, we stand on a higher plane than did our ances-
tors. At the present time the principle of brotherly
love has a wider and deeper development than at any

254 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

previous time in the history of the world, although
we are very far from realizing our ideal. Almost
the same stateijient might be made at the beginning
of any century. In spite of the various side eddies,
the progress toward the realization of the principles
concerned in this law has been constant.

Altruism versus Egoism

Egoism — Civilization, however, has not been the
result of the simple substitution of altruism for self-
ishness. Had this been the case, history would have
been very different from what it has been. Civiliza-
tion may best be understood as the result of a con-
stant struggle between the two principles of altruism
and egoism, greed and generosity, or the law of self-
hood and the law of love. In this long contest, which
we can trace in almost every incident of human his-
tory, it seems at first as if the victor were always
egoism rather than altruism. At all periods of
history the ruling impulses have seemed to be fear
and selfishness. This we may see in the early build-
ing of the nations, for they were founded upon con-
quest, which meant robbery, slaughter, and exter-
mination. We see it, again, in the destruction of
those nations which fell through the influence of
luxury, for luxury is always accompanied by a lack
of sympathy, which is a form of selfishness. We
can see it likewise in the wonderful development of
the Eoman Church, the one uniting force of the
Middle Ages. Here, what was originally altruism
became egoism. Though this church was founded
upon the principles of love for one 's neighbor, noth-
ing is clearer than that the growth of the church in
the Middle Ages was dominated by the ambitions,

ALTRUISM 255

selfishness, and masterful authority of its leaders
rather than by the spirit of humility and love
taught by Christ. Egoism rather than altruism lay
behind this mighty force. Even the crusades, that
series of events which awakened Europe, although
actuated in large degree by religious devotion, was,
after all, controlled by the same law of ambition.
Had it not been for the ambitions of the leaders, for
the love of military glory, for the desire of power,
the crusades would hardly have been episodes in the
world's history. Again, we find it in the increasing
concentration which developed at the close of the
crusades. The modern nations were built out of the
chaotic fragments of the Middle Ages by the grow-
ing central power of the king; and this king, while
pretending to act for the good of his people, was
actuated fundamentally by the desire for personal
aggrandizement. In more recent times we see it in
the growth of the money power which has in our day
acquired the rule over the world, replacing that of
the kings of earlier days. No one questions for a
moment that it is selfishness which has been at the
foundation of the accumulation of this money power
in the hands of the few. In the events of to-day, in
the organization of capital into ''trusts" and labor
into ' ' unions, ' ' the same principles of selfishness and
greed must be recognized as the active motives.
Even our philanthropic movements are in no small
degree controlled by the ambitions of their leaders.
Probably there has not been a truly ''holy war" in
history, for all have been dominated from the begin-
ning by the ambitions of the leaders, who appeal to
religious fervor or sympathy with down-trodden
people, as a motive to incite the enthusiasm suffi-

256 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ciently to make war a possibility. Clearly, selfish-
ness and greed have dominated civilization.

Altruism. — But in spite of all these facts they
indeed are blind who fail to see that the permanent
victor in this long contest is not the law of greed and
selfishness, but the law of altruism. This has become
clearer with each century. All civilization is per-
vaded with this truth, for the keynote of the advance
in civilization is the increased value set upon the
individual, the increased significance of the prin-
ciple of sympathy, of justice, of righteousness ; and
all these principles are part of altruism. It is this
slowly developing law that has produced every
advance in the progress of mankind. It is this which
has curbed the power of the despot, and ameliorated
the condition of the poor, leading those in better
conditions to extend a wider sympathy to those less
favorably endowed by nature and conditions. It is
this which has produced the abolishment of slavery,
for slavery was a normal condition of early man;
and only as the law of love found its way into the
hearts of the races has slavery been rendered, first,
less harsh, and then abolished. Natural selection
would crush out the weak and unfortunate with its
inexorable tread, but altruism has gradually brought
about a condition where the strong contribute of their
strength to the welfare of the weak. It is this law
that has elevated the condition of women, for the
position of women in society is dependent directly
upon the extent of the development of the laws of
altruism and sympathy. This same principle to-day
is wresting every right that the people possess from
those in power. Whether it be political rights
wrested from a monarch and an aristocracy, or

ALTRUISM 257

whether it be the rights of the laborer taken from
the capitalist, in all cases success or failure is de-
pendent upon the principle of love and sympathy.
Such a statement may at first appear wholly false.
Nothing seems more manifest than that the demands
made by labor upon capital result in constant war-
fare, and that when labor wins it does so because it
has been able to obtain its ends loj force. The cap-
italist is not commonly supposed to grant the de-
mands of labor from love, but, rather, because he is
forced to do it. When we analyze such victories and
defeats we soon learn that, after all, it is the prin-
ciple of altruism rather than force that determines
the final victor. When labor contends against cap-
ital it is powerless to stand alone. Nothing is more
clearly understood by both the labor agitator and the
capitalist than the fact that the victor in these con-
tests is ultimately that side holding the widest sym-
pathies. As soon as labor interests commit excesses
that alienate the sympathies of the people their cause
is lost ; and if they can show the mass of the people
that they are unjustly dealt with, their cause is gen-
erally gained. Whatever be the immediate result,
the final victory is determined, not by the force which
the two sides appear to possess, but by the verdict
which the general mass of mankind gives as to the
point at issue.

Permanent Advance from Altruism Alone. — In holding
this position we have reference to the permanent
advance of the race and not of the individual. The
results of many of the contests are clearly deter-
mined by force and greed rather than by love and
generosity, and are settled by might rather than by
right. But it is a clear teaching of history that all

258 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

such decisions are sure to be called again in ques-
tion. We sometimes say that '^nothing is settled
until it is settled right," and this phrase expresses
a mighty truth. When settled right it is settled
to benefit the people instead of the rulers, the
many rather than the few ; and if settled in any other
way, the question is absolutely certain to come up
again for readjustment. All this is altruism. Noth-
ing is clearer than that the victories won by force
can in the end be maintained only when upheld by
the wide sympathy of mankind which leads to the
insistence that all individuals shall have equal jus-
tice. Permanent advances are made hy altruism,
never by force. Force controlled by greed may take
initial steps, but unless love comes to its support the
structure built by force is sure to fall. Might makes
right for a while, but not permanently. Nothing can
be clearer to one looking over the pages of history
than that here lies the secret of the rise and fall of
nations. A nation may be built by might and remain
a unit so long as the uniting bond of mutual sym-
pathy and love remains in force. But when this unit-
ing bond is loosened, either by the luxury of the
wealthy, the corruption of officials, or the profligacy
of the poor, the nation becomes dissolved. We can
count upon a nation acting as a unit only so far and
so long as its members are bound together by mutual
sympathy and confidence.

The progress of civilization has been a see-saw.
At one time egoism and at another altruism comes
to the front. Egoism is, however, always the quicker
in its action. Every man sees his own interests first,
and every nation sees first its own glory. Altruism
is more like a subcurrent, flowing quietly and only

ALTRUISM 259

occasionally seen on the surface. But altruism is
the stronger in the end. It alone makes lasting
union possible, since it is founded upon the united
interest of humanity. Altruism and egoism have
been in contest with each other since the beginning
of life. Among animals egoism stands preeminent,
although many animals are sacrificed for their off-
spring. But among men a broader altruism is
clearly, even if slowly, gaining the contest. Only as
altruism has gained a supremacy over egoism has
civilization advanced. It is this contest that has
founded our system of laws, which would be unneces-
sary if either greed or love ruled alone. If love
ruled alone, certainly no laws would be needed; if
greed ruled supreme then man would be on a grade
with the brute and would be in no more need of the
law than a pack of wolves. It is thus the contest that
has created the customs of society. Were it not that
the interests of the few are in contest with the inter-
ests of the many, law would be unnecessary; their
interests clash, and in order that harmony should
exist, human society has organized its rules and
customs to regulate the relations of one to another.
It is this contest that curbs the passions of mankind ;
for egoism demands that the passions be gratified,
while altruism demands that they be regulated in
such a way as to do no injury to others. It is this
same contest that has developed all of our modern
laws regarding sanitation, the customs which regu-
late charity, and, indeed, nearly all the peculiar
features of modern civilization.

Civilization is thus an attempt, both conscious and
unconscious, on the part of man to replace the old
law of struggle with the new law of service. But he

260 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

tries to apply this principle of altruism only to his
fellow men and not to animals, and only to those
whom he regards as friends, not to his enemies.
Within the limits of his nation he endeavors to bring
about a condition in which fraternal contests shall
cease. The most extreme aspect of this new prin-
ciple is in what is known as socialism, for socialism
is primarily an attempt to abolish absolutely this
condition of rivalry which leads to personal struggle.
Socialism tries to make competition impossible by
bringing about a new condition of society where there
will be no incentive thereto. Whether it would be
successful is not for us to answer here. What does
concern us is, to notice that civilization develops
only as man succeeds in producing an amelioration
of the struggle which man has with man. We can,
indeed, almost measure the state of civilization by
the state of this personal contest. Social progress
has ever been ethical in direction and aim. It has
ever been along the line of encouraging the individ-
ual to take greater interest in his neighbor, and this
principle includes all phases of the ethical nature.

The general upward trend of history has been con-
stant. However numerous may have been its ups
and downs, the advance of the altruistic nature of
man has been constant and has been parallel with
the growth of organization. By ups and downs
altruism has advanced. A leader centers in himself
the support of numerous adherents, and he may use
this power for a time to benefit the people. Then
he or his followers become despotic, are overthrown,
and the power is consigned to some new centralizing
force, and the history is repeated. By successive
revolutions the history of man proceeds, but each

ALTRUISM 261

revolution leaves civilization in a position to occupy
a higher plane than before. Each century settles
some questions so positively that they can never be
raised again. In spite of the constant forcing of
egoism to the front, in spite of the fact that the inter-
ests of self are active and quick, nevertheless the
principle of altruism, that demands justice and
equality of opportunity for all, is more fundamental,
and for this reason is slowly winning the contest for
civilization. The development of society, though
permeated by greed and selfishness, has morality
and ethics as its goal, and toward that goal man-
kind has been progressing from the earliest period
when the human family was organized.

Why Is Civilization Dependent upon Altruism?

Why is it that after mankind had developed its
physical body under the influence of the law of per-
sonal struggle, its further development was depend-
ent upon its separating itself from this fundamental
law? How can it be that, while evolution and ad-
vance among animals has demanded the rigorous
action of the law of natural selection, the evolution
and advance of man is possible only when this
struggle of individual with individual is checked?

Ethics Places Society Above the Individual The an-
swer to this question is that human evolution is
social and not organic; and ethics places society
above the individual. Ethics leads a man to follow
certain lines of action, not because they are best
fitted for him personally, but because society in gen-
eral will be better off if all its members follow cer-
tain rules of life. The law of the greatest good for
the greatest number underlies ethics; and if we ex-

262 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

pand this doctrine a little so that it reads, ''The
greatest good for the greatest number of all ages,"
we have the foundation, the defense, and the strength
of the ethical laws of the human race. Ethics sacri-
jBces both the individual to society, and the present
to the future. It leads man to-day into lines of
action calculated to produce the greatest good to
subsequent generations. It demands the sacrifice
of the adult to the child, and makes the world ap-
plaud when a mother yields her life in defense of her
helpless babe. As civilization develops the benefit
to posterity is more and more recognized as a forc-
ible factor. Savages are guided by their present
wants only, and are not at all disturbed by the needs
of their future years. They will even cut down a
tree to pluck its fruits. It was long in the develop-
ment of civilization before the idea of sacrificing the
present generation to the future was conceived.
Even to-day no race of men actually realizes it, and
no race is much influenced by this law. We can point
out the disastrous influence upon the future of cut-
ting down the forests, or of wasting the coal in our
mines; but the knowledge has little effect upon the
lumberman or the mine owner, and the consumer
does not use a pound less of coal because of such
knowledge. Nevertheless, it is evident that this bene-
fit to future centuries lies beneath most of the lines
of action toward which civilization tries to bend its
customs. If this is true, we can understand readily
enough why the ethical nation is bound to triumph in
the end, since, evidently, those nations in which the
present is sacrificed for the future will, in the future,
he in better condition than the other nations in ivhich
the future has been sacrificed for the present. Se-

ALTRUISM 263

lection will in the long run preserve those nations
with the highest ethical development, whatever tem-
porary success may come to the nation that is ruled
by the law of selfishness and greed.

A second factor in explaining the dependence of
civilization on altruism is the fact that civilization
would not have developed if organization had not
been successfully accomplished. High civilization
demands numbers, and a small nation cannot hope to
stand at the summit of civilization. An individual
living as a hermit has no possibility of mental or
moral advance. In small tribes of savages, where no
more than twenty or possibly forty individuals are
associated together, the possibility of the develop-
ment of intelligence is limited and civilization is
impossible. As we follow through the various stages
of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, it grows
more and more evident that the evolution of society
is dependent upon the formation of large bodies of
men, aggregated together in social unity. The size
of a nation limits its civilization, and the highest
civilization is possible only in the larger organiza-
tions. The converse of this is not true, for mere
size is not sufficient to develop civilization. Nor is
it true that size is needed for intelligence. But it is
abundantly evident that the highest civilization de-
mands great nations.

Now, the size of a nation is not dependent upon the
reproductive power of individuals, nor upon their
valor and heroism as soldiers. All races of men can
multiply fast enough to produce enormous nations,
if nations could grow by the simple process of repro-
duction. The size of a nation is dependent, rather,
upon the possibility of coordination of its parts and

264 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the holding of them together. The Roman empire
was limited in size by the possibility of coordination.
After its armies had extended far beyond the limits
of Italy there was produced an unwieldy mass which
it was impossible to hold long together. Even before
it became weak enough to be in danger of destruction
it broke into sections because it was too large to be
controlled as a unit. With the modern nation the
development of means for the rapid distribution of
information by steamships, railways, and telegraph
has vastly increased the possibility of coordination,
and consequently in the twentieth century nations
are possible which could not have held together at an
earlier date. But in every century the size of a
nation is limited by the possibility of a proper coor-
dination of its parts.

Natural Selection Leads to Disintegration. — If we ask for
the forces that will make possible a lasting organi-
zation, we see, in the first place, that the struggle for
existence, as it occurs among animals and savages,
tends toward disintegration. It is true that some-
times animals live in peace with their own brothers,
though they may be at enmity with other animals.
A herd of buffalo lives in internal harmony, having
its struggle for existence with other animals and
with inanimate nature. Under these conditions a
certain amount of concentration is possible, so long
as food is abundant. But this is only because of the
internal harmony. Whenever the struggle for exist-
ence becomes one between animals of the same
species there is an inevitable tendency toward dis-
integration. Among all animals where the exigencies
of life lead to a rivalry of individuals there is a ten-
dency for the animals to live solitary lives. The same

ALTRUISM 265

thing is emphatically true of man. He cannot use as
food the abundant vegetation of the field, but
requires the more condensed form of fruits or flesh.
Such food is scarce, and from the beginning this
fact has led to rivalry and warfare among human
races. Such a warlike spirit always leads to disinte-
gration. The nature of some savage tribes is so
fierce that every one is an enemy, and such people
absolutely fail to have any kind of organization.
They are driven apart by this warlike nature and
fail to associate even in the smallest groups. The
family bond itself is insufficient to hold them to-
gether, and as soon as the child is able to care for
himself he leaves his family and quickly forgets that
there is any relationship between himself and the
rest. Under such conditions it is impo:ssible for man
to develop into the higher grades of intelligence and
civilization. That phase of the struggle for exist-
ence which involves the rivalry of mankind and the
eternal conflicts which have characterized history is
opposed to the development of lasting organization,
and consequently of civilization.

Intelligence Leads to Disintegration. — We notice, next,
that reason and intelligence also lead to disintegra-
tion. Reason results in individualism rather than
organization. Reason alone can never give the indi-
vidual any sufficient grounds for sacrificing his own
interests without promise of return. He may logic-
ally argue that, if he will yield his interests, society
will be benefited and the public better served; but
logic gives no grounds for real personal sacrifice. No
argument apart from the ethical one of ouglitness
can give adequate reason why one should yield up
his personal interests for those of the public. To

266 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

sacrifice my own interest for the good of the
greatest number can furnish me with no logical,
though it does furnish an ethical ground for action.
The good of the greatest number does not concern
me, and while I may use this as a justification of the
dictates of my ethical nature, it never could furnish
me with a vital basis for self-sacrifice. It is not
reason that draws men into the army at times of
great national crises, although it has its influence.
Patriotism draws the man from his home and impels
him to give his life for the nation. Reason alone
would lead him to stay at home and allow others to
sacrifice themselves for the things he holds valuable.
Reason can never lead man to sacrifice his life for
the king whom he serves, even less to sacrifice it for
the military glory of the general or emperor who
commands him. Reason is eminently selfish. The
impulse that leads to patriotism is something very
different from logic. The spirit of the martyr is not
based upon intelligence or reason. It involves both,
but is superior to both. Even in the conditions of
modern society it is clear that the impulse which
leads mankind in general to refrain from taking
another's property is not reason. "Honesty is the
best policy" may be the guiding principle of some,
but not of most people. While many are deterred
from acts of dishonesty through fear of the conse-
quences, certainly the majority are kept from paths
of dishonesty by some feeling wholly different from
reason and intelligence.

In short, reason lacks the vitality that actuates
modern civilization. If mankind were actuated by
intelligence alone, civilization would be impossible;
for whatever combinations might be produced would

ALTRUISM 267

soon disappear. In a social community the good of
the individual is often opposed to the good of the
race. Beyond doubt it would frequently be for the
good of the individual to appropriate to himself
property that belongs to his neighbor. But it is not
good for society that such actions be allowed, since it
is only by mutual trust that society holds together.
No logic can convince me that I should be in want
and my neighbor in affluence. Hence laws are neces-
sary to prevent theft. But while these laws are
logical enough in their relation to society, they are
not always logical as they relate to the need of the
individuals. They are obeyed, sometimes, indeed,
through fear, but commonly from some other motive.
In the following lines of action which lead toward
unity each individual is actuated by impulses quite
foreign to his intelligence. He follows his ethical
instincts.

Social Evolution Founded upon Ethics

By this time it is clear where we must look to find
the force which has been at the foundation of the
organization which has resulted in civilization.
Neither the laws which have developed the animal
kingdom, nor that attribute of man which has been
regarded as his most distinct characteristic lead
toward organization. The law of struggle and intel-
ligent actions are both disintegrating in their ten-
dency, and neither can be regarded as the basis of
social evolution. It becomes evident, therefore, that
we must find the uniting force which has been at the
basis of organization in the ethical nature. Altru-
ism, the principle that gives man sympathy with his
neighbor, that urges him to yield some of his inter-

268 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ests to those of others, lies thus at the basis of civil-
ization. The ethical side of man's nature is the
foundation of social evolution. Whatever may have
been the origin of these instincts, they have led in
mankind to a notion of right and wrong, and to the
feeling of oughtness, both of which are fundamental
motives in human action. The development of altru-
ism has led to a feeling of obligation and duty, first,
toward the child, then toward the parent, later
toward the chieftain, the king, the emperor, and fin-
ally, the ultimate end of all, toward God. It involves
a sense of duty toward something in all cases. It is
this rather than the fear of consequences that leads
the majority of men to avoid theft or dishonesty, or
injustice toward their neighbor. While fear of pun-
ishment may with many people have its influence, it
weighs little with the mass of mankind in compar-
ison with the stronger force of the feeling of duty.
It is this that binds together the members of a family,
that unites families into tribes, and holds tribes into
a sufficiently close and permanent union to form king-
doms. It is this alone that makes possible the
gigantic associations of man that form nations, since
this it is that induces man not only to make but to
obey laws.

Altruism does not produce centralization, but it
preserves organization. Whenever egoism has ob-
tained the mastery it has resulted in the degradation
of the people and the eventual disintegration of
nations, while the elevation of the ethical side of
man's nature has resulted in the growth of nations
and the advance of civilization. The factors which
are commonly the precursors of national destruction
are luxury, licentiousness, indolence, alcoholism,

ALTRUISM 269

effeminacy, despotism, and the like, and these are
all phases of egoism. Practically every decline of
nations may be traced to a decadence of the prin-
ciple of altruism and an increase in egoism. Some-
times it has been the egoism of the people, who be-
come more and more centered in self-interests and
less and less willing to yield anything to the good of
the country or society. More commonly it has been
the egoism of the ruling classes, who cease to re-
member that the lower classes exist. The former
results in decay, the latter in revolution. In all later
centuries, at all events, a ruler or a ruling class has
commonly obtained his or its power by promising an
increased benefit to the people, and their strength
has been simply that which has been given them
from below. But if, after the power is obtained, the
promises are forgotten, and the ruler tries to rule
for self-aggrandizement, the inevitable result is
revolution. Only as the government rules for the
masses can its foundation stand.

Ethics Demands Sacrij&ces. — Ethics places the race
before the individual. In the relations of modern
society it frequently hapjjens that the good of some
individual is in opposition to the good of society.
Viewing the subject from the standpoint of the ad-
vantage to the individual and leaving out of con-
sideration all reference to life after death, it is per-
fectly clear that the interests of the individual are
frequently opposed to the interests of society. Many
a time in life it would be of worldly advantage to the
individual to commit a theft or to obtain by the
power of his superior strength or intelligence cer-
tain advantages which others possess and which he
lacks. But ethics forbids such actions, even though

270 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

they might be done in absolute secrecy. Many a man
has lived a life of prosperity upon ill-gotten gains;
but ethics tells us that, in spite of the advantage
which comes to him, such a course of life should not
be followed. Ethics constantly insists that we should
yield to the interest of others some things which we
could easily obtain for ourselves. The sacrifice
demanded is real and not imaginary. Nothing is
surer than that ethics sometimes forbids the strong
man to use his strength to obtain the necessities of
life. He may not rob another of a loaf of bread,
even to save himself from starving. A man of supe-
rior intelligence is not allowed to use this intelligence
in all ways to obtain the things he needs. He may
not obtain his living by cheating his fellows, even
though this should give him a competency. The
spirit that underlies ethics demands of an individual
the yielding of many things which he could readily
obtain for himself by his own power.

If it be said that this simply means that ethics
asks us to sacrifice a present good for a future ad-
vantage, the reply is that this is not true. Of course
frequently it may be true that in yielding his present
desires the individual is only working for a future
greater good. But in a vast number of instances,
where the demand for sacrifice is just as cogent,
the sacrifice is complete and involves no promise of
return. Many a man lives a whole life of sacrifice,
and to the day of his death is constantly yielding to
others things which he would like for himself, and
which would increase the value of his life to himself.
The monk, in the Middle Ages, when he went into the
monastery undoubtedly sacrificed permanently many
good things of this world which people in general

ALTRUISM 271

recognize as belonging to the heritage of man. He
gave up his life to his sense of duty. Many a man
to-day devotes his life from early manhood to the
service of the poor, to persons far below him in intel-
ligence and value; and in such cases there is no
possible question of any recompense during his life.
His life is spent in poverty and discomfort when his
abilities would easily enable him to obtain comforts.
If he only put his efforts in the direction of self-
seeking instead of sacrifice, comforts and even lux-
ury might be his. A soldier gives his life to his
country, and when called upon to lead a forlorn hope
offers it cheerfully with no thought of recompense.
In all these cases there is no possible claim of a
temporary sacrifice for a future good unless we find
that good in a future life. To society it is a per-
manent advantage, but to the individual it is often a
direct disadvantage to follow the dictates of ethics.
The principle of altruism, which rules the higher
races of man, demands that mankind make sacrifices,
and the sacrifices it demands are actual ones. Only
by sacrifice can we follow the dictates of ethics.

The Relation of Religion to the Evolution of

Civilization

Universality of Religion. — By no means can our intel-
ligence, or even our instincts, be brought to believe
that justice can demand one individual to yield his
interests to another, without at the same time pro-
viding for a proper recompense. While we feel that
the law of sympathy and love, which demands sacri-
fice, is fundamental in the nature of man, we feel
with no less positiveness that the laws of justice are
inherent in the nature of things. Justice insists

272 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

upon a final recompense for sacrifice. Here it is
that we find the greatest significance of religion in
its relation to the history of man. Eeligion concerns
the relation of man to the unseen world, and has had
its place in practically all races of men. It has had
its foundation usually, if not always, in regulating
worship and sacrifice and not originally in its en-
deavor to regulate conduct. To-day we regard the
regulation of life as the primary object of religion,
but we must not forget that this was not its original
object. While religion and morals have, especially
in later centuries, been closely associated, they have
not been identical. Indeed, sometimes the grossest
immoralities have been admitted as part of religious
observances. This has not been confined to savage
races and savage rites, for anyone who will care-
fully read the history of the European religious rites
in earlier centuries will see that too frequently,
indeed almost constantly, religion has been totally
disassociated from right living. Its original pur-
pose seems to have been a proper regulation of sacri-
fice and worship, which should place the individual
in proper relations to the unseen world.

It is a very significant fact that some form of
religion has developed in nearly all races of men.
But the foundation of these facts cannot be discussed
here. It is, however, very important for our dis-
cussion to remember one primary feature. The
human mind demands that in some way justice shall
be meted out to the individual. Therefore from the
earliest times man has insisted that in some way a
proper recompense should be given to each for his
good or bad actions. Inasmuch as many of man's
actions cannot possibly be recompensed in this life,

ALTRUISM 273

we have here one of the logical grounds for the belief
in a life after death, where rewards and punishments
can be received. Nearly all races have such a belief,
and while the belief in immortality may be accounted
for in various ways, herein lies one of the most
fundamental arguments for this belief and also one
of the reasons for its universality. Justice demands
some method of righting the manifest injustice in
this world. From the very earliest period, among
the lowest savages as well as the higher races, the
demand for sacrifice of the individual has been en-
forced by a belief in the supernatural.

Religion the Foundation of Strong Government. — This
feeling has been constantly appealed to as the justi-
ijcation of authority. Religion has ever been the
very foundation of government. Why is the indi-
vidual willing to give obedience to the king? Fear
of the results of disobedience, of course, contributes
to this willingness ; but without the promises of reli-
gion there is nothing to make one ready for the
extreme sacrifice of life, which is so frequently de-
manded. Among savages chieftains and leaders
appeal to superstitions and the fear of the unseen
world in order to influence their subjects to obey
commands. In all early races the chieftain is not
only the military leader but he is also the religious
head of the race. The people feel that he is the pro-
pitiating medium between them and the dreaded
unseen world, the fear of which influences them to
yield obedience to this chieftain, to sacrifice their
goods, and even life itself. Because of this belief,
that good deeds will be rewarded and evil ones pun-
ished after death, the chieftain of a savage tribe is
able to control his subjects. Throughout the whole

274 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

series of patriarchal nations the same is true. The
monarch of such a nation is regarded as divine, or,
if not actually divine himself, he is thought of as
having such a close relation to the unseen powers as
to be the medium by which his subjects may be recon-
ciled to these objects of dread. This willingness to
sacrifice all interests has proved the feature most
essential for the organization and maintenance of a
patriarchal nation. This feeling of dependence upon
the supernatural has produced that union among the
members of a nation that in itself is strong enough
to enable them to hang together as a unit. It was
this which gave the early monarchs their power. In
the communal nations too we see the same principle
working itself out in a different manner. The older
races had their druids — their priests as a court of
final resort — whose dictates were regarded as divine.
This fear of the supernatural enabled the Eoman
Church, during the Dark Ages, to obtain its mastery
over the world, since all Europe looked upon the
church as the mediator between this world and the
next, and all listened to and obeyed its mandates,
even to the extent of deserting the standard of their
monarchs. If we ask what were the feelings which
impelled the people to obey the dictates of the church,
we cannot fail to conclude that they were all founded
upon the belief that for the good and evil done in this
world there is to be a recompense in the world to
come. This made men feel that the temporary good
or ill of this world should not be counted against the
permanent rewards or punishments which were to
come later. This belief gave the vitality to Moham-
medanism. The complete readiness to sacrifice life
which characterized the soldiers of Islam has ever

ALTRUISM 275

been a wonder. The foundation of their remarkable
eagerness to sacrifice life was their absolute belief
in an immediate reward in a life after death, which
made the sacrifice of life appear as nothing. It was
the promise of paradise, with its houris, that nerved
the sword of the Mohammedan. Such power did this
belief give to this mighty force that, but for an acci-
dent, it would have overrun the Western as well as
the Eastern world. Even in the Western nations the
monarchs who have ingrafted their power upon the
communal system have supported their claims by
means of divine right. In modern times the inspira-
tion of this feeling is somewhat weakened, but it still
actuates the majority of mankind. It still makes
martyrs. From this standpoint it is easy to see why
monarchy has, even in Western nations, been so de-
sirous of insisting on the divine right of kings. This
divine right is only one phase of the belief that the
king is a mediator between the natural and the super-
natural, and that only by obeying him can the indi-
vidual be sure of the permanent reward which he
feels is promised as a recompense. It furnishes the
king with the only logical reason for his inherited
authority.

Religion, then, has had a very significant relation
to the progress of civilization, perhaps more inti-
mate than any other single factor. Even in its earli-
est phases it taught the dependence of man and the
necessity of yielding to higher authority. By em-
phasizing supernatural powers it emphasized obedi-
ence. It has insisted upon the necessity of sacrifice,
has taught of supernatural powers that demand
obedience, and has told of rewards after death as
recompenses for sacrifices in this life. Its great

276 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

function in the history of man, then, has been to
teach the duty of obedience. Society is founded upon
the willingness of the individual to yield some of his
present desires to the good of the community or to
the interest of the future. Without this yielding to
authority, kingdoms and nations would have been
an impossibility. Obedience is the keystone of gov-
ernment. When we recognize that religious beliefs
have always enforced upon the masses the spirit of
obedience, that monarchs have always tried to sup-
port their authority by the divine right; when we
remember that all people engage in religious rites
before entering upon battle, and that the greater
their faith and fanaticism the greater their willing-
ness to sacrifice life in the contest, then can we read-
ily see that religion has been the vitalizing force of
social development. The strongest nations of his-
tory have been those whose religion was the most
vital, controlling most completely the lives of the
people. The loss of religion has always been fol-
lowed by disintegration. Even in the nations of
antiquity this was evident. Our discussion of the
principles underlying organization would seem to
show that this must always happen. If we take
away from a people their religious belief, we take
away from them the logical reason why one indi-
vidual should yield to another for the good of society
or country. Patriotism is commonly founded on
faith. We may point out to a man, logically, that his
nation would be benefited if he would be willing to
sacrifice his own interests in behalf of that nation,
but we cannot give him any reason why he, the indi-
vidual, should have any care for such a fictitious
thing as a nation. We can logically show him the

ALTRUISM 277

advantage that maukind of the future will receive if
each follows certain lines of actions. But such
arguments amount to little when the individual is
confronted with the question whether he himself
shall take a good thing that is within his grasp or
leave it to another. Logic alone never leads one to
follow conscience. The loss of religion deprives a
nation of the greatest centralizing factor which has
united it into a unit, and such loss will tend toward
disintegration. Intelligence furnishes logic, but
religion furnishes vitality to a nation, and a nation
must have vitality to hold the people together when-
ever there comes a strain of clashing interests. No
nation has hitherto succeeded in becoming great
unless its people were inspired by some kind of reli-
gious faith. Religion has been a mighty force in the
evolution of society, since it has furnished a vital
foundation for altruism, and altruism is the one
force which makes possible a continuation of organi-
zation. No one can predict the future, but, judging
from the past, the nations of the future are to be
those in which the religious faith remains in the
ascendancy. Religion has been the centripetal force
of society, and irreligion has always resulted in dis-
integration. Religion means organization and irre-
ligion disintegration. The anarchist can have no
religion, for he denies the cogency of the authority
of anything except his own inclinations, and this is
fatal to religion. Religion and civilization have ever
gone hand in hand.

One must not infer from the foregoing that reli-
gion alone is sufficient to make a powerful civilized
nation, or to develop civilization. Evidence to the
contrary is abundant enough. Religious faith of the

278 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

most extreme type has been found among many a
people who have developed neither force nor civiliza-
tion. The Hindus have faith enough to lead to the
utmost sacrifice, but they have counted for little in
the world history. Spain has always retained its
allegiance to religious teachings, but has ceased to be
a worM power. Abject subservience to the religious
teachings of the priesthood has a tendency to check
progress. The religious authority, like all other
types of authority, unless checked by opposing influ-
ences, tends toward stagnation. But with all this
clearly in mind it is evident that in all ages religious
faith has furnished the vital force needed to produce
that obedience to authority without which the king
could not have built up his power, and without which
the nations would go to pieces. Religion is the
cement that hinds together the fragments of which
the nations are composed, and which prevents their
breaking to pieces wnder the influence of contend-
ing interests.

CHAPTER XI

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY

We may now return to the question raised and
partly answered in an earlier chapter as to whether
human evolution has been based upon organic or
social heredity, and hence to what extent it has been
dependent upon the same laws that have guided the
evolution of the rest of the animal kingdom and to
what extent upon new laws of its own. That evolu-
tion must have been founded upon heredity is self-
evident, since this is the only force that enables one
generation to receive characters from its parents
and to pass them on to the next. Moreover, it has
become evident from the study of the last quarter
century that the evolution of animals below man has
been due to the laws of organic inheritance. Since
the lowest animals seem to learn nothing from expe-
rience, it follows that whatever characters they
possess must have been transmitted to them at birth
by inheritance. Among the higher animals below
man there seems to be some capability of learning
from experience, giving a possibility of a slight
amount of social inheritance. But this is so slight
that it cannot have any considerable effect upon the
evolution of life. "With man, however, this capacity
of learning by being taught is so great as to consti-
tute a large factor in his life. Social evolution has
evidently been the result not wholly of organic inher-
itance but in considerable part of social heredity.

279

280 social heredity and social evolution

Summary of Salient Conclusions

It will make this discussion clearer if we briefly
summarize at this point the salient conclusions
reached in the previous chapters as to the history
and trend of social evolution. The more important
of these conclusions are as follows :

1. Social evolution has been characterized by con-
stantly growing organizations.

2. With the increasing size of organizations there
has been a corresponding increase placed upon the
value of the individual.

3. Organization has been made possible only by
the possession of language, and this has been devel-
oped from small beginnings, slowly step by step, as
man has laboriously constructed it by experience and
teaching.

4. The all pervading law of natural selection still
acts upon the evolution of the human race with an
irresistible force. But its action is so profoundly
iriodified by the artificial conditions introduced by
society that it sometimes fails to be recognized.

5. Social evolution has, however, not been brought
about by natural selection or by selection at all but
by the action of the ethical nature which, since it
demands sacrifice, frequently acts in apparent oppo-
sition to the fundamental laws of self-preservation
and selfhood that controls the rest of the animal
kingdom.

6. The ethical nature is based upon instinctive
impulses founded in the nature of man.

7. Under the influence of developing society the
ethical instincts have universally produced codes of
morals which guide the lives of members of society

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 281

in such a way as to make harmony a possibility.
While these codes of morals have necessarily a few
fundamental points of likeness among all men, in
most respects they are as widely divergent as are
the social conditions under which they have devel-
oped.

Civilization a Purely Artificial Product -^~-

We must first point out that civilization is simply
an artificial product, created by man and not bjiitf^
into his nature. Social evolution has not strictly
been an organic one, but something different from
all other phases of evolution. Animal evolution, in
general, has been connected with anatomical and
structural changes in organisms. The zoologists
have studied evolution almost wholly from the stand-
point of structure. They have tried to show how an
arm may have developed from a leg under the con-
ditions of natural law. They have tried to show how
the leg of early reptiles may have become changed
by adaptation to new conditions until it developed
into a wing ; or how such a complicated organ as the
eye may have been built up, step by step, from
simple organs with a diiferent structure and adapted
perhaps to a different purpose. Such problems as
these constitute structural evolution, which zoolo-
gists have of necessity been studying. They have
studied this side almost exclusively, since the struc-
tures of animals and plants lend themselves readily
to the scientific method of investigation. The size of
an organ may be measured, its shape described, and
its homologies drawn. This has been the basis of
the discussion of evolution which was inaugurated
by Darwin.

282 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Moreover, instincts, which represent phases of
evolution seemingly radically different from anat-
omy, are in reality based upon the structure of the
nervous system. What can seem more unlike than
structure and instincts, which are habits of action?
But when we come to analyze these instincts we learn
that, after all, they are only outward expressions of
the structure of the nervous system, and as such they
are inherited and not learned.

That this is a correct method of viewing the
problem may be rendered apparent by a considera-
tion of the conditions under which instincts appear
in the individual. If the egg of one of the lower
animals be removed entirely from contact with its
parents, and if the young be reared without any
knowledge of the habits or instincts of its parents,
the animal will universally pass over the same line in
its development as did its parents, and will develop
instincts practically identical with those of the
animal from which it sprang, even though no inter-
course has taken place between the parents and the
offspring since the production of the egg. Many a
bird leaves its eggs to be hatched by the heat of the
sun, and yet all the young develop independently the
instincts of their parents. The duck hatched in the
incubator goes to the water while the chick avoids it.
The fish commonly leaves its eggs to be hatched by
the heat of the water, and yet the young, who have
never seen their parents, develop their instincts. The
young salmon seeks the ocean and later comes back
to the river for spawning, just as did its parents.
The same would undoubtedly be true of mammals if
it were possible to separate the offspring from the
parents. This is not so easy with mammals as with

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 283

lower animals, and yet every one knows of a suffi-
cient number of instances of young mammals being
brought up upon artificial food, to convince him that,
in spite of the lack of contact with their parents, they
develop identical instincts with those of their race.
Even the complicated instincts of the social insects
are included in the same general law. The common
bumblebee produces eggs in the fall. In the spring,
under the heat of the sun, they hatch each egg into an
individual, that has never seen its parents. This
individual begins at once to follow the instincts of
the race, builds for herself a nest, and in the course
of a few short weeks produces a new community with
the individuals differentiated and fully supplied
with the normal instincts of the species. Instances
might be multiplied ad libitum, but they are hardly
necessary. These few are sufficient to show that the
adult animal, including its instincts as well as its
structure, is represented in the egg. The instincts
are a part of the organism, and even in the egg there
is a structure which will inevitably develop an organ-
ism showing the numerous instincts as the result of
its delicately adjusted machinery. This does not
necessarily mean that there is in the egg a structure
as complicated as that of the adult. Over this ques-
tion biologists are still in dispute. It simply means
that in the egg there is a structure of such a nature
as to lead inevitably, under the influence of normal
conditions, to the regular structure of the adult, and
this includes the varied machinery upon which are
dependent the instincts, as well as the bones and
muscles. The whole problem is one of organic struc-
ture.

The instincts which develop in animals may be

284 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

complex indeed and yet all based upon inherited
nervous structure. Consider the marvelous habits
of the ants in their colony or of the bees in their hive.
Everyone has read of their well-regulated domestic
economy, of their curious habits of making war, of
capturing their enemies young and rearing them as
slaves^ of their habits of keeping domestic animals
(plant lice) for their own use, of their planting the
spores of fungi in order to reap a crop later for food,
and of the many othei curiously interesting customs
that remind us forcibly of human society. The com-
parison between such conditions and human society
is indeed striking; but in one respect it fails, and
fails so radically as to destroy the parallel entirely.
The habits of ants and hees are clearly and surely
inherited hy organic inheritance. The ant never
needs to learn how to do its work, or even what to do.
Immediately after birth it begins to perform its
natural duties practically as well as it can after
extended experience. The ant does not learn from
experience, and, moreover, it acts blindly, without
even a knowledge of the purposes of its acts. We
call its actions instincts; whatever we may call them,
it is evident that they are born with the animal and
are thus transmitted by organic inheritance. They
are incorporated in the germinal substance and are
therefore transmitted to generation after generation
with seemingly little variation.

In sharp contrast to all this stands the problem of
the customs of the human social organism. Al-
though the instincts of the ant may be only the out-
ward expressions of an inherited nervous structure,
this cannot be said of the characters of the human
society. This may be made clear by contrasting the

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 285

development of a man with that of other animals
along the lines just mentioned. Suppose we could
bring up a child entirely without contact with
its imrents or any other members of the race to
which it belonged. Or even suppose that a
child could be brought up without acquiring the
one human attribute of language; what would be
the result upon the individual thus influenced? Of
course such an experiment as this is an impossibility,
and we can judge the results only from inference.
But the inference is clear enough, and probably no
one will ever hesitate to regard it as correct. We
know positively from observation that the intellec-
tual nature, and even the moral nature, of an individ-
ual is closely dependent upon the conditions under
which the individual is reared. We know that a child
brought up under the influences of an English com-
munity develops different qualities from what he
would develop if he had been brought up under the
influence of the Turks. We know of instances where
European children have been stolen from their par-
ents at an early age and brought up amid a tribe of
savages. These examples show that such individuals
acquire not only the customs and habits but also the
methods of thinking, and even the moral instincts
of the human beings with whom they have been in
contact during their early years. The intelligence,
the method of thinking, even the moral sense and
conscience of the individual, are dependent in large
degree upon the character of the people with whom
he is placed during his youth. We must unhesitat-
ingly conclude that all these factors are stimulated
to develop in the human mind largely, if not wholly,
by the action of its environment. These facts are

286 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

emphatic enough to tell us quite certainly that if a
child could be brought uj) isolated from all other
human society^ he would be found when adult to be
lacking in the distinctive attributes of man ; at least
without any of the characters that constitute the
social individual. He would be what is sometimes
spoken of as a ''wild man" — just a little distance
removed from the brute. Intellectually and morally
he would be devoid of the very characters that dis-
tinguish social man.

From these considerations it is evident that social
evolution is something unique. Instincts are indeed
only the outward expression of nervous structure
and nervous adjustment. The communal customs of
the bumblebee are represented in the egg from which
the individual hatches. The problem of the evolution
of instincts is thus, in its last analysis, a problem of
structure, like the other phases of evolution that biol-
ogists have studied, and is dependent upon organic
inheritance. But the human civilization is not pres-
ent in the human ovum, nor is it present in the nerv-
ous system of the neivly horn infant. It would never
develop in a single individual if he were left alone.
It is something that is forced upon him by the mold-
ing action that comes from the conditions in the
midst of which his mind develops. It has always
been and still is something entirely external to his
organic nature. Civilization is not a part of man's
body, nor yet of his brain. It is an artificial product
which he has created and which he hands on to his
offspring by other means than organic heredity.

Organic and Artificial Characters in Man
Herein lies a fundamental error in some of the

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 287

attempts made to compare human evolution with
that of animals. Writers have failed to see that the
problem of the evolution of civilization and society is
totally different from that of the evolution in the
lower realms of nature. The one is an evolution of
the organic nature, and the other the evolution of a
purely artificial product. It may be that a certain
parallel can be drawn, but the utterly different
nature of the two should convince us that they are
controlled by different laws. Man is endowed at
birth with certain innate powers, but from the very
day of his existence there is being added to them a
large and ever-increasing number of artificial or
acquired characters. These are impressed upon his
nature by the action of his environment. The same
thing is true, to be sure, of other animals, but the
relative importance of these two phases of nature is
different in man and animals. Among animals the
innate powers, including those of organic structure
and those of instinct, are by far the most impor-
tant, while the new features that are added during
life, as results of the action of environment upon
them, are comparatively unimportant. With man,
while the powers with which he is born are cer-
tainly important, the factors added to his nature,
especially his mental nature, by the action of the
environment upon him, are much the greater and
become in adult life by far the most important
part of his attributes. Since such attributes are
acquired rather than congenital, they have rarely
entered into discussions as factors in evolution, inas-
much as they are not transmitted by heredity as
ordinarily understood. But, as we have seen, they
are transmitted by social inheritance.

288 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Civilization Due to Acquired Charactebs

A civilized community becomes in this way a
series of secondary forces acting upon man. Man
inherits a plastic nature which is modified by these
secondary conditions until the mental powers of the
adult become quite different from what they would
be under different artificial conditions. Civilization
is thus simply an accumulation of experiences which
can be artificially taught, and conditions which can
be artificially and intentionally handed on from par-
ent to child. The adult must be looked upon as only
in part the result of that kind of organic evolution
which has characterized the development of the rest
of the world. His body has been the result of an
evolutionary process similar to that found elsewhere.
His instincts also come partly under the same cate-
gory, and have likely developed under the same laws
as the instincts of other animals. Moreover, his
mental capacity must be recognized as due to the
same cause, for his mental power is due, as is be-
lieved at all events by scientists, to the structure
of his brain, and this is something that has been
developed by organic evolution, and is a matter of
inheritance. But the adult man possesses far more
than he inherits by nature, much of which is the
result of secondary modifications of his innate
nature. He must be looked upon largely as a result
of the action of his personal environment upon his
plastic organism. Even his body is to a considerable
extent due to this environment. All are familiar
with the numerous little deformities in the structure
of the body of man resulting from peculiar fashions,
such as the wearing of tight shoes, etc. These show

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 289

US that adult man, even structurally, is in some
degree the result of the environment which he has
created. More forcibly is this true in regard to his
intelligence. A large part of the mental character-
istics of adult man are due to his acquiring the use
of speech. How feeble would be our mental equip-
ment if we could not use language ! But the develop-
ment of the power of speech is simply a matter of
environment, due, not to the innate characters of
the individual, but to the environment in which he is
placed. The education of the brain during youth is
necessary for the production of an adult fitted for
our civilized communities. Every advance sees a
greater and greater appreciation of the necessity of
educating the individual, and every age sees the
number of years given to this education increasing.
But education is nothing more than grafting a large
number of acquired characters upon the plastic
innate attributes of man. Men have, of course,
mental powers which are organic and inherited. But
the use they can make of these mental powers
depends upon the tools they have to work with. By
tools we have here reference to language, the multi-
plication table, writing, printing — to education in
general ; in short, to social inheritance. Civilization,
we must remember, is due to the powers of the adults
that compose a community and not to the attributes
of children. Thus civilization is based upon the
acquirement on the part of each individual of a series
of characters not inherited in the ordinary sense
from previous generations but acquired anew by each
individual.

Indeed, this phenomenon which we call civilization
is of a high grade only when the artificial becomes

290 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

highly developed. It is only among nations where
the town or city plays an important part in molding
the characters of the people that this phenomenon
which we call civilization develops to its highest
point. Speaking broadly, we may say that the high-
est civilization is found in cities. To be sure, in
cities and towns there are many characters which we
regard as excessively low. Criminals flourish to a
greater extent than in smaller communities, and the
ignorance and brutality of the slums are proverbial.
But these facts do not interfere with the general
conclusion that the advance of civilization, and even
the development of moral nature, has been closely
associated with the organization of towns and cities.
In such communities alone do we find a high divi-
sion of labor, one of the primary factors of civiliza-
tion. Eefinement and culture are not as a rule found
among primitive peoples, or in small villages : neither
are they found among hermits, pioneers, or isolated
farmers. Nowhere do they become as highly devel-
oped as in the large cities. In the city education,
upon which civilization is growing more and more
dependent, reaches its fullest significance. Indeed,
it is impossible for educational systems to develop
in country districts, and large communities alone
present a possibility for the education which lies at
the basis of modern civilization. Civilization has,
indeed, developed parallel with the towns. The
ancient Aryans had no towns, but lived a scattered
life over a sparsely inhabited country, and their
civilization was of the very lowest order. They
developed none at all until they were brought into
conditions where the city or town began to have its
influence upon the character of the people. At the

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 291

close of the Dark Ages of this Aryan people, as the
modern nations arose from the barbarian fragments,
the civilization of the advancing races uniformly
emerged from their towns and cities. It was not
until these towns and cities were organized and
began to grow in influence and power that mankind
really emerged from the Dark Ages into the age of
civilization.

A city is certainly not a part of the organic inher-
itance of man. If a lot of individuals could be
removed from their parents at birth and develop
without contact with cities and towns, it is certain
that they would not, as the ants do, organize the
social customs of their parents. The communities of
New York, London, and Peking are quite different
from each other; but the differences are surely not
ingrafted into the nature of their inhabitants in such
a way that they will develop in the children inde-
pendently of environment. The child is simply born
with certain social instincts impelling him to asso-
ciate with his fellows, and with a plastic nature
capable of being molded in an infinite variety of
directions. As long as individuals are placed in the
same environment they will be generally molded in
much the same manner. A million of children grow-
ing up in a similar environment will become quite
alike as adults ; but their characters will be alike, not
because they have inherited them from common
ancestors, but because they have been imprinted upon
the plastic natures of the individuals by a similar
environment. Civilization is thus a purely artificial
product external to human nature.

292 social heredity and social evolution

Social and Organic Inheritance in Man

Organic Heredity. — We now come to the specific
question of what man owes to organic and what to
social heredity. We must recognize that man pos-
sesses a body of great value. An upright position,
a mobile hand, a large brain have all been of the
greatest service in developing his civilization. All
such characters he, of course, receives through the
action of the same laws as those by which animals
have all received their physical characters. Man also
possesses unusual mental plasticity, a character evi-
dently depending upon his large brain. That civil-
ization is dependent upon these mental powers is
self-evident and hence, so far as social evolution is
based upon the possession of highly developed mental
powers, it has been dependent upon organic inherit-
ance, which has given man a large brain and
unmatched mental ability.

But we have learned that human social evolu-
tion has been primarily founded upon the ethical
nature rather than the mental, and the question of
the inheritance of the ethical instincts is thus of
special significance.

Moral Codes. — It is evident that moral codes are the
result of social inheritance. We have learned how
the moral codes of the different races of men have
been undergoing a slow but constant change, and that
they are to a large extent artificial products. Codes
have arisen as the result of the association of men
into complex groups, a condition that has demanded
the development of moral codes to make social life a
possibility. This is abundantly proved by the great
variation in the codes of morals of different races.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 293

the moral code of each race accommodating itself
to the customs of its society. In modern nations the
whole series of actions toward which the ideas of
right and wrong are directed has been built up
by social heredity. These moral codes have slowly
developed. Whether or not the higher civilized
races have a higher moral sense than the lower, they
certainly have a much more developed set of moral
codes, and these determine the moral status of indi-
viduals. Eear two men with the same attributes
under different environments and they will develop
a different moral tone. It may be that they would
develop an equal moral sense of the urgency to do
right, whatever the conditions in which they might be
placed ; but they would apply that sense differently
according to their environment. Educate them from
birth in the family of a Turk, and they would acquire
Turkish notions of what is right and wrong which
would be quite distinct from the ideas of the English-
man. Educate them from birth in a Chinese family,
and their moral nature would become different still.
Educate them in a savage tribe, and their ideas as
to right and wrong will be those of a savage. These
statements are abundantly proved by instances. In
each case the moral sense may be equally clear and
strong, but the environment determines the applica-
tion of the moral sense to practical life. In short,
moral codes are clearly the result of the environment.
They are not inborn but learned by each individual
from his surroundings. They are transmitted by
social, but in no sense by organic heredity.

The Family. — Even the question of the foundation
of the human family, we must recognize, is a matter
not wholly of organic, but to a large extent of social

294 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

inheritance. The love of the parents for the chil-
dren, as we have earlier noticed, is really the founda-
tion stone upon which the human family has devel-
oped. But we have also seen that the reason that
this becomes so especially keen in the human race is
because of the long-continued sojourn of the parents
and children together. This is due to the long-con-
tinued infancy of the human race, and to this extent
it is based upon the organic nature of man, which
comes, of course, from his organic inheritance. But
there is no question that the keenness of love, and
therefore the willingness of the parents to sacrifice
their own interests to those of their children, through
a long continued period of time is due to the constant
association of the individuals together. It is the
contact, the social relations of parents and children
that develop the parental and the filial love, which is
the foundation of the human family. In this way we
see that even the fundamental phase of society, the
formation of the family, is, while founded indeed
upon organic traits, due primarily to the develop-
ment of new impulses that come from the teaching
of social inheritance.

The Moral Sense. — The application of moral nature
to the affairs of life, the practical side of conscience,
is thus dependent upon the environment of the indi-
vidual rather than upon his organic inheritance.
This is true even to a greater extent than is some-
times thought. It is claimed by those who have
studied the life of the lower classes that at least three
out of every ten criminals might have been saved by
simply changing the conditions of their lives. Their
inherited nature could certainly not have thus been
changed, but the environment changes the relation of

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 295

man to his conditions, and produces totally differ-
ent results. How much difference in the tendencies
could be produced by changing environment is diffi-
cult to say. If the children of the Jukes or Callicax
families could have been reared in the families of the
Edwardses, and the children of the Edwards family
reared under the conditions of vice and criminality
surrounding the Jukes family, what would have
been the result? No one, of course, can answer
such a question ; but it is safe to say that there would
not have been as many criminals in the Jukes family
nor as many college presidents or other men of note
in the Edwards family. With the same moral inher-
itance it is perfectly sure that environment may
make quite different results in different cases.

Nevertheless, there must be a substratum in the
nature of man upon which is built the moral system
of the individual. Each individual is born with cer-
tain innate powers, and it is these powers which are
molded by the environment. The child of the savage,
even at birth, is not just the same as the child of the
European, and while we must admit that the same
individual brought up under different conditions
would develop a different type of morality, it is no
less true that the raw material out of which the
moral nature is developed varies in different races
of men. The innate powers of a twentieth-century
man are probably, both intellectually and morally,
different from the innate powers of an individual of
the twentieth century before Christ. These differ-
ences furnish the basis upon which may be erected
the intellectual and moral structure built by man.
In the realm of morals it is this innate nature which
urges the man to follow ivhat he thinks is right,

296 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

while his social inheritance determines for him what
is right. While the code of morals may differ in
accordance with the man's surroundings, the impulse
which urges the individual to follow the code of
morals under which he has been brought up, is im-
perative in all races. Is this moral sense, or con-
science, wholly the result of social inheritance, or is
it, in part, at all events, due to organic inheritance!
The impulse to obey what we think is right and to
refrain from that which we think is wrong seems to
be a part of our nature and not wholly due to edu-
cation. If so, it is subject to the law of organic evo-
lution, similar to that which has regulated animals.
Up to this point there has been no special diffi-
culty in determining whether social or organic inher-
itance is concerned in the transmission of human
traits. But we now come to the first question that
presents a real puzzle. The question whether the
moral sense itself is wholly a matter of inherited
traits, or whether it is due to training, is by no means
so easily answered as some of the other questions.
Is this moral sense, this conscience, a matter of
organic inheritance alone, or is it in a measure,
perhaps to a considerable degree, or even wholly,
a matter of training! We have noted in a previous
chapter that there are some reasons for believing
that conscience is in part a matter of training, and
hence of social inheritance. To some thinkers, how-
ever, this is radically wrong, and conscience, they
say, must be looked upon as an innate inheritance
of mankind. Those who have fastened their atten-
tion most fixedly upon the laws of organic inherit-
ance as they worked them out experimentally in
animals, are inclined to insist that it is organic in-

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 297

heritance alone, and not training, that is concerned in
the origin of the moral instinct. They point out the
continuation, generation after generation in the same
family, of the same general moral tone, of sometimes
high, sometimes a lower moral sense, and they insist
that it is hopeless to expect a high moral sense in the
inheritance of a family that has shown a different
character for some generations. They point to the
several now famous families of such evil inheritance,
which prove that moral sense is a matter of organic
inheritance and not training ; and they give instances
of members of these families that had been removed
from their families and reared under new sur-
roundings, but who in spite of all give evidence of
their own evil moral tendencies. Upon such facts
as these they base the conclusion that only by inherit-
ance and selection can the moral tone of the race be
preserved. On the other hand, an opposite view is
held by others, who point out that in these famous
families the children during their young plastic years
are always reared under influences that tend to
develop a low moral tone, and who insist that the
fact that continued generations of such families show
a succession of criminals, is to be accounted for as
much by training as by inheritance. They emphasize
the fact that during the training of the child he is
little by little taught by his parents or by others the
meaning of right and wrong, is even taught the words
''right" and ''wrong," and that thus, to a large
extent at least, his whole idea of moral obligation is
a matter of teaching from his surroundings rather
than innate intuition.

•To decide sharply for either of these two views
is at present premature. Indeed, it seems probable

298 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

that neither of the extreme views is right, and that
here as elsewhere the truth is between the two. It
seems certain that each person receives by inherit-
ance impulses in the direction of both altruism and
egoism, as does also the fact that not all individuals
receive the same grade of instincts in these direc-
tions. In some families the egoistic and in others the
altruistic instincts are the more prominent. Just as
persons with exceptionally high mental power are,
on the average, likely to produce children with large
mental development, so it is equally true that those
who have especially keen or unusually dulled moral
natures seem likely to transmit similar characters
to their offspring. These innate moral tendencies
would appear to be family attributes, transmitted by
organic inheritance, and, if they are to be preserved
and increased, it must be by the control of mating
and by the selection of individuals. But it is abun-
dantly clear that these instincts may be greatly modi-
fied by training, that is, by social heredity. It is
certain that there is such a thing as an educated con-
science. From birth to death each human individ-
ual is being subjected to the teachings of his environ-
ment, and, being eminently more receptive than any
other animal, the growing child is inevitably molded
into an adult whose characters are dependent more
upon the training than upon the traits that he has
inherited.

General Conclusions

Eecognizing that civilization has been developed
from the human family, and primarily by the action
of the ethical nature which binds men together into a
unit, we conclude that civilization has been builded

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 299

upon a foundation of characters inherited by organic
heredity. So far as concerns these attributes, they
cannot be modified by training or education, but we
must rely upon breeding and selection to develop
them and to hold them at a high grade. But except
for these foundation stones practically all the rest
that pertains to civilization comes to man in a differ-
ent way, so that social heredity outweighs organic
heredity. The development of language is wholly a
matter of social heredity. The development of the
moral sense may be in part due to organic inherit-
ance, but it is certainly in part dependent upon
social inheritance. The evolution of the codes of
morals which determine the condition of civilization
of different peoples is wholly a matter of social
inheritance. Organization and centralization are to
be attributed partly to the social instincts which are
matters of organic inheritance, but partly also to
social inheritance, since they are largely determined
by custom, precept, and tradition as well as by intel-
ligent action. The type of the civilization that any
race of men has built has been due wholly to social
heredity, being determined by the environment and
by custom. The particular character of any nation,
depending as it does upon precept, custom, educa-
tion, and environment, is a matter of social and not
organic inheritance. The slow but continued tri-
umph of altruism, which is the great lesson from
social evolution, has been due to both organic and
social heredity. By normal processes of evolution
the human race has been equipped with altruistic
as well as egoistic instincts handed on probably by
organic inheritance. But the development of these
instincts and their application to actual life in the

300 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

human race has been wholly the result of the new
force of social inheritance.

Our final conclusion to the general question as
to the relation of man to the two types of heredity,
is thus brie3y as follows : To his organic inheritance
mankind owes his mental powers, his physical
powers, his instincts toward a social life, and the
instincts toward self-sacrifice, which make him will-
ing to yield to authority and to demand government.
It is his organic inheritance that has forced him into
association with other men, that has led toward social
evolution. But the structures that he has builded
upon these foundation stones have not been builded
by organic but by social inheritance. The social
organism itself is wholly the result of social inherit-
ance, for which organic inheritance has furnished
only the foundation. Society is a superstructure,
built by social inheritance upon a foundation laid by
organic inheritance. If we want to get a picture of
what man would have been from his organic inherit-
ance alone, we have only to imagine an individual
brought up alone in nature, without contact with
any other human being. He would have the same
inherited powers as now but would lack the social
inheritance. That he would be little more than a
cunning brute seems apparent enough ; and thus we
see that man is really separated from animals
primarily by his social rather than by his organic
inheritance. That any social evolution at all was
possible has been due to the physical, mental, and
moral nature which man has inherited by organic
heredity ; but the form and nature of the actual evo-
lution that has taken place has been determined by
social heredity.

Unlverttty

of (uj

*&, ToreirtB ^J

social evolution and social heredity 201

"Social Heredity" and the "Envieonment"

Having thus gained a comprehensive idea of what
is meant by social heredity, we may ask a final ques-
tion— whether this force is anything more than the
long recognized ** influence of the environment." In
a certain sense they are identical, since social hered-
ity is surely the influence produced upon the individ-
ual by the various forces acting upon him during his
life. But in another sense they are different, and,
as we have considered it, social heredity is not the
same force that has formerly been recognized as the
action of the environment. As the environment has
been thought of in earlier discussions of evolution it
has been looked upon as a set of forces which not
only modify an animal during its life but may pro-
duce changes in it which are transferred to the
organic nature of the individual so as to be trans-
mitted by organic inheritance. The evolutionary
theories of Lamarck and the later Neo-Lamarckians
were founded ujDon the idea that the environment
thus produced modifications in organisms that then
became part of their organic structure. These ideas
have been pretty thoroughly discredited by the grow-
ing recognition of the non-inheritance of acquired
characters. With the abandonment of these views
the influence of the environment has been given less
and less weight until it has been almost abandoned.
To explain any phase of evolution by appealing to
the action of the environment is now regarded as
quite unsatisfactory. That the environment has
some indirect influence in shaping evolution is about
all that the more recent views of heredity have been
willing to admit, and it has been appealed to less and

302 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

less during tlie years that have followed the appear-
ance of the new conceptions of heredity which started
with Weismann.

But the principle of social heredity which we have
been studying does not claim to do what the older
biologists attributed to the environment. This prin-
ciple recognizes that there are in all animals certain
characters which are incorporated into their organic
nature, are represented in the germ plasm, and are
handed on by the laws of germinal heredity. But it
also insists that there are other characters possessed
by animals which are developed during the life of
the animal as the result of the actions of its environ-
ment upon it. These do not, it is true, become incor-
porated into its nature in such a manner as to be
part of the germinal substance in condition for trans-
mission by organic heredity. But the conception of
social heredity as we have been considering it pre-
sents two phases in which it is vastly more compre-
hensive and far-reaching than the older phrase ' ' the
environment." First, it points out that so far as
concerns mankind these artificial characters, acquired
anew by each generation, constitute the larger parts
of the attributes which make him the social unit;
while the characters which he receives by organic
heredity simply make him a human animal with a
few important instincts. The larger portion of the
attributes of the twentieth-century man he receives
from his environment and does not inherit by organic
inheritance at all. This phase of the matter places
this force of social heredity far ahead of the older
ideas associated with the term ''environment."

A se-cond new phase of social heredity is the recog-
nition of the fact that the acquired characters devel-

SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL HEREDITY 303

oped in the individual by the environment, though
not transmitted by organic heredity, are just as
surely, and in some cases more surely, handed on to
the next generation by laws of their own. At least
this is true concerning the action of the force upon
the human race. It is this phase of the conception
that warrants the 'use of the term ''heredity" as
descriptive of the force. It is manifest that the older
phrase — ''the influence of the environment" — con-
tained neither of these two conceptions. While, there-
fore, the force of social heredity in one sense is no
more than the influence of the environment upon suc-
cessive generations, in another sense it is much more,
since it furnishes a basis for an evolution of its own
kind quite independent of organic evolution as com-
monly understood. Moreover, it becomes a force
which has had a vast deal to do with the evolution
of human civilization, is, in short, civilization itself;
but it is a force which has had only the smallest part
to play in the evolution of the lower animals. It is
distinctly a force of human rather than animal evo-
lution.

One other factor contained in social inheritance
not commonly included in the term "environment"
is the action upon the individual of training. The
environment as commonly understood includes the
surroundings in which an animal lives, which may
have direct action upon him. It does not commonly
take cognizance of the fact that the activities of an
animal from birth are producing a series of changes
in his nature, physical and mental, which make
very different adults in accordance with the nature
of his activities. This is commonly included under
the term "training," sometimes called "nur-

304 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ture." Social inheritance includes not only the
direct action of the environment but also the effect
of this training, which in mankind is probably the
greatest force determining his development. For all
of these reasons it is clear that ''social heredity" is
by no means simply a new name for the older term
''environment."

CHAPTER XII

THE LAWS CONTKOLLING HUMAN SOCIAL
HEREDITY AND EVOLUTION

From all that has preceded it has appeared that
human social evolution has been brought about by a
different set of conditions from those which have
produced animal evolution. Since the guiding prin-
ciple has been social rather than organic heredity,
we are prepared to believe that the laws controlling
human evolution may be different from those at
work elsewhere. The evolution of animals in gen-
eral, according to our present knowledge, appears to
have been brought about by the accumulation of con-
genital characters alone. Whether the variations
which constitute the stepping-stones of advance have
been slight ones (diversities) or large and sudden
ones (mutations) may not be yet fully settled; but
whatever they are, they have from the first been fixed
in the germ substance and handed on by organic
heredity. Then by the action of natural selection
some have been preserved and others eliminated, the
total result being progress and evolution. In certain
respects man must have been subjected to these same
forces, since he too is an animal. But since social
evolution stands upon a different footing, we may
naturally expect that it may have been brought
about by different forces which may have had little
or no part in the evolution of the lower animals,
where social inheritance is practically lacking. In
this chapter we will briefly consider some of the

305

306 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

principles wherein human evolution stands apart,
principles which to a large extent so modify the prog-
ress of evolution as to vitiate all comparison be-
tween human development and that of animals.

The Inheritance of Acquired Characters

The fundamental distinction between acquired and
congenital characters was not sharply recognized
until Weismann threw such a clear light upon meth-
ods of heredity by his theories advanced thirty years
ago. A distinction between those characters which
had been received by inheritance and those that
were acquired during life had been indeed recognized
before ; but it was reserved for Weismann to distin-
guish them sharply as having totally different rela-
tions to the problem of inheritance and development.
From that time biologists have been coming to place
less and less reliance upon acquired characters as
affecting the evolutionary process, until to-day they
are practically excluded from the discussion. In
modern discussion of evolutionary methods it has
come about that to show that any character has
been acquired during the life of an animal has been
regarded as sufficient to exclude it from playing any
part in the evolutionary process. Acquired char-
acters have thus been slightingly thrown to one side.

From our study of the evolution of human society,
we are forced to restore to acquired characters an
immense significance. The first striking feature that
we find wherein the evolution of mankind differs
from that of animals is that here acquired characters
are transmitted to posterity, and do count emphat-
ically in evolution. To be sure, they are not trans-
mitted by the same laws as are congenital characters,

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 307

for they are simply handed down by education and
precept. But nevertheless they are handed down to
the following generations.

Although this matter has been considered inciden-
tally in the previous pages, it is necessary here once
more to summarize the matter, as representing one
of the new laws controlling human evolution. Social
evolution, indeed, is hardly more than an accumula-
tion of acquired characters; but though they are
simply acquired and never become a part of the
germ plasm, they are none the less surely trans-
mitted to different generations by a method of their
own, and it is by their development and their trans-
mission that the phenomenon which we call social
evolution has taken place and through their influ-
ence that what we sometimes call the social organ-
ism has been developed. Under the influence of
acquired characters development can take place with
very much greater rapidity than when congenital
characters alone are concerned. Hence it is that in
the development of the human race acquired char-
acters are reinstated as a force of great significance,
and as forming the primary factor in human
advance.

From birth to death the human individual is being
subjected to the teachings of his environment, and
being eminently more receptive than any other ani-
mal, the growing child becomes inevitably molded
into an adult whose character is dependent more
upon the training than upon inheritance. The child
may be born with wonderful mental possibilities,
but unless he is trained by education his mental
power amounts to little. By education his mind
becomes yearly more efficient and no one fails to

308 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

recognize that the educated mind is vastly superior
to the uneducated; even though they may have been
equal at first. This is equally true of the ethical
nature. This phase of the child's life too is subjected
to the training of his home, of his neighbors, and of
the hosts of other influences that surround him dur-
ing his young years, until two persons who had at
birch an equal endowment of moral as well as mental
sense may become almost world-wide from each
other. The primary attributes which the individual
possesses, moral as well as mental, he owes, largely
at least, to the fortune or misfortune of his birth,
that is, of his organic inheritance ; but what he does
with these attributes, whether they increase or de-
crease, whether they become keener or more dulled
and how they are applied to practical life, depend
..upon social inheritance.

Natural Selection No Longer the Sine Qua Non

OP Progress

The new laws of social inheritance have brought
it about that progress is no longer dependent upon
the rigid action of natural selection. Among the
lower animals a rigid selection based upon a struggle
for existence has appeared to be a necessary factor
in advance. It has been forcibly pointed out that
such a selection is necessary, not only to produce
advance but even to protect from degradation those
already developed. Even if the recent mutation
theory be accepted, which makes new types sudden in
their origin, instead of gradual as Darwin supposed,
it would still be necessary to have a rigid selection to
preserve the valuable and discard the useless types.
Among animals it appears that the withdrawal of

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 309

the force of selection leads to degi^adation. In view
of these general laws some biologists have been
somewhat pessimistic over the action upon the human
race of the ethical instincts, which bid man to pre-
serve the weak instead of exterminating them as
nature does elsewhere — and have intimated that the
results will inevitably be a degradation.

But as soon as man comes under the full influence
of social heredity there begins to act upon him a new
principle which tends to progress. In developing
society a new rivalry takes the place of nature's
struggle for existence, a rivalry that leads to ad-
vance, though in a different way. The social and
industrial rivalry that is found among man is some-
times called a struggle for existence, and compared
in its action to the struggle for existence among
animals. But such social rivalries must not for a
moment be confounded with a real struggle for exist-
ence, and whatever influence they have comes in, a
different way. Nature's struggle for existence
results in the extermination of the ill fitted. But in
the human race for supremacy success in any of the
lines toward which such rivalry is directed does not
result in extermination of the non successful nor does
it result in leaving the successful with a larger num-
ber of offspring, or with a greater chance of handing
their characteristics to the next generation by
organic inheritance. The most successful man in
human rivalry may be from nature's standpoint a
total failure since he may leave no offspring. It
often happens that the families of the world's lead-
ers soon die out. The Eoman Catholic clergy have
been great forces in the progress of civilization, but
not by means of the progeny they have left behind.

310 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

All such individuals from the standpoint of organic
evolution have been total failures. If human evolu-
tion were of the same type as that of animals, they
would have had no influence upon posterity. With
animals the individual influences the race only
through his offspring, and he has no influence unless
he leave a numerous progeny.

■N"ew Forces of Progress — Clearly, then, human evolu-
tion is not to be compared with organic evolution,
for there are other intelligible forces that lead it on
toward progress besides the inexorable elimination
of the unfit. Progress in mankind may be brought
about by deliberate intention, by intelligent guiding
of events, by a conscious modifying and controlling of
the environment, and by the improvement of the edu-
cation imparted to the growing minds of the children,
so that each generation may be in a little better
position than the last. Social heredity may, in
short, be intentionally and consciously modified, and
the social heritage thus brought into a higher and
higher plane without the necessity of a rigid ex-
termination of the unfit as its central feature. The
ethical nature, though it does preserve the unfit, is
not necessarily leading to degradation, since a new
force tending toward social progress has made its
appearance. In social evolution, which comprises
the real progress of the human race, natural selec-
tion is no longer the sine qua non of progress, what-
ever may have been the case concerning the evolution
of animals.

The fact is that in the development of the human
race a new goal has appeared toward which the race
is progressing. Evolution no longer seems to be
aimed toward producing better animals, or more

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 311

complexly built masses of muscles, bones, and nerves.
The last quarter of a century has shown that to
develop these there are needed those laws which are
acting in nature, which have produced a rigid selec-
tion resulting in the breeding together only of indi-
viduals well fitted to continue to fight for existence.
But the development of mankind has a new aim,
which doubtless as yet we only dimly appreciate and
of which, possibly, we have as yet no conception at
all. Whatever this new aim may be, one thing is
certain: the new goal inevitably involves a higher
activity of the mental powers of mankind. It is not
simply the possession of mental powers that consti-
tutes humanity ; it is, rather, the use of these powers.
Now, while the possession of mental powers is
clearly a function of the brain, and while this, again,
has likely been produced in man by the same forces
that produced his other bodily features, we are sure
that the activities of his mental powers are controlled
by the environment in which he lives. That which
the mind of man is capable of doing is dependent not
wholly upon the inherited mental power, but largely
upon the condition in which it works, upon the train-
ing it can receive, and upon the tools with which it
has to work. This is dependent upon social life
almost wholly. From all of this it follows that the
aim of human evolution, instead of being to produce
a better animal, is to produce a better society, and
for this purpose, for reasons already pointed out,
other laws than those of natural selection are most
significant.

Through the influence of social inheritance man-
kind thus comes to be more or less independent of
the laws of natural selection. Through its influence

.312 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the social heritage which is handed from age to age
may become greater and greater by accumulation,
can be modified by law, by precept, by advice, and
by education. The statutes which our legislatures
create, the customs which our families develop, the
laws which our nations devise, the education which
civilization puts into the hands of its members —
all these, although they do not affect organic develop-
ment, do profoundly affect social development.
Each age sees a greater improvement in the appre-
ciation of the value of those facts which are instilled
into the mind by education, in comparison with those
that are simply innate. The savage has little appre-
ciation of the value of training, and his children be-
come largely what their inherited nature makes them,
molded by the simple environment which surrounds
them. But civilized man recognizes that this mold-
ing process contributes a greater part in making the
history of man than do his innate powers. Thus
man is becoming less and less a creature which his
inherited powers alone would make him. He be-
comes more and more an artificial product, modified
more and more profoundly by education with each
generation. Under these conditions, a governing
family, or even a single individual, though he breeds
no offspring, may guide evolution, and thus be an
extraordinarily potent factor in development; and
the influence which such families or individuals have
is brought about by conscious, intelligent action and
not, as in the organic world, through the unconscious
inheritance of innate traits of character.

The Influence op the Individual
Among Animals — One of the most striking and

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 313

sharp contrasts between human and animal evolu-
tion has been in the influence of individuals upon
the race. Among animals, the individual counts
for little or nothing. When a single Daphnia may
have millions of offspring during the few weeks of
summer, it matters not in the evolution of the race
whether any particular individual survive or perish.
Even among more slowly multiplying animals the
same thing is true. The only way that an elephant
can influence his race is through the organic heritage
which he gives his offspring, and if he dies and
leaves no offspring he has had no part in the prog-
ress of evolution. It has sometimes been questioned
whether among animals the individual counts at all ;
for strong reasons have been advanced for suppos-
ing that the process of evolution has been by aver-
ages and means rather than by the appearance of
isolated individuals in advance of the rest. Evolu-
tion has been described sometimes as an advance of
the race en masse rather than by any particular
advance along special individual lines. In more
recent years a somewhat different conception has
become popular. It seems that in many cases
among animals and plants sudden new departures
from the original type appear amid the offspring of
normal parents. Such new departures have been
called mutations, and evidence has been accumulat-
ing rapidly in recent years that these mutations may
become permanent, thus constituting a noticeable
advance in the race at a single step. So far as this
may occur, of course, an individual may count em-
phatically in the process of evolution. But if such
an individual does count, it is a result for which he
is wholly irresponsible, since it depends entirely

314 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

upon whether his germinal heritage has furnished
him with such a persistent mutation that he can hand
it on to his offspring. Moreover, if such mutations
do occur and form a controlling factor in evolution,
it still remains true that the individuals possessing
them influence the race only through their progeny.
If any animal should develop some mutation of ex-
treme value to his race, but should by accident be
prevented from leaving any offspring, his influence
upon the race would absolutely vanish and the race
be left exactly as if he had not been born. Among
animals, then, the general rule is that the individual
counts for nothing, and that the only way any indi-
vidual may count in the evolution of the race is by
the offspring which he leaves behind.

Among Men. — In contrast to this picture stand the
possibilities of the human race under the influence of
social inheritance ; for social heredity makes it pos-
sible for the individual to leave an impression upon
the race totally independent of his offspring. With
mankind, the influence which an individual may have
in the process of evolution is not simply through the
offspring he may leave, and it cannot be said that
the man who leaves no offspring leaves no influence
upon the race. It is perfectly evident that a Caesar,
a Luther, a Napoleon, a Bismarck, a Lincoln, and
hosts of others that might be enumerated have ex-
erted a most profound influence on the evolution of
mankind. It is equally evident that they did not do
this through their offspring. Some of them left no
children at all, and those who did leave children owed
their influence upon the progress of mankind not to
their children, who were few, but to the hosts of man-
kind upon whom they had had an influence. What

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 315

man had an influence in shaping the destiny of the
Western continent equal to that of Washington?
And yet he had no children. Among animals it is
the individual that produces and rears the greatest
number of offspring to maturity that is the greatest
success, while the one which j^roduces none is a total
failure. According to the standard of natural selec-
tion, Washington was a total failure, while the Jukes
family, with its numerous offspring, was a great
success. But the fact stands apparent that the Jukes
family has had no influence upon human evolution,
while Washington turned it in a new direction.
Among mankind the individual may count by what
he does during his life and not simply by the off-
spring he leaves.

Thus we find that social heredity has been respon-
sible for the greatest organizing force in history. As
we look over the history of mankind as far back as
we can trace it we find that the force of the individ-
ual has ever been the most potent influence in de-
veloping organization. It has been the force of per-
sonality that has been the center around which organ-
izations have usually developed. While principles
have been ever manifest as an underlying cause for
the different steps in social evolution, it has com-
monly been individuals that have produced the stim-
ulus toward union. The single reformer may change
the beliefs and hence the actions of the world; the
inventor changes the whole aspect of civilization and
the discoverer modifies every phase of the world
touched by man. Alexander made the great Grecian
empire; Caesar created imperial Rome; Mohammed
founded the great Mohammedan nation; Luther
changed the thoughts and actions of the world;

316 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Cavour created free Italy and Bismarck imperial
Germany. Throughout human history single indi-
viduals may be seen to be guiding the evolution of
society. This is an absolutely new phase in the his-
tory of the world; for such a condition never has
and never could have occurred among any animals
lower than man. It is clearly the new force of social
heredity that has brought into existence this new
mighty influence, which has been felt in all ages since
man began to unite into societies, and which is felt
to-day with even greater force than ever, since with
higher civilization the single individual becomes ca-
pable of doing greater works because he can control
the actions of larger associations of men. Social
heredity, by furnishing the exceptional individual
with almost unlimited powers, has thus called into
existence perhaps the most mighty force that has
contributed to the evolution of the social organism.

Civilization and Intelligence Have Developed

Together

We may notice next that the new force of social
heredity explains the recognized fact that intelli-
gence has developed as civilization has advanced.
That the intellectual possibilities of twentieth cen-
tury man are far above those of primitive man will
not be questioned. As long as science held the view
of heredity accepted before Weismann it was natural
to suppose that intelligence should advance with
civilization. As long as it was supposed that the
characters acquired by one generation could be
transmitted to the next it would follow that the
results of the accumulating experiences of the race
would be handed on from age to age, so that the

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 317

mental powers would increase with successive gen-
erations. But with the conception of heredity that
denies the transmission of acquired characters it is
no longer possible to think of one generation as
profiting by the characters acquired by the last, and
hence it has been difficult to explain how a develop-
ing civilization could develop mental powers. Now,
while science may not yet perhaps have definitely
reached the extreme position that acquired char-
acters can have no influence upon subsequent gen-
erations, still the discussion of the last two decades
has shown conclusively that such characters cannot
be counted upon as playing any important part in
evolution. This being the case, the questions arise :
1. If civilization is only a series of acquired char-
acters, and if acquired characters are not inherited,
how can we account for the fact that intelligence has
increased with developing civilization? 2. How can
we explain the evolution of intelligence itself if we
assume that acquired characters are not inherited?
3. If civilization is nothing but a series of acquired
characters, and if intelligence is a part of the organic
heritage of man, how could the former have any
influence upon the latter?

Human Progress. — We are frequently told that the
mind of man has not advanced at all since the time
of the Greeks. Perhaps this is true ; and it may be
perhaps said with equal cogency that the mind of
man has not advanced since the time of the Egyp-
tians, when they built their vast monuments so long
ago. We may even raise the question whether the
mind of man has any greater powers than it had in
the time of the old stone men of prehistoric ages;
for it is a question whether it did not take just as

318 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

much mental power to make the first crude imple-
ment out of stone, with nothing as a pattern and with
not even the idea of the possibility of making any-
thing like an artificial implement, as it does in these
later ages to fashion the most delicate instrument
when the inventor has all the patterns of previous
ages to aid him. When we come to try to compare
mental power of our twentieth-century inventors
and those of earlier ages we have no adequate
measure. Did Beethoven have a greater musical
genius than the savage who makes music on his crude
flute? Doubtless Beethoven produced greater music.
But he had a better instrument to work with, and
withal he had the music of centuries behind him to
stimulate and guide him. Is a Maxim with his
rapid-fire gun a greater inventor than the savage
who invented the bow and arrow? Who can answer
such a question? Certainly the rapid-fire gun is a
more intricate instrument; but the savage created
his bow and arrow out of nothing, while Maxim
utilized the discoveries of thousands of men behind
him. There is surely some reason for insisting that,
so far as innate abilities are concerned, the twentieth-
century man is not superior to the earliest race of
men of whom we have any knowledge. While it
hardly seems that such a conception is or can be true,
there is certainly enough of suggestion in it to make
us think soberly, and to ask ourselves what is this
boasted progress which the human race has made
during the centuries ?

For progress there has been beyond any question.
Whether twentieth-century man is superior to pre-
historic man we may at least doubt, but that the
human race of the twentieth century is vastly above

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 319

the prehistoric stone man none will venture to ques-
tion. Progress there has been of immense imj)ort.
But this progress has been primarily not in the
innate powers of man but in his acquired powers. It
is civilization that has advanced rather than the
man who has made the civilization. A man might,
if he lived long enough, heap up treasure for a cen-
tury, and at the end of the century he would doubt-
less be the possessor of a vastly greater pile of trea-
sure than at the end of the first year. With the
treasure he could do far greater things than he
could have done at the end of his first year of accu-
mulation. But he would not necessarily be a stronger
or a greater man simply because his j^ile of trea-
sure had grown for a hundred years. So the human
race has been heaping up treasures of vast utility
and has continued to do this for thousands of years.
The treasure pile has grown to prodigious size, and
with it mankind is capable of far greater achieve-
ments than he could accomplish when he began this
treasure-heaping. But he is not necessarily a better
animal than when he started. The treasure pile
which he has heaped up for his use we call civiliza-
tion. It has never been a part of his organic nature
any more than the miser's gold is a part of himself.
It has accumulated by laws of its own.

How Civilization Develops Intelligence

Social heredity furnishes the something that is
lacking in the understanding of human mental de-
velopment. The evolution of mankind has offered
many difficulties to the natural selection theory, and
even its most strenuous adherents have admitted
that there are phases in human evolution that do not

320 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

seem to be comprised under that general law. The
development of a mathematical, a musical, or an
inventive genius, or any other peculiar character
among civilized races, can be demonstrated not to
be due to natural selection. Social heredity would
account for them as follows. That each man has a
certain amount of mental plasticity is proved by the
fact that the mental nature of each individual is
capable of being molded by conditions. Now, in this
respect, as well as in others, there are many grades
in the inherited capabilities of individuals. Some
are born with minds especially plastic and hence
capable of a high education ; others with a less power
of being molded. This has come about over and
over again in the history of the world through the
ordinary processes of reproduction, just as varia-
tions in the colors of feathers and the length of wings
have occurred in birds. But these especially plastic
individuals grow into different kinds of adults under
different circumstances. In a savage community, be-
cause of the limited extent of his contact with man-
kind, such an individual must become a warrior, a
chieftain, or a medicine man ; while the same individ-
ual if brought up amid the wider environment of a
civilized nation might become a Napoleon, a Michel-
angelo, a Newton, a Beethoven, a Gladstone, or an
Edison. The innate genius of our great man is not
the result of natural selection ; it is simply one of the
normal variations in the educability of mind. But
the product that results from the action of the en-
vironment upon such exceptionally plastic minds is
widely different with different environments. The
musical genius of a Beethoven and the inventor of the
savage's tomtom may possible be on a par; but the

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 321

one has a better education and better instruments to
work with than the other. Thus social heredity
explains the origin of the modern individual with his
peculiar characteristics and his extraordinary
mental grasp, so much superior to that of earlier
days, even though the substratum of innate charac-
ters out of which the individual has been produced
may perhaps be no greater than was possessed by
mankind three thousand years ago. To explain the
condition of modern civilization, then, there need
have been no great increase of brain power over that
possessed by man long ago, but simply the action of
that series of acquired characters which furnishes
man with new tools. The real advance has been in
the treasures heaped up by social heredity and not
in the organic nature of man.

We thus easily understand the interaction of civil-
ization and intelligence. As the result of normal
variations individuals, and even races of men, have
appeared with more or less variable mental powers,
and these being due to internal factors are trans-
mitted by organic heredity. But although this may
be the explanation of the mental possibilities of the
twentieth-century newborn infant, it is not the ex-
planation of the great mental power of the twentieth-
century adult. The infant is from birth subjected
to the molding influences of the twentieth-century
environment, and this acting continually upon his
plastic mental nature produces finally an adult with
mental capabilities commensurate with the influences
that have been concerned in forming him. Hence
the higher the civilization the greater will be the
force of the influences at work to form the mind of
the growing child, and therefore the ability of the

322 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

mind to act when mature will be commensurate with
its education, which thus practically coincides with
our term ' ' social heredity. ' ' That the innate powers
of mankind have been increased by civilization it is
by no meanc necessary to believe. Nor is it neces-
sary to believe that the mental powers of the civilized
man at birth are materially higher than those of the
savage. That the innate powers of man become
immensely developed in each individual by the influ-
ence of civilization is a principle quite sufficient to
explain the evident increase in the mental powers of
mankind with the development of civilization. It is
not necessary to suppose even that the innate pow-
ers of the human mind have particularly increased
during the long period of evolution, but simply that
man has greatly developed the ability to increase
and use this mental power by the accumulating influ-
ences of those factors which are given to him by
social inheritance. Thus, again, we see that his evo-
lution has been external to his nature rather than
internal, social rather than organic. Social advance
rather than organic advance has become the goal of
evolution. The progress of humanity consists in the
growth of an artificial structure which has been built
rather than in any advance in the animal character-
istics of man. Hence it may follow that even while
the human animal might be remaining stationary,
without advancing at all, the human race might con-
tinue to progress with rapid strides toward its new
goal.

How Intelligence Develops Civilization

The question of how intelligence could have in
itself produced an advance in human evolution is

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 323

answered with equal ease. Even thougk civilization
is a series of acquired characters, these have accu-
mulated age after age because of the new force of
social heredity resulting from the social life of man.
Each generation teaches the next consciously and un-
consciously; each generation benefits by the discov-
eries of the last. Age after age men living in social
communities accumulate the discoveries, inventions,
customs, and modes of thinking, as well as the gener-
alizations of previous ages. These artificial products
can accumulate just as surely as can organic char-
acters; and they accumulate much more rapidly,
since each generation can materially add to that
which it received from the last and can then hand on
the accumulated inheritance. The progress is far
more rapid than the slow one of the accumulation of
organic characters. By example or discovery a
single generation may add immensely to the total
sum of social inheritance; as, for example, when
printing or the telephone was given to contribute
its influence ujaon civilization. In organic evolution
a single generation contributes little, and not at all
unless valuable variations happen to appear in the
germ plasm. Advance is therefore slow. But since
any individual in the human race may add greatly to
the content of social heredity, the advance of social
evolution may be very rapid. Thus the laws of
social heredity explain both how the mental achieve-
ments of human beings develop with civilization, and
also how civilization has developed with the growth
of mental powers, in spite of, or, rather, because of,
tlie fact that civilization is only a series of acquired
characters not transmitted to posterity by the ordi-
nary laws of inheritance.

324 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Individual Responsibility

Another result of the recognition of the signifi-
cance of social heredity is to restore to us the feel-
ing of individual responsibility, which Weismann's
theory of heredity and the discussion of eugenics
have tended to destroy. If each individual is the
result of his inherited tendencies alone, and if his
heritage is fixed by the unalterable laws of inherit-
ance, there seems to be little encouragement toward
individual striving. Our inherited characters are
fixed by the mating of our parents, and the charac-
ters that we may transmit to our own offspring are
similarly fixed when we choose our own mates. By
the principles of organic heredity, nothing that we
may subsequently do can modify these fixed char-
acters. Our eugenists tell us that an evil trait may
persist in a family for generations in spite of any
kind of training, and even in spite of mating with
one in whom the weakness is lacking. The laws of
organic heredity make it hopeless to strive by any
kind of life either to eradicate a weakness or to intro-
duce strength into the nature of our children. Per-
sonal responsibility thus tends to vanish entirely as
we become filled with this conception. We do not
seem to be responsible for our own acts inasmuch
as they are determined by our inherited traits, nor
are we responsible for our children's inheritance,
since it is beyond our reach. The life one lives seems
to weigh as nothing and to be without any influence.
With these conceptions it would seem to be a matter
of wisdom that attention should be concentrated
simply upon the matter of choosing one's mate, as
eugenics are at the present time insisting. All of

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 325

this inevitably follows from fixing our attention too
strongly upon the recognized laws of organic inherit-
ance. Among animals, individuals certainly are not
responsible either for their own inheritance or that
of their offspring.

But when we realize that human social evolution
has not been an organic one, and that it has been
due not to congenital but to acquired characters,
not to organic but to social heredity, the sense of
responsibility for our lives comes back to us with
greater force than ever. It is exactly these acquired
characters that are forming the future. It is the
lives that men live that create social inheritance.
It is not a matter of indifference to our children or
to posterity in general what kind of a life we indi-
vidually live. We are responsible for the social her-
itage that we give our children, even if we are not
responsible for their organic heritage. We may
greatly modify the social inheritance of our off-
spring, even after they are born, though we may not
modify their organic inheritance; and in determin-
ing what they will become and what they will do in
the world, the social inheritance commonly counts
much more than the organic inheritance. It has
made a great difference to the heritage of the world
that a Luther, a Washington, or a Lincoln lived the
life he did, for with men the life counts, quite inde-
pendently of organic inheritance. The heritage of
the race is determined more by what men do than by
what they inherit from their parents by organic
inheritance. For all of these reasons, personal re-
sponsibility, that seems to be vanishing when we fix
our attention closely upon the laws of heredity and
the discussions of eugenics, comes back to us more

326 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

forcibly than ever, since we realize that human social
evolution has been built up chiefly from what men
have done, and, secondarily, from what they have
received from their parents by the laws of organic
heredity. Of course those who advocate the modern
views of eugenics will admit all this, for no one ques-
tions the influence of environment. But the danger
is that, in the discussion of the laws of inheritance
and the interest that is aroused by the principles of
modern eugenics, the effect of social inheritance will
be overshadowed, until this side of the question will
be quite lost from sight. But we should not lose
sight of the fact that the life of the man counts as
well as his heritage. In trying to build up an en-
vironment for our children or for posterity, we may
thus have the decided satisfaction of feeling that it
will not be in vain, for the social inheritance is even
more sure than the organic. The result of the agita-
tion in the problem of eugenics is surely of inestim-
able value, though under the complex conditions
of society the prospect of improving the race along
these lines is not very great. But as an offset to
this rather unpleasant conclusion, we may rejoice in
the fact that whatever is acquired by one generation
in human society, it is sure to be acquired again by
the next ; and thus, by using our intelligence, we may
build up a social heritage that is greater and more
far-reaching than is our organic heritage. The
actions of one generation of men are not lost upon
the race, as are the actions of a race of buffaloes;
but they remain to have their influence upon poster-
ity. The buffalo influenced posterity only through
his offspring; man influences posterity through his
acts.

laws controlling human social heredity 327

Social Heeedity and Language

Social heredity gives us further light upon the
question raised in an earlier chapter — why no ani-
mals have developed a language. We have seen that
animals have the beginnings of language, but that in
man alone these beginnings developed into speech.
Apart from the difference in intelligence of man and
other animals, we find in the factors discussed in this
chapter another reason why language has developed
only in man.

Language is a phenomenon that can be transferred
from generation to generation only by social hered-
ity. It is a purely artificial product, an acquired
character, and is never handed on by organic hered-
ity. The child, at birth, inherits from his parents
the power of learning language, but no trace of lan-
guage itself. This he acquires by being taught, that
is, by social heredity. Now, social heredity, as we
have seen, has very little influence upon animals.
Animals are controlled by organic heredity almost
alone, and since language is not transmitted by
organic heredity, it could never be handed from gen-
eration to generation. It could never accumulate, as
it does by social heredity.

The last statement is really the solution of the
problem. Language is an extremely complex phe-
nomenon, so complex that it could never be devel-
oped anew by a single individual during his short
life. If two children were removed in infancy from
the rest of mankind, and from that time on lived
together, they would very likely develop some means
of communicating with each other; but they would
not in their short lives develop such a complicated

328 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

tool as a language. The result of the experiments
and trials of thousands of generations during thou-
sands of years has been that each generation takes
possession of what was built by all previous genera-
tions and adds something in turn for subsequent
generations to improve upon. In this way our com-
plica-ted language has been built up. Now, this pos-
sibility of receiving the product of previous genera-
tions and adding to them is dependent upon the fact
that man lives in lasting communities in close asso-
ciations. Among animals the young associate with
their parents at most for only a few weeks and then
commonly leave them to care for themselves. In
most cases they separate from their parents com-
pletely and never know them again. This in itself
absolutely precludes the possibility of their develop-
ing a language, which can come only from a close
association of individuals for hundreds of genera-
tions. Language has thus been dependent upon the
formation of lasting organizations.

Such organizations are not formed among animals.
Among higher animals, with which, of course, we are
alone concerned, the family association is fleeting
even when it occurs, and individuals rarely remain
together more than a few weeks, not long enough to
learn or develop language. We could, therefore,
look for traces of language only among such animals
as form societies. In this connection it is, therefore,
very significant to find that social animals do have
a language, a crude one to be sure, but still a lan-
guage. The social insects certainly communicate
with each other in some way. Among the herds of
ungulates we find examples of warnings from sen-
tinels which indicate danger. Among the social

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 329

monkeys Garner claims to have found the highest
trace of language yet reported among animals.

In short, the nondevelopment of language among
animals is due fully as much to the low condition of
their social customs as to their inferior intelligence.
Such a complicated phenomenon as speech could
develop in a community of associated men only after
many generations of experimenting, and it could be
transmitted to each generation only by social hered-
ity. The universal habit of forming lasting associa-
tions among men, and the lack of social customs of
similar duration among animals, furnishes a sufficient
explanation for the development of langTiage in one
case and its absence in the other. Language, like
civilization, is based primarily upon social habits
rather than upon intelligence.

Social Heredity Leads to Altruism

We have noticed that there are two fundamental
instincts innate in human nature. The egoistic
instinct impels each individual to seek his own inter-
ests, and is found throughout the human race. The
altruistic instinct is in some respects in conflict with
the egoistic, and impels each individual to cherish
the interests of others. The first of these two is the
primitive instinct, and is shared by all other animals.
The latter is a secondary one, is in general weaker
than the former, and is almost distinctly confined to
the human race, although slight traces of it may be
found among other animals. The fundamental law
of nature, based upon the struggle for existence with
the resulting natural selection, is founded upon the
instinct of egoism. It is very significant now to find
that the force of social heredity emphatically leads

/"'

330 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

toward altruism, and hence toward the development
of the ethical nature. So emphatically is this true
that it is not an overstatement to say that altruism is
one of the results of the action of this new law of
social inheritance.

That this is true may be first illustrated by a com-
parison of the instincts of the child and the adult.
The child in his early years is guided by the pure
primary instincts which are wholly egoistic. These
lead him to seek for his own pleasure, to yield to his
passions, to think only of self-interests; and in the
first few years of life nothing like an interest in
others is seen. But each year he becomes more and
more controlled by a second type of influences, by the
altruistic instinct, which gradually curbs the egoistic
instincts of childhood and leads him into a life con-
formable to the rules and customs of the social
organism. For the first year or two the child acts
out his natural animal instincts. After a little he
develops the moral sense and becomes more and more
controlled by artificial laws, by the acquired char-
acteristics of the social organism. Not until he
becomes an adult does he fully enter into his com-
plete social inheritance. Of course he is never freed
from his original instinct of egoism, but simply has
engrafted upon it a new instinct which causes him to
take an interest in others. Organic heredity, in
short, transmits animal instincts, and leads to the
placing of self-interests ahead of others. Social
heredity, as its action becomes gradually developed
in the individual, emphasizes the rights and interests
of others. Organic evolution is clearly egoistic;
social heredity is as plainly altruistic in its tendency.

Social evolution, being thus based upon the new

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 331

instinct of altruism, is not always in harmony with
some of the strongest animal instincts. The impulses
for self-seeking were inherent in man before the
altruistic, and hence there is sure to be confusion and
conflict when the social organism demands anything
in contradiction to the animal organism. Indeed,
much of the confusion and turmoil that has arisen in
the history of mankind in connection with civilized
races has been due to the fact that this artificial struc-
ture which man has been building has been out of
harmony with some of the primary, innate impulses
of the individual nature. The innate impulses of man
lead him in one direction, toward self-seeking, while
civilization is trying to lead him in the contrary
direction, of placing the interests of others on a par
with or ahead of his own interests. The primary
instincts of mankind tell him to gratify his desires,
to yield to his passions whenever they demand or
occasion offers. Such is the nature of animals;
such are the fundamental instincts of mankind, as
can be clearly seen when we examine the conditions
of life either of low races of savages or of the low
classes of civilized people living in the slums of our
great cities. The customs and laws of society, how-
ever, developed by the influence of the ethical instinct
and intelligence combined, tell man that he must not
yield to his passions, but he must hold them in check ;
that he must not always seek for his self-interests,
but think of the interests of others. It is this con-
flict between the demands of the social organism and
the demands of the animal organism that lies at the
basis of a large part of the criminality found in civ-
ilized races. Society tells man that what it calls
duty should stand ahead of personal pleasure. While

332 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

the primary impulses of mankind tell him that self-
interest should stand ahead, the social organism is
insisting with greater and greater force each genera-
tion that the interests of others should be placed
upon a par with, or perhaps in advance of, self-
interests. It is the demand of society that thus
creates duties. It is society that decides what is the
best type of living to fit its demands, and as a conse-
quence the possibility of failing to live according to
such demands becomes a breach of law. There could
be no crime if there were no law. Social inheritance
has produced crime, because it has distinctly form-
ulated certain rules and regulations in accordance
with which men should live in their relation with
each other. Social heredity inevitably leads toward
altruistic relations in contradistinction to the egoistic.
Ideals Advance Faster Than Realization. — For reasons
already pointed out, it is evident that social heredity
increases in extent with each generation, and that
every century sees the heritage which is handed to
subsequent generations on a higher and a broader
plane than the previous century. The demands of
society in the twentieth century are far ahead of the
demands of society two thousand years ago; they
are even greatly ahead of the demands of society
a century ago. Every new demand made by society
upon the human race is a new attempt to subvert and
contradict the primary instinct of self-seeking. The
fundamental egoistic impulses in the human race
have always been and still are immensely powerful
in controlling human action; and as a result the
activities of mankind fall far behind the rules set
for it by the advanced altruistic principles of any
particular age. The average of the human race

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 333

never measures up to the standard which the altru-
istic principles of egoism have set. These standards
advance rapidly with each century, and the attempts
of the human race to bring the race up to the stand-
ards are never wholly successful. The failure of the
human race in general to hold in subjection its pri-
mary egoistic impulses and live in accordance with
the standards of society constitute what, in general,
we call crime, or sin, or immorality, or any other
names indicative of failure to live in accordance with
society's standards. From all this it will follow that
if these standards continue to advance, the human
race will never measure up to them, and will never
seem to be living very closely in accordance with its
ethical standards. To a superficial observer, there
will always appear to be a failure of the human race
to advance in morality because it will be about so
far behind the standards that are set by any partic-
ular generation. But if we remember that our
standards are growing and becoming more elevated
with each century, and that the human race simply
lags behind those standards, we shall see that our
conclusions as to the advance of the human race must
not be based upon the relation between the standards
set by ethics at any generation and the activities of
that generation; but we must make an actual com-
parison of conditions of things independent of such
standards. When this is done we find beyond ques-
tion that the twentieth-century man lives far more in
accordance with the standard of altruism and far
less completely under the control of purely egoistic
impulses than in any previous century. The human
race, then, even in morals, has clearly advanced, and
stands upon a higher plane to-day than ever before,

334 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

even thougli it continues to come far short of meet-
ing its own standards, which are with each genera-
tion placed in advance over the standards of any ,
previous age.

While in a narrower sense this new law of ethics
places the human race above the law of natural selec-
tion, in its broader sense man cannot free him-
self from the application of that all-j^ervading law.
Families and races are constantly disappearing be-
fore the inexorable law of failure to reproduce ; and
the problem as to what families will continue to exist
and what ones will be exterminated by failure to
meet the conditions of nature depends upon many
complicated conditions. One of the important ones
is clearly the power of the family or of the race to
act in accordance with the new principles of ethics.
Evolution of man has been and will constantly con-
tinue to be characterized by the survival of such fam-
ilies and such races as have impulses in their nature
best adapted to form strong social organisms.
Those races whose impulses lead them to live in
constant opposition with each other have fallen,
while those whose innate impulses have led them to
love society, as well as to preserve peace and har-
mony in the tribe or in the kingdom, are the races
that have succeeded. The race that has the most
delicate moral sense, the most sensitive conscience, is
the race whose impulses lead it toward the strongest
concentration, the strongest unity. It is such races
as this that natural selection has produced and will
in the long run j^reserve. From such races there
have been slowlv eliminated the families in which the
impulses are out of harmony with this type of social
organism, and hence in this far-reaching way nat-

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 335

ural selection is tending in the human race toward
the enhancement of the ethical nature of man.

Final Conteast of Organic and Social Heredity

Organic evolution has produced for man his body
and brain with mental powers in which the amount
of fixed inheritance is slight while the plasticity is
great. Natural selection acting upon man has pre-
served those races in which the social instinct is best
developed, together with such other instincts as lead
toward a willingness to sacrifice self-interests in
some degree. These latter factors have been slowly
developing during his history. In distinction from
the evolution of animals, among which the tendency
has been for fixed adjustments of the nervous system
to be formed and inherited (instincts), mankind has
apparently developed less and less fixity in nervous
structure and become more plastic. With mankind
natural selection has largely resulted in the elimina-
tion of fixed instincts, leaving a race whose nervous
system is very complex and whose possibilities of
combination are extremely great, but a nervous
system that is not preformed at birth and is therefore
capable of an almost unlimited amount of subsequent
molding by the action of the environment upon it.
Up to this point we are dealing with factors which
are organic in nature and transmitted by germinal
heredity.

Inasmuch as this brain is not preformed, and its
machinery is not already adjusted into its intricate
relations by prenatal influences, it is possible that the
structure which arises upon this plastic substratum
may be immensely varied. Upon this plastic nature
the force of social heredity has engrafted the struc-

336 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

ture of civilization. Customs of the races have
slowly developed, and these, through education, mold
this machine, from the time of birth to the time of
adult life. This produces a change in the mind of
man far more rapidly than is possible by organic
evolution. The chief factors which separate the
European from the Bushman are not, then, in his
innate, but in his acquired characteristics. We do
not mean by this that there are no innate differences
between the Bushman and the European. The dif-
ferences in inherited mental power of the two are
perhaps great; but the chief differences between
them, in adult life, are in the mental powers which
each has acquired rather than in the mental attri-
butes which each has inherited. Civilization is thus
a heritage, handed down from father to child ; but it
is like property passed on from generation to gen-
eration, and not like that organic inheritance by
which the parent transmits to his child the color of
his hair, or his eyes, or his stature, or his mental
power and moral sense.

Hence, social evolution is something quite differ-
ent from organic evolution. On the one hand, we
have a phenomenon resulting from the slowly modi-
fying structure of the life substance; on the other
hand, we have a development of purely artificial
factors, capable of accumulation and of being handed
on from generation to generation without any mold-
ing of the characters which are transmitted by inher-
itance. The great lesson to be drawn is that social
heredity is under the action of laws totally different
from those of organic heredity. We may deny that
acquired characteristics play any part in the proc-
ess of organic evolution, but it is clear enough that

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 337

acquired characteristics not only play a part but
that they constitute almost the whole social evolu-
tion. With this understanding of the development
of civilization, it is clear that the problem of explain-
ing the evolution of society is not like the problem
of the evolution of animals. All attempts made to
compare the development of society with the develop-
ment of the organism are fundamentally vitiated by
these radical differences in the nature of the phe-
nomena to be explained. In one case we have the
explanation of the gradual modification of the organ-
ism through the laws of selection and descent. In
the other case we have merely the accumulation of
a series of artificial products which heap themselves
up age after age, through the process of accretion.
The development of society under the force of social
heredity is a phenomenon entirely distinct from that
of the development of animals under the laws of
organic evolution, and they must never be confused
with each other. The laws which regulate the one
are clearly not the laws that regulate the other. Or-
ganic heredity has produced the human animal,
but social heredity has produced the modern social
man.

The two different classes of influences which de-
termine what any living being shall be have some-
times been referred to under the terms "nature"
and "nurture," the former referring to that derived
by organic inheritance and the latter by social inher-
itance. It has been a general result of the last thirty
years to emphasize nature and minimize nurture.
Perhaps this was natural, since the previous gen-
erations had placed more emphasis upon nurture
and failed to appreciate nature. Our study of the

338 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

principles of social evolution has reinstated the
force of the enviionnient in the development of social
though not in the development of organic evolution.
In a sober consideration of the principles of modern
eugenics it behooves us, therefore, not to reject or
overstate the effect of either of these two forces, but,
rather, to carefully determine their relative influ-
ence. With the eugenists we may recognize that all
features of our bodily structure are controlled by
the laws of inheritance. With them too we must
admit that one's innate mental powers are largely
or wholly matters of organic inlieritance ; and prob-
ably, though this is less certain, the same is true of
the moral sense with which each is endowed. So far,
then, as concerns the problem of improving our phys-
ical nature, or the innate mental ability and the keen-
ness of the moral instinct, this must be done, if done
at all, through the control of marriage. This is what
our eugenists are trying to emphasize and to bring
about. But we must not forget, in the enthusiasm
with which we welcome improvement in this direc-
tion, that there is another even larger side of the
question. Organic heredity simply gives us certain
powers, while social heredity determines what we
shall do with those powers. Man is molded into a
social individual by social forces, and whether or not
he fits into our society depends more upon the social
forces at work than upon the powers that nature
gave him. Even though he have an inheritance weak
both mentally and morally, an individual may be
molded into a fairly good member of the social or-
ganism if he is surrounded by proper environment;
but if he is reared in the wrong environment, tending
to produce a wrong social inheritance, he will be an

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 339

undesirable member of society, no matter what may
have been his innate powers.

When we realize, as we are now in position to do,
the tremendous influence of this factor of social
heredity in the development of humanity, we are led
to the feeling that, after all, the primary distinc-
tion between man and animals has been that man
alone has developed the power of utilizing this new
force. Among animals social inheritance is a factor
of slight moment, but with man of the greatest. The
real stimulus which has acted upon man to produce
his wonderful development in contrast to animals
has been the utilization of the new force of social
inheritance. It is this which has produced civiliza-
tion, and it is civilization that really separates man
from the lower orders of nature. The utilization by
man of this new force has been brought about as the
result of his growing organization and centraliza-
tion, and this is due to the instincts which, in gen-
eral, belong to the ethical nature. It is thus the
instinct which leads to the willingness of the individ-
ual to sacrifice his own interests that constitutes
the real stimulus under whose influence human evo-
lution has taken place.

Human evolution has thus been a double one. The
laws which had been at work for countless ages pro-
ducing a world full of its numerous animals and
plants produced also the first human animals with
some points of strength and some of weakness. But
among other features of this new production there
were certain Instincts that led to social life and to
a spirit of self-sacrifice. These new characters in
time brought to the front the force of social heredity
and a new era of evolution began, ending in the

340 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

comparatively rapid evolution of civilization. This
latter phase of the great sweep of the evolutionary
processes of nature belongs to man alone, and has
made him the unquestioned master of nature, the
mastery having been given him by his own unique
evolution, made possible by the utilization of the new
phase of inheritance which has been called Social
Heredity.

General Conclusions

It may be instructive to ask a final question : Are
there any great lessons which may be learned from
social evolution of the past, that can guide us in our
endeavor to direct that evolution in the future?
While man cannot stem the tide of advance, he may,
in a measure, guide it, and may, at all events, adapt
his life and his laws to it. It is well to bear in mind
a few general facts.

1. We may with absolute certainty expect in the
future that social evolution will i^rogress in the direc-
tion of greater concentration and greater organiza-
tion. This is the law of the greatest achievement
with the least expenditure, and is absolutely irresist-
ible. All attempts to stop increasing centralization,
like those of anarchism or democracy, and all laws
devised to prevent organization will be futile. They
may be useful in preventing too precipitous an ad-
vance, but they cannot stem the rising tide.

2. With the growing centralization there will be a
parallel development of the worth of the individual.
This will be brought about, however, not by giving
man back his original freedom. Such a course would
deprive him absolutely of the advantages accruing
from civilization. The worth of the individual will

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 341

be increased by an increasing care taken of him by-
central authority. The evident drift of social evo-
lution is to give to each individual a larger share in
the good things of the world, either by legislation
or as the result of modified social conditions. But
although this will be the general trend of evolution,
it will not be uninterrupted.

3. Social evolution has not come from the con-
stant advance of any one principle, but as the result
of a seesaw. Practically every advance in the con-
dition of man has come from struggle. Constant
development in any one line has always meant stag-
nation. It is only as opposing ideas and opposing
beliefs and interests are brought into contact with
each other that social evolution has advanced. Ri-
valry and conflicting interests are necessary for an
advance. If we hope for the future advance of the
race, we must not aim for the cessation of struggle,
for this would mean an end of progress. It has been
the conflict of centralization and individualism, the
opposition of altruism and egoism, that has caused
the advance of man to higher and higher grades of
civilization. Contests alone can settle world prob-
lems and place man on a higher plane. Without them
no great questions could be definitely answered, and
the race would live a life of stagnation. In these
contests many will suffer, but the results will be
greater organization, greater value of the individ-
ual, greater accomplishment by the race, in short,
progress.

4. We may be sure that the family or that race
that fails to rear abundant offspring will be dis-
tanced by those whose reared children are numerous.
Race suicide and family suicide have been and still

342 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

are playing an important part in determining the
future of the race. It is not, however, wholly a ques-
tion of producing, but one of rearing children that is
concerned, and to a considerable extent the smaller
numbers of families of the upper classes are compen-
sated for by the larger percentage that is reared. At
the same time, we must remember that those races
and those families that fail to reproduce themselves
and leave abundant progeny behind, cannot in any
proper sense be called the higher classes.

5. The new force of social heredity has produced
a great change in the condition of evolution, bringing
it about that the family and the race that determines
the direction of evolution is not necessarily the one
that produces the largest number of vigorous off-
spring. Through social heredity, a single individual,
though leaving no offspring, may turn the direction
of evolution, and have more influence upon mankind
than another with numerous progeny. Hence, while
emphasis should be placed upon reproductive effi-
ciency, even greater emphasis needs to be placed
upon making the individual's life count, since the
influence of the individual upon evolution through
his life may be far greater than his infliuence through
his offspring.

6. Eecognizing that the particular phase which civ-
ilization has taken has been due to the factors which
we have called social heredity, we must reach the sig-
nificant conclusion that the guidance and direction of
human evolution will in the future be largely in our
own hands, as it has been in the past. For the de-
velopment of the fundamental instincts upon which
society is based we may be dependent upon the laws
of organic inheritance. For this we can assume no

LAWS CONTROLLING HUMAN SOCIAL HEREDITY 343

responsibility, though perhaps we may improve the
race inheritance if we can properly control mar-
riages. But for the vast and complicated structure
of civilization which has been built upon this founda-
tion mankind is responsible, and each person who
lives his life among men is responsible for a certain
share in shaping the evolution of the future.

7. The hope for the future must lie largely in the
development of the ethical nature. For the advance
of civilized society there is a need for organization
and the ethical nature alone teaches the necessity of
sacrifice which is the key of organization. Religion,
therefore, cannot be left out of the development of
society, for that alone gives vitality to ethics, offers
a reason for the sacrifices of present interests, and
thus furnishes the cement necessary for lasting
union. Education without religion makes cold, cal-
culating men, with self-centered interests, and any
system of social advance which leaves out the reli-
gious side of nature leaves out the one force that
makes possible lasting organization upon which civ-
ilization depends. Society not only has been, but
must remain, ethical in its tendency and aims. New
laws, new customs, new conditions, may all be desir-
able and all have their influence. But unless they
involve as a central factor the elevation of the ethical
nature of man, they will be futile in the end from lack
of vitality. That great series of influences which in
our Western nations are called religions, since they
furnish the only real grounds for sacrifice and right
living, are, after all, the hope for the future, rather
than education or any system of laws and customs
that mav be devised.

Although in the organic evolution of animals

344 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION

nature rather than nurture has been the predominant
force, in human social evolution nurture rather than
nature has stood foremost. It is not what we are
born, but what we become after birth that makes
us men : it is not the powers of babes, but what civili-
zation makes of those powers that constitutes the
essence of mankind. The future is full of hope.

INDEX

Accumulations, 23

Acquired characters, 10, 24, 29,
42, 288
inheritance of, 10, 306
in human evolution, 306

Advance, social rather than
organic, 321

Agglutinative languages, 65

Agriculture, effect of, 228

Alcoholism, 241

Alter ego, 112, 116

Altruism, 78, 120, 253, 256, 261,
329
alone produces advance, 257
makes strong nations, 253
vs. egoism, 254, 330

Amphictyon, 170

Anarchism, 186, 192
has no religion, 277

Animal instincts, 247

Animal language, 44

Animal societies, 145

Ants and bees, 145, 284

Aryan race, 139, 165, 167, 196,
234, 291
certralization within, 170
chieftain not a religious

head, 169
growth of nations, 171
migrations of, 167

Australia, 238

Barbarians, classification of,

151
Bees, 283

Beethoven, 318, 320
Bird societies, 145
Birth rate, 217
Bushman, 100, 149, 336

Callicax family, 295
Centralization, a source
weakness, 175

and individual value, 196

force of, 174, 193

origin of, 153

tendency toward, 178
Chieftain, 208
Child language, 47, 51, 61

of

345

Children, influence of, 134, 136
China, 161, 236
City, influence of, 290
Civilization an artiflcial prod-
uct, 281, 286

and intelligence, 319, 321

based on acquired charac-
ters, 288

dependent on altruism, 261

develops intelligence, 322

ethical in its aim, 260

founded on instinct, 217
Clans, 84, 149
Codes of morals, evolution of,

82
Colorado canon, 7
Communal system, 162

based on ability, 162

lack of centralizing force in,
164

makes men, 166

weakness of, 164
Comparative philology, 55
Concepts, 4, 54
Congenital characters, 29
Conscience, 4, 5, 94, 98, 106,
108, 117

authority of, 122

origin of, 110
Contrast of animal and social
man, 17, 20

of organic and social he-
redity, 335
Crusades, 209, 255
Customs, 22

Darwin, 9, 75

Differences between man and
animals, 4

Diseases, venereal, 14

Disintegration, tendency to-
ward, 179, 264, 265

Divine right of kings, 165, 275

Duties, 82, 84, 109, 141

Duty, sense of, 103

Educated conscience, 298
Education, 289, 290

J46

INDEX

Edwards family, 39, 295
Egoism, 254

or altruism, 223
Elimination, factors concerned

in, 232
Embryology, human, 2
Emotions, 3, 219
England, 174, 175, 220
Environment, 301

action of, 287
Eskimos, 148, 150
Ethical instinct, 248

not based on reason, 249

produces strong nations, 251
Ethical nature, instinctive, 204
Ethics, places society above
the individual, 261

sacrifices demanded by, 269
Eugenics, 11, 12, 324, 326, 338
Evolution of man, evidence

for, 1
Extermination by (warfare,
231

Family, 82

customs, 87

expansion of, 148

life among animals, 129, 139

life, forces contributing to,
133

origin of, 132

permanence of, 142

socially inherited, 293

the unit of natural selection,
142, 225
Feudalism, 181, 190
Forces of progress, 310

producing disintegration, 200

producing union, 207
Fossils, 1

France, 191, 193, 217
Frederick the Great, 127
Freedom, 191

loss of, 182
French Revolution, 220
Fuegians, 149

Garner, 58, 329
Germans, 175, 235
Germinal substance, 29
Gesture language, 57
Government, 6, 22
Greece, 213, 219
Greeks, 128, 171, 184, 213

Heredity, 9, 29

general laws of, 10

social and organic, con-
trasted, 26
Higher classes, 243, 245
Hindus, 236
Human progress, 317

Ideals, advance of. 111, 332
Imitation of a model, 105
Indians, 128, 210, 232
Individual, exaltation of, 187

freedom, 183

influence of among animals,
312
among men, 314

responsibility, 324

sacrificed to the race, 76, 183,
187

value, 183, 186, 188, 195, 200

vs. society, 188
Individualism, 143, 164, 210

and centralization, 195
Individuals as organizing

centers, 153
Infancy, length of, 137
Inflectional languages, 65
Instincts, 34, 215

based on structure, 282

transferred by organic he-
redity, 284
Instinctive actions in animals,
215

in man, 216
Intellect vs. instinct, 204

vs. moral sense, 205
Intelligence, 34

develops civilization, 322

leads to disintegration, 265
Isolative languages, 65

Jukes family, 28, 39, 295
Justice, 88, 89, 271

Kaiser, 19

King, a religious head, 157

Knowledge, 22

Labor unions, 194, 255
Lamarkism, 301
Language, 22, 327

acquirement of, 49

building of, 51

INDEX

347

Language developed only in
man, 67, 328

development of, 64

inheritance of, 38

of animals, 44

of children, 44, 47

of savages, 55

origin of, 58

primitive, 48

the foundation of society, 44

the result of growth, 50
Latin races, 213
Laws, 87

origin of, 86

controlling evolution, 8
Length of life, 33
Lincoln, 19, 314
Louis XII, 89

Mammals, societies among, 146

Man, accomplishments of, 203

Martyr, 94

Mathematical genius, 320

Maxim, 318

Mental evolution, 3
and language, 66, 71
vs. physical evolution, 202

Microorganisms, 227, 242

Migrations of the Aryans, 234

Mob action, 218, 221

Modern nations, formation of,
173

Mohammedanism, 274

Monkeys, 58, 97, 180

Moral codes, inheritance of,
292
evolution of, 82

Moral nature, innate or ac-
quired, 72, 73, 296

Moral sense, 4, 5, 22. 94, 248
among savages, 95, 99
and moral codes, 113
and social heredity, 121
development of, 106
inheritance of, 41
innate or acquired, 73, 95, 122
in primitive family, 96
nature of, 94
new with man, 73
organic or acquired, 294
origin of, 95, 118
origin of in a child, 104
the foundation of social
evolution, 267

Morals and laws, 86
Mother's love, 79
Motives in low races, 97, 100
Muller's "roots," 52
Mutations, 119, 313

Napoleon, 193, 314

Natural forces, explain natural
phenomena, 6

Natural selection, affecting
peaceful nations, 238
among higher classes, 243
among lower classes, 240
and the human race, 223, 334
develops ethical nations, 334
leads to disintegration, 264
not necessary for human

progress, 308
reversal of, 250

Nature vs. nurture, 11, 304, 337

Nurture, 304

Obligations, 83, 91, 100

broadening of, 91

to one's enemies, 93
Opportunity vs. license, 199
Organic and social heredity,

summary, 300
Organic heredity, 26, 37

in man, 35, 292

its uncertainty, 37
Organization, 206, 233

and individuals, 153

foundation of, 207

growth of, 150, 178

significance of, 126
Other self, 105, 112

Panmixia, 251

Passions, 243

Patriarchal nations, 159

Patriarchal system, 156
based on the family, 156
religious authority of the

king, 157
weakness of, 160, 161

Patriotism, 182, 276

Perceptions, 4

Permanency of inherited traits,
11

Persian empire, 160, 213

Philology, evidence from, 49

Political parties, 194

Primitive family, conditiott
of, 137, 140

348

INDEX

Primitive language, 48, 57, 61
and child language, 61

Progress social rather than
organic, 319

Race characters, change of, 234
Racial poisons, 15
Rearing of offspring, 233
Reason eminently selfish, 266
Recox-ds of language building,

52
Reformation, 143
Religion the foundation of

strong government, 273
function of, 278
influence of, 157
universality of, 271
Religious leaders, 157, 163
Reproduction, 9
Reproductive instincts, 76, 78
Responsibility, 324
Right and wrong, 87, 94, 97,

104, 106, 107, 112, 115, 297
among savages, 98
Roman Church, 86, 174, 181,

190, 219, 254, 274
Romans, 172, 185, 189, 210, 213,

217, 219, 236
"Roots" of language, 52, 54
Royalty, rise of, 191, 255
Russia, 176

Sacrifice of present to future,

262
demanded by ethics, 270
in reproduction, 76
Salmon, 5, 76, 78
Sanskrit, 51, 52
Savage races, classification of,

151
Scope of social and organic

heredity, 31
Selection, action of to-day, 237-

240, 243
Sentence words, 56, 59
Sexual diseases, 14
Sexual instincts, 134
Short lives as limiting social

heredity, 33
Sitting Bull, 19
Slavery, 220
Social attributes, transmission

of, 40
evolution, 17, 267

Social heredity, 24, 25, 26, 37
altruistic, 330

and acquired characters, 27
and environment, 27, 301
and language, 66, 327
and organic, contrasted, 26,

335
in animals, 31
in man, 36
its certainty, 37
laws of, 26

leads to altruism, 329
scope of, 41
significance of, 29

Social instincts, 30, 148

Social life among animals, 81

Social man, 17, 21, 23

Social organism, 126

Socialism, 192, 200, 260

Societies, formation of, 145

Society not founded on in-
telligence, 212
powers given by, 19

Starvation, 229, 238

Struggle for existence in man,
225, 309
for the life of others, 79
for the life of the species, 74,

79
of man with man, 230
with inanimaie nature, 227
with lower animals, 226

Sympathy, 101

Syphilis, 15

Subordination of self, 180

Teutons, 213
Tools, 3

Tribes, 84, 149, 151
Truce of God, 190

Uniformity of law, 7
United States, 175, 194, 238

Variation, 9
Venereal diseases, 244

Wallace, 69

War, 208, 231, 236

an organizing force, 157
Washington, 155, 315
Weismann, 10, 29, 251, 306
Writing, 22. 53

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