THERE are wars and rumors of wars in a portion of the territory occupied
by the doctrine of organic evolution. All is not working smoothly and
well and according to formula. It begins to appear that those men of
science who, having derived the doctrine of organic evolution in its
modern form from observations on earthworms, on climbing-plants, and on
brightly colored birds, and who then straightway applied it blithely to
man and his affairs, have made enemies of no small part of the human
race.
It was all well enough to treat some earthworms, some climbing-plants,
and some brightly colored birds as fit, and others as unfit, to survive;
but when this distinction is extended over human beings and their
economic, social, and political affairs, there is a general pricking-up
of ears. The consciously fit look down on the resulting discussions with
complacent scorn. The consciously unfit rage and roar loudly; while the
unconsciously unfit bestir themselves mightily to overturn the whole
theory upon which the distinction between fitness and unfitness rests.
If any law of nature makes so absurd a distinction as that, then the
offending and obnoxious law must be repealed, and that quickly.
The trouble appears to arise primarily from the fact that man does not
like what may be termed his evolutionary poor relations. He is willing
enough to read about earthworms and climbing-plants and brightly colored
birds, but he does not want nature to be making leaps from any of these
to him.
The earthworm, which, not being adapted to its surroundings, soon dies
unhonored and unsung, passes peacefully out of life without either a
coroner's inquest, an indictment for earthworm slaughter, a legislative
proposal for the future protection of earthworms, or even a new society
for the reform of the social and economic state of the earthworms that
are left. Even the quasi-intelligent climbing-plant and the brightly
colored bird, humanly vain, find an equally inconspicuous fate awaiting
them. This is the way nature operates when unimpeded or unchallenged by
the powerful manifestations of human revolt or human revenge. Of course
if man understood the place assigned to him in nature by the doctrine of
organic evolution as well as the earthworm, the climbing-plant, and the
brightly colored bird understand theirs, he, too, like them, would
submit to nature's processes and decrees without a protest. As a matter
of logic, no doubt he ought to; but after all these centuries, it is
still a far cry from logic to life.
In fact, man, unless he is consciously and admittedly fit, revolts
against the implication of the doctrine of evolution, and objects both
to being considered unfit to survive and succeed, and to being forced to
accept the only fate which nature offers to those who are unfit for
survival and success. Indeed, he manifests with amazing pertinacity what
Schopenhauer used to call "the will to live," and considerations and
arguments based on adaptability to environment have no weight with him.
So much the worse for environment, he cries; and straightway sets out to
prove it.
On the other hand, those humans who are classed by the doctrine of
evolution as fit, exhibit a most disconcerting satisfaction with things
as they are. The fit make no conscious struggle for existence. They do
not have to. Being fit, they survive _ipso facto_. Thus does the
doctrine of evolution, like a playful kitten, merrily pursue its tail
with rapturous delight. The fit survive; those survive who are fit.
Nothing could be more simple.
Those who are not adapted to the conditions that surround them, however,
rebel against the fate of the earthworm and the climbing-plant and the
brightly colored bird, and engage in a conscious struggle for existence
and for success in that existence despite their inappropriate
environment. Statutes can be repealed or amended; why not laws of nature
as well? Those human beings who are unfit have, it must be admitted, one
great, though perhaps temporary, advantage over the laws of nature; for
the laws of nature have not yet been granted suffrage, and the organized
unfit can always lead a large majority to the polls. So soon as
knowledge of this fact becomes common property, the laws of nature will
have a bad quarter of an hour in more countries than one.
The revolt of the unfit primarily takes the form of attempts to lessen
and to limit competition, which is instinctively felt, and with reason,
to be part of the struggle for existence and for success. The
inequalities which nature makes, and without which the process of
evolution could not go on, the unfit propose to smooth away and to wipe
out by that magic fiat of collective human will called legislation. The
great struggle between the gods of Olympus and the Titans, which the
ancient sculptors so loved to picture, was child's play compared with
the struggle between the laws of nature and the laws of man which the
civilized world is apparently soon to be invited to witness. This
struggle will bear a little examination, and it may be that the laws of
nature, as the doctrine of evolution conceives and states them, will not
have everything their own way.
Professor Huxley, whose orthodoxy as an evolutionist will hardly be
questioned, made a suggestion of this kind in his Romanes lecture as
long ago as 1893. He called attention then to the fact that there is a
fallacy in the notion that because, on the whole, animals and plants
have advanced in perfection of organization by means of the struggle for
existence and the consequent survival of the fittest, therefore, men as
social and ethical beings must depend upon the same process to help them
to perfection. As Professor Huxley suggests, this fallacy doubtless has
its origin in the ambiguity of the phrase "survival of the fittest." One
jumps to the conclusion that fittest means best; whereas, of course, it
has in it no moral element whatever. The doctrine of evolution uses the
term fitness in a hard and stern sense. Nothing more is meant by it than
a measure of adaptation to surrounding conditions. Into this conception
of fitness there enters no element of beauty, no element of morality, no
element of progress toward an ideal. Fitness is a cold fact
ascertainable with almost mathematical certainty.
We now begin to catch sight of the real significance of this struggle
between the laws of nature and the laws of man. From one point of view
the struggle is hopeless from the start; from another it is full of
promise. If it be true that man really proposes to halt the laws of
nature by his legislation, then the struggle is hopeless. It is only a
question of time when the laws of nature will have their way. If, on the
other hand, the struggle between the laws of nature and the laws of man
is in reality a mock struggle, and the supposed combat merely an
exhibition of evolutionary boxing, then we may find a clew to what is
really going on.
It might be worth while, for example, to follow up the suggestion that
in looking back over the whole series of products of organic evolution,
the real successes and permanences of life are to be found among those
species that have been able to institute something like what we call a
social system. Wherever an individual insists upon treating himself as
an end in himself, and all other individuals as his actual or potential
competitors or enemies, then the fate of the earthworm, the
climbing-plant, and the brightly colored bird is sure to be his; for he
has brought himself under the jurisdiction of one of nature's laws, and
sooner or later he must succumb to that law of nature, and in the
struggle for existence his place will be marked out for him by it with
unerring precision. If, however, he has developed so far as to have
risen to the lofty height of human sympathy, and thereby has learned to
transcend his individuality and to make himself a member of a larger
whole, he may then save himself from the extinction which follows
inevitably upon proved unfitness in the individual struggle for
existence.
So soon as the individual has something to give, there will be those who
have something to give to him, and he elevates himself above this
relentless law with its inexorable punishments for the unfit. At that
point, when individuals begin to give each to the other, then their
mutual co-operation and interdependence build human society, and
participation in that society changes the whole character of the human
struggle. Nevertheless, large numbers of human beings carry with them
into social and political relations the traditions and instincts of the
old individualistic struggle for existence, with the laws of organic
evolution pointing grimly to their several destinies. These are not able
to realize that moral elements, and what we call progress toward an end
or ideal, are not found under the operation of the law of natural
selection, but have to be discovered elsewhere and added to it. Beauty,
morality, progress have other lurking-places than in the struggle for
existence, and they have for their sponsors other laws than that of
natural selection. You will read the pages of Darwin and of Herbert
Spencer in vain for any indication of how the Parthenon was produced,
how the Sistine Madonna, how the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, how the
_Divine Comedy_, or _Hamlet_ or _Faust_. There are many mysteries left
in the world, thank God, and these are some of them.
The escape of genius from the cloud-covered mountain-tops of the unknown
into human society has not yet been accounted for. Even Rousseau made a
mistake. When he was writing the _Contrat social_ it is recorded that
his attention was favorably attracted by the island of Corsica. He,
being engaged in the process of finding out how to repeal the laws of
man by the laws of nature, spoke of Corsica as the one country in Europe
that seemed to him capable of legislation. This led him to add: "I have
a presentiment that some day this little island will astonish Europe."
It was not long before Corsica did astonish Europe, but not by any
capacity for legislation. As some clever person has said, it let loose
Napoleon. We know nothing more of the origin and advent of genius than
that.
Perhaps we should comprehend these things better were it not for the
persistence of the superstition that human beings habitually think.
There is no more persistent superstition than this. Linnæus helped it on
to an undeserved permanence when he devised the name _Homo sapiens_ for
the highest species of the order primates. That was the quintessence of
complimentary nomenclature. Of course human beings as such do not think.
A real thinker is one of the rarest things in nature. He comes only at
long intervals in human history, and when he does come, he is often
astonishingly unwelcome. Indeed, he is sometimes speedily sent the way
of the unfit and unprotesting earthworm. Emerson understood this, as he
understood so many other of the deep things of life. For he wrote:
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then
all things are at risk."
The plain fact is that man is not ruled by thinking. When man thinks he
thinks, he usually merely feels; and his instincts and feelings are
powerful precisely in proportion as they are irrational. Reason reveals
the other side, and a knowledge of the other side is fatal to the
driving power of a prejudice. Prejudices have their important uses, but
it is well to try not to mix them up with principles.
The underlying principle in the widespread and ominous revolt of the
unfit is that moral considerations must outweigh the mere blind struggle
for existence in human affairs.
It is to this fact that we must hold fast if we would understand the
world of to-day, and still more the world of to-morrow. The purpose of
the revolt of the unfit is to substitute interdependence on a higher
plane for the struggle for existence on a lower one. Who dares attempt
to picture what will happen if this revolt shall not succeed?
These are problems full of fascination. In one form or another they will
persist as long as humanity itself. There is only one way of getting rid
of them, and that is so charmingly and wittily pointed out by Robert
Louis Stevenson in his fable, "The Four Reformers," that I wish to quote
it:
"Four reformers met under a bramble-bush. They were all agreed the world
must be changed. 'We must abolish property,' said one.
"'We must abolish marriage,' said the second.
"'We must abolish God,' said the third.
"'I wish we could abolish work,' said the fourth.
"'Do not let us get beyond practical politics,' said the first. 'The
first thing is to reduce men to a common level.'
"'The first thing,' said the second, 'is to give freedom to the sexes.'
"'The first thing,' said the third, 'is to find out how to do it.'
"'The first step,' said the first, 'is to abolish the Bible.'
"'The first thing,' said the second, 'is to abolish the laws.'
'"The first thing,' said the third, 'is to abolish mankind.'"
[From _Why Should We Change Our Form of Government_, by Nicholas
Murray Butler. Copyright, 1912, by Charles Scribner's Sons.]