its purpose, variation is simply assumed to be a fact, and Darwin’s
acknowledged ignorance as to how variation is brought about is
expressed in the term “spontaneous variation.” Until variation has
played its part by producing new and various forms, selection has no
function or office to perform. Then it simply decides which forms shall
survive by destroying the rest. As Wigand has pointed out, selection
does not do more than determine the survival of what is offered to it,
and does not create anything new. As DeVries very strikingly puts it,
“It is only a sieve, and not a force of nature, no direct cause of
improvement, as many of Darwin’s adversaries, and unfortunately many of
his followers also, have so often asserted. It is only a sieve which
decides which is to live and which is to die.... With the single steps
of evolution it has nothing to do. Only after the step has been taken,
the sieve acts, eliminating the unfit.” Thus Prof. Cope’s point that
Darwin’s theory does not explain the “origin” of the fittest, is well
taken, or as Mr. Arthur Harris puts it, “Natural selection may explain
the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the
fittest.”
It was around this question of the “causes” of variation that the
Neo-Lamarckians and the Weismannians fought their battle, the former
insisting, as we have seen, that variation was caused by the hereditary
transmission of acquired characters, while Weismann maintained that
variation arose solely through the combining of two portions of
differing germ-plasm contributed by two different individuals, and
producing a new individual unlike either,--a “variation” from both.
While whatever there was of victory fell to Weismann, neither side has
experimentally proven its case, and we are still in the dark as to the
“causes of variation.” Our ignorance is still cloaked in the convenient
word “spontaneous;” to Darwin’s “spontaneous variation” we now add
DeVries’ “spontaneous mutation.”
It is another tribute to Darwin’s caution and insight that he
recognized the possibility of variations arising either suddenly, as
DeVries asserts they do, or gradually as DeVries denies.
Not only did Alfred Russell Wallace seek to limit the operation of
natural selection in certain fields, in order to make room for his
spiritualist theories--an adventure which failed dismally--but he
denied the sudden appearance of new species or sub-species, thereby
restricting Darwinism, as he understood it, to the origin of new
species by the gradual accumulation of those almost imperceptible
variations usually described as “fluctuations.” Whatever conflict there
may be between Darwinism and mutation must be ascribed to Wallace. As
DeVries clearly recognizes, Darwin is in no way responsible. “Darwin,”
says DeVries, “recognized both lines of evolution.”
The difference between “fluctuations” and “mutation” is illustrated by
DeVries recalling Galton’s simile of a polyhedron--an example of which
is a solid piece of glass covered with many small flat faces. When it
comes to rest on any particular face, it is in stable equilibrium.
Small disturbances may make it oscillate, but it returns always to
the same face. These oscillations are like fluctuating variations.
A greater disturbance may cause the polyhedron to roll over on to a
new face, where it comes to rest again, only showing the ever present
fluctuations around the new center. The new position corresponds to
a mutation. One of the disabilities of this illustration is that
some fluctuations represent a greater disturbance from the given
position than some mutations. The essential difference is that in the
fluctuation it rocks back again while in the mutation it remains on a
new base.
Everybody has heard something of the famous evening primrose which
gave DeVries his first and most conclusive evidence of mutation. At
Hilversum near Amsterdam, he discovered a large number of the plants
of the evening primrose, named Lamarckiana after Lamarck. It is an
American plant imported to Europe. It often escapes from cultivation
and in this case DeVries says it had escaped from a park. It had run
wild ten years. A year after first noticing them DeVries observed two
new forms which he at once recognized as two new elementary species.
In the test conditions of his own garden, in an experiment covering
thirteen years, he observed over fifty thousand of the Lamarckiana
spread over eight generations and of these eight hundred were mutations
divided among seven new elementary species. These mutations, when
self-fertilized, or fertilized from plants like themselves, bred true
to themselves, thus answering the test of a real species. DeVries also
watched the field from which his original forms were taken, and saw
that similar mutations occurred there so that they were not in any way
due to cultivation.
Thus has the modest mutating primrose contributed its quota to the
solution of that riddle of the universe which, until it is solved, will
always command a paramount position in the thoughts of men.
DeVries discourages the notion that mutations are always occurring
everywhere, which might seem to be one of the inferences from his
theory, and his twenty-fourth lecture of the series, delivered before
the University of California is entitled “The Hypothesis of Periodic
Mutations.” The common primrose, he says, seems to be immutable at
present, and argues that it must have had a mutatory period sometime
in the past, when, perhaps, the evening primrose was not mutating. He
says: “All the facts point to the conclusion that these periods, of
stability and mutability, alternate more or less regularly with one
another.”
He deals the Neo-Lamarckians a heavy blow by his denial of “direct”
adaptation, and he greatly strengthens their opponents when he asserts
that mutation takes place, not only in useful directions, but in all
directions, leaving natural selection to destroy the unfit. This
is a restatement of Darwin’s conception, followed by Weismann, of
“fortuitous” variations, and is contrary to the notion of Spencer and
Haeckel, that variations are mainly in the direction of adaptation
to environment, as a result of animals exerting themselves in that
direction.
This point is well stated by DeVries in the following passage,--“This
failure of a large part of the productions of nature deserves to be
considered at some length. It may be elevated to a principle, and
may be made use of to explain many difficult points of the theory of
descent. If in order to secure one good novelty nature must produce ten
or twenty or perhaps more bad ones at the same time, the possibility
of improvements coming by pure chance must be granted at once. All
hypotheses concerning the direct causes of adaptation at once become
superfluous, and the great principle enunciated by Darwin once more
reigns supreme.”
Another difficulty which DeVries claims to have solved by his theory,
is the supposed contradiction between the physicist and the biologist
as to the time allowed by the former and the time required by the
latter, for the evolution of animals.
Lord Kelvin asserted the age of the earth to be between twenty and
forty million years. George Darwin estimates the separation of the
moon from the earth as having taken place some fifty-six million years
ago. Gekie estimated the existence of the solid crust of the earth
as at most hundred million years. Joly, by calculating the amount of
dissolved salts, and Dubois by the amount of lime, estimated the age of
the rivers, Joly giving as probable fifty-five and Dubois thirty-six
millions of years.
“All in all,” concludes DeVries, “it seems evident that the duration of
life does not comply with the demands of the conception of very slow
and continuous evolution.” Mutation, with its sudden leaps, has no such
difficulty, and,--“The demands of the biologists and the results of the
physicists are harmonized on the ground of the theory of mutation.”
In order properly to estimate the sociological significance of DeVries’
theory it will be necessary to go back more than a century, and observe
the sociological import of the leading biological ideas of that period.
And here let us remark, that nobody knows better than we do the
danger of transplanting, without criticism, biological theories into
the field of sociology. Nevertheless, our opponents have never lost
an opportunity to twist and distort science, if perchance by any
possibility it could be made to contradict anything that had so much as
the semblance of Socialism. We, however, have always insisted on the
weakness of reasoning by mere analogy and have kept to those general
laws which have been worked out separately in sociology.
The principle now about to be applied belongs to this latter class.
It is the most luminous principle ever employed in the interpretation
of the phenomena of society. This principle is that the intellectual
life of a people is determined by its mode of wealth production and the
social classes arising therefrom.
Jean Lamarck, the first great modern apostle of evolution, died in
poverty because he advocated a theory that appeared to contradict the
interests of the ruling class of his time. He had against him all that
survived of feudal interests, which was intensely theological, and
although his theory really favored the bourgeoisie, that class was not
yet aware of it.
Cuvier was the lion of that day, for he managed the remarkable feat of
adapting science to the ideas, not only of the increasing bourgeoisie,
but also of the diminishing feudal power. He pleased the feudal
regime, such of it as remained, by denying evolution, and endorsing
its theology. This made his theories welcome also among those shrewd
early capitalists, as the English, who realized more quickly than their
fellows, that religious belief might constitute as great a prop for
one ruling class at it had already been for another.
But in his capacity of scientific reflection of the class interest
of his masters, Cuvier’s masterpiece was his “cataclysmic theory.”
According to this theory, organisms were not the result of evolution,
but they were now just as when they issued from the hands of the
Creator. The difference between existing forms, and those creatures
whose story is preserved in the rocks, was explained by a series of
cataclysms or catastrophes by which, at certain widely separated
periods, all living forms were destroyed, and a completely new stock
was created to take their places.
It would be impossible to conceive a better scientific justification
of the French revolution than Cuvier’s theory presented. For many
decades before that event these rising commercialists had groaned under
the yoke of feudal dues and feudal restraints of trade. Nothing could
be more to their wishes than a sudden social “cataclysm” that would
destroy the feudal system with its trade despising and plundering
nobility, and exalt its own trading class to fill the vacancy. And when
this had been accomplished, and that same nobility had been sent to the
guillotine, it was great consolation to have on Cuvier’s authority,
that this method of sudden violence had no less a precedent than the
methods of the Almighty in suddenly destroying the living things in his
own universe.
Cuvier’s theory however, almost died with him, for the violent desires
of the bourgeoisie were short lived. When it realized the completeness
of its own victory, and that the next “cataclysm” would mean its own
overthrow and the enthronement of some successor, cataclysms lost favor
and were frowned down. Preachers of sudden and violent changes were now
regarded as the enemies of society, and Cuvier’s once lauded theory
of cataclysms was sneered at as a relic of the dark ages. What the
capitalist class wanted now was peace, and long life, and above all, no
disturbances.
And it was just at this point that Darwin came forward with a theory
that seemed made to order. True this theory spoke of evolution and
change, but the change was so slow it was impossible to notice it. A
million years was as ten minutes to this theory, and if it took as long
for one class in society to displace another, or for one social regime
to succeed another, as it does for one species to develop from another,
the capitalists and their heirs had nothing to apprehend for a thousand
generations.
There was nothing sudden about this theory, quite the contrary. In fact
the real difficulty was to see how anything managed to change at all.
As for that part of it which spoke of the survival of the fittest,
what could be clearer than that these self-made men were themselves
the fittest. It was, of course equally clear that the degraded working
class, lacking the cleverness to rise, was destined to be eliminated as
unfit, by the laws of nature.
For half a century this argument of slow evolution has done valiant
service as an antidote for Socialism, and the present ruling class
would like to retain it forever.
But no ruling class ever was or ever can be wholly omnipotent. The
capitalists of to-day can no more hinder the process of social
evolution, with its resulting march of ideas, than they can intercept
gravitation or divert the tides. They are being driven blindly to their
fate by social forces which are beyond their command.
They are in the midst of social powers which mock their puny efforts
to administer. Contradictions arise which cannot continue. As soon as
a capitalist country is over-stocked with wealth, poverty prepares to
stalk abroad.
But amid all this confusion, something moves on, a something which
we sometimes call the spirit of the age. Society grows restless
and instinctively anticipates a coming change. A new class rises
into prominence and begins to realize its strength and develop its
intelligence.
The ruling class still proclaims its will, but cannot always execute
it. Colorado, Idaho, and Haywood are proof of that. The mental
development of this new class has reached the point where it has become
an intellectual factor in the national life. Its voice is listened to
by publishers of books. It establishes its own press. It publishes a
literature of its own. It creates its own platform. It reaches into the
future and demands control of its own destiny.
And now see how all this is reflected in the scientific world. It is no
longer true that species require thousands of years for the simplest
change. We are now informed that change takes place by sudden leaps. At
one single step a new species appears and begins its existence. There
is therefore, no longer anything in biological science to contradict
the Socialist position that a new society may be born of a sudden
revolution.
Mutation, the savants tell us, runs in periods, alternating with
periods of apparent stability. Then if we are not supported we are at
any rate not contradicted, when we assert that in social development,
periods of economic evolution, with apparent social stability, are
followed by periods of social revolution when the entire social
superstructure is transformed.
It is no longer necessary to assume countless millions of years for
the evolution of living forms. A plant enjoys a period of apparent
stability, then it reaches a point where it “explodes” and gives
birth to new species. If a plant, why not a society? At least there
is nothing in the example of the plant that will furnish an argument
against such an idea.
If the history of biological science for the last half a century were
to be written by a Socialist, who had no scruples about wresting the
record so as to support his Socialist theories, he would have nothing
to gain by changing a single line.
There is nothing in that history to contradict us when we assert the
probability or the certainty, of a social revolution. Who, that looks
about him, can fail to see that death is plainly branded in the brow
of the existing social order? Its legal, political, and financial
institutions are tied together with rotten thread. It is already
outliving its usefulness, and when it goes it will have few mourners.
But millions will hail with joy that social mutation which will kindle
the fires of human liberty, and create, if not a new Heaven, at least,
a new earth.
VI.
KROPOTKIN’S “MUTUAL AID.”
Lamarck was the first to present the theory of Evolution in a
thoroughly scientific manner. Then Darwin discovered “the great
principle which rules the evolution of organisms”; the principle of
“natural selection.” Then Weismann repudiated current ideas as to how
the fittest “arrived,” or “originated,” and presented in their place a
theory of his own, which is still under discussion. DeVries raised the
question as to whether new species “arrive” by a gradual accumulation
of tiny changes, or by sudden leaps--mutations--and demonstrated the
latter by his experiments with the evening primrose.
And now comes Kropotkin with the question, “Who are the fittest?” What
constitutes the fitness, which makes for survival? Are those organisms
the fittest which are constantly waging a war of extermination against
every other organism in the struggle for existence, or, are those the
fittest which co-operate with each other in the preservation of the
common life of all?
The raising of this question brings to light another striking
instance of the influence of class interests on scientific thought.
It is a matter of common observation that any class, struggling for
what it conceives to be its own emancipation, looks to the past for
justification and precedent. In the English speaking world there is a
widely prevailing opinion that the Magna Charta, extorted from King
John at Runnymede, is the foundation of modern liberty.
The French bourgeoisie, struggling to overthrow the feudal monarchy,
sought its justification in that “state of nature” which a despotic
monarchy was said to contravene. Thus writers like Rousseau idealized
nature, representing it as comparatively perfect, and declared that
a restoration of “natural rights” was essential to liberty. But when
this same bourgeoisie had won its victory and enthroned itself, and
instead of increasing the liberty, had in many respects, deepened the
degradation of the mass of the French people, its ideas about the
“state of nature” underwent a radical change. And this happened not
only in France but wherever the bourgeoisie triumphed.
Now the “state of nature” was one of constant carnage; nature was
“red in tooth and claw.” And this chamber of horrors was supposed to
support the exploitation of labor, and countenance a brutalization of
childhood that constitutes the blackest stain on human history. So
strong was the swirl that Huxley was swept into it; but, although he
maintained the “gladiatorial” view of nature, he repudiated the social
atrocities which capitalist apologists such as Spencer sought to deduce
from it. In later years, Spencer partially abandoned his premise as to
the animal world but, strangely enough, kept it intact for primitive
man.
For this view of nature as full of nothing but darkness and cruelty,
where, as Hobbes had put it, there waged “the war of every one against
everybody,” the great authority of Darwin was invoked. In fact, Darwin
was supposed to be almost solely responsible for the theory, and its
overthrow by Kropotkin was heralded by the uninformed as another of
those “death-blows” of which Darwinism is thought to have received so
many during the last quarter of a century.
Kropotkin, however, in his introduction, claims that the idea of mutual
aid is “in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas
expressed by Darwin in the ‘Descent of Man’”. Darwin said: “Those
communities which included the greatest number of sympathetic members
would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
Kropotkin complains that Darwin did not sufficiently develop this idea,
but over-emphasized the idea of “competition” for life, and this error,
he insists, was further accentuated by his disciples. “It happened with
Darwin’s theory,” he says, “as it always happens with theories having
any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to
his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more.”
It is a mistake to suppose that Kropotkin denies the Darwinian
principle of mutual struggle. “It is evident,” says he, “that no
review of evolution can be complete unless these two dominant currents
are analyzed. * * * The struggles between these two forces make, in
fact, the substance of history.” He anticipates the objection that
his work only emphasizes the principle of mutual aid by insisting
that the principle of struggle has “already been analyzed, described,
and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time,
this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the
annalist, the historian, and the sociologist.”
The main body of his book is a solid mass of evidence of the existence
of mutual aid everywhere in the living world, from the lowest insects
to the highest mammals; and from the first stone age to the twentieth
century. It consists of eight chapters, the first two of which are
devoted to “Mutual Aid among Animals.”
Here, the theory of the human origin of society is utterly demolished.
Complex social arrangements, popularly supposed to be limited to ants
and bees, are shown to flourish everywhere, especially among birds.
With the parrot mutual aid is developed to such an extent that
Kropotkin places it “at the very top of the whole feathered world
for the development of its intelligence.” The white cockatoos of
Australia, in raiding a crop, mutually aid each other so shrewdly as
to “baffle all stratagems” to thwart them. “Before starting to plunder
a cornfield, they first send out a reconnoitering party which occupies
the highest trees in the vicinity of the field, while other scouts
perch upon the intermediate trees between the field and the forest and
transmit signals. If the report runs ‘all right,’ a score of cockatoos
will separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air,
and then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will
scrutinize the neighborhood for a long while, and only then will give
the signal for general advance, after which the whole band starts at
once and plunders the field in no time.”
Mutual aid is very conspicuous among pelicans. “They always go fishing
in numerous bands and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form
a wide half circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling
towards the shore, catching all the fish that happen to be enclosed
in the circle. On narrow rivers and canals they even divide into two
parties, each of which draws up on a half circle, and both paddle to
meet each other, just as if two parties of men dragging two long nets
should advance to capture all the fish taken between the nets when both
parties come to meet.”