on this point, and then winds up with the following: “In view of this
state of affairs, we zoologists, recognized as authorities on the
subject, may surely ask, How can many so-called anthropologists still
maintain that there exists no sort of actual proofs of the ‘Derivation
of Man from Apes’? How can Virchow, Ranke, and others, who are not
zoologists, in the speeches they annually deliver at anthropological
and other congresses, continue to declare that this ‘Pithecoid thesis’
is an empty hypothesis, an unproved assertion, and a mere dream of the
philosophers of nature? How can these anthropologists still continue
to ask for ‘certain proofs’ of this thesis when proofs with all the
clearness that could be desired lie before them, and are unanimously
recognized by all zoologists? As regards Virchow’s often quoted
declarations against the Pithecoid thesis, they have obtained great
favor in wide circles, only because of the high authority this famous
naturalist enjoys in an entirely different domain of science. His
‘cellular pathology,’ his ingenious application of the cell-theory
to the whole province of medicine, introduced a grand advance in
that branch of science thirty years ago. This great and lasting
service rendered by him has, however, no connection whatever with the
unyielding and negative position which, unfortunately, Virchow persists
in assuming towards the doctrine of evolution.”
It probably never occurred to Haeckel that the argument which he here
uses to meet Virchow’s opposition to evolution, would serve quite as
effectively as a reply to his own opposition to Socialism.
As regards Haeckel’s “often quoted declarations against” Socialism,
“they have obtained great favor in wide circles, only because of the
high authority which this famous naturalist enjoys in an entirely
different domain of science. His biogenetic principle, discovered in
embryology, “introduced a grand advance in that science thirty years
ago. This great and lasting service rendered by him has, however no
connection whatever with the unyielding and negative position which,
unfortunately,” Haeckel “persists in assuming towards the doctrine of”
Socialism.
Haeckel’s complaint that Virchow could not judge the merits of
evolution because he was not a zoologist, is well taken. But the
Socialist has as good or better right to assert that Haeckel was
incapable of estimating the relationship of Socialism to Darwinism, for
he certainly knew a good deal less about Socialism than Virchow knew of
zoology.
This is precisely the trouble with Haeckel’s criticism of what he calls
Socialism. Of the theories of Karl Marx and the modern scientific
Socialists, he knew absolutely nothing. The Socialism he condemned
had been abandoned by the Socialists themselves, nearly thirty years
before his criticism was made.
“Absurd equalitarian notions,” granted; but they were not even the
sole property of the utopian Socialists. They borrowed them from the
bourgeois revolutionists of 1789. It was they who boasted of the
equality they would set up. That equality, which, as Engels says, only
“materialized in bourgeois equality before the law.”--“The equality
before the law of all commodity-owners.” It was this struggling
bourgeoisie that adopted as its catch-words, “liberty, fraternity,
equality,” and applied them to a typical bourgeois use when they
inscribed them above the entrances to French prisons.
A significant clause in the second sentence of Haeckel’s criticism is,
“in human societies as in animal societies,” the duties, etc., of the
members cannot be “equal.” The only possible point this could have as
a criticism of Socialism, would be its use to deny the possibility of
abolishing social class divisions. There is nothing to show whether
Haeckel intended it to have such a specific application, but as any
other application it might have could be in no way opposed to the
Socialist position, I need only show its failure in that regard.
“Bee” society may be said to have class divisions, and it must be
conceded that these classes cannot be abolished by anything that
could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called “bee socialism.”
But the reason for this is not far to seek and, when found, it makes
any argument by analogy, against Socialism, impossible. Bee workers
are “physiologically” incapable of discharging any other function in
bee society. They are females, incapable of maternity. As a result
of this the queen bee is obliged to shoulder the whole burden of the
reproduction of the species, and she is specialized in this direction
to such an extent, that she could not possibly be a worker. The drone,
as the male breeder, is in the same fix, and the popular notion that
they are useless loafers, has its origin in the bee custom of applying
the boot, or something worse, to all superfluous members of the drone
class.
“A hive of bees,” says Prof. Huxley, “is an organic polity, a society
in which the part played by each member is determined by organic
necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so to speak, castes
divided from one another by marked physical barriers.”
Says Ernest Untermann in his fine chapter on this question, in “Marxian
Economics”: “Every textbook on natural history describes the different
orders. For instance, the societies of bees are ‘monarchies’, those of
ants ‘republics’. But in either case, biological variation determines
the form of these societies. Queen bees, drones, and workers are of
organically different structure and equipped with different specialized
organs. The queen bee is equipped only for the duties of conception
and the laying of eggs. The drone cannot perform any other function
but that of fertilizing the queen. The worker alone has organs for
gathering flower dust, honey, and manufacturing wax.” Class divisions
in bee society are therefore “biological” and not economic. But
Haeckel’s comparison ignores this vital distinction. Before this
argument can be used against the Socialist advocacy of class abolition,
it must be shown that a queen cannot wash clothes with starvation as an
alternative, and that a pleb woman could not wear a coronet, should her
father invest in a busted duke.
True there are other animal societies which have no such biological
division. But these have no private property in the means of life,
and therefore no classes. Pelicans and crows recognize only three
grounds as justification for idleness--infancy, old age and sickness or
accident.
A recent Socialist writer said: “Take two babies together--the worker’s
baby and the parasite’s baby. There they are, both of them, out of
the great mystery. Examine their soft little bodies. Do you see spurs
on the one and a saddle on the other? And yet, one is to grow up a
profligate loafer, and the other a starved and beaten worker. One to
rot at the top; the other to be stunted and oppressed at the bottom.”
Of course these two babies would not be equal, either actually or
potentially, but is that any reason why they should be given an unequal
start? How are we to find out which is the best in any sense, if a
multitude of opportunities open to the one are to be closed to the
other?
And here Haeckel’s implied parallel breaks down once more. In nature
the strong and capable survive in the struggle for existence; nature
gives something like a fair field and no favor. But in capitalist
society, a puling son of a rich father is coddled to maturity, and
reproduces others of his kind; while the lusty child of a worker is
murdered by poisonous milk, or debarred from marriage by low wages.
In nature, “fittest” does not mean best in any moral sense, except
indirectly, as that the practice of certain moral principles in animal
societies may constitute, or add to, fitness. But in present society in
a vast number of instances, fitness does not mean “best” even to the
extent that such a word may be used in the natural world.
A real estate “shark” is a libel on the fish. An indispensable
qualification in business is to have few scruples and be a first-class
liar. Honesty and suicide are synonymous terms.
The statement that natural selection “favors aristocratic aspirations,”
involves the same fallacy. It assumes that aristocrats are on top
because of fitness to be there. Recent revelations in Berlin indicate
that the aristocrats of Haeckel’s own country are “fittest” for the
garbage can.
Haeckel’s main position is that “the struggle for existence” in nature
is a justification for “competition” in society. To begin with,
Kropotkin has shown that Haeckel grossly misrepresents nature when he
speaks of “the cruel, pitiless ‘struggle for existence’ which rages
everywhere throughout animated nature” and “between all living beings.”
When this is used as a defense of present society, it is equal to
saying that human society should seek its models among the lowest forms
of organic life rather than the highest. Haeckel’s position was taken
by Spencer and received the following clever reply from Prof. Ritchie:
“The struggle among plants and the lower animals is mainly between
members of the same species; and the individual competition between
human beings, which is so much admired by Mr. Spencer, is of this
primitive kind.”
Kropotkin says: “If we ask nature ‘who are the fittest, those who are
continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?’
we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid
are undoubtedly the fittest.”
As to the desirability of that “pitiless struggle,” Huxley pertinently
says: “Of all the shapes which society has taken, that most nearly
approaches perfection in which the war of the individual against the
individual is most strictly limited.”
Whatever may be the truth among the protozoa, we are safe in applying
to society the statement of Ruskin: “Co-operation is always and
everywhere the law of life; competition is always and everywhere the
law of death.”
Human society eventually reaches a point of development where nature’s
haphazard ways are interfered with, and man arranges means to an end.
Professor Schiaparelli thought he saw canals on Mars, and inferred
intelligent inhabitants. The difference in water-ways, between blind
nature and a designing intelligence, is the difference between a
rambling river and a straight canal.
Now human society has arrived at a stage where its consciousness of
itself and the possibility of self-arrangement, becomes a factor. This
is a tremendous step forward, and its future possibilities seem to be
illimitable. Before this can be largely effective, however, it will be
necessary to thoroughly understand all fundamental social laws.
We had no rod to rule the lightning until we knew the laws of its
movement. There will be no real airship until we master the laws of
aerial flight. Socialism solves the social problem, not because it has,
but because it is, an explanation of the laws of social development in
general, and of existing society in particular. On these laws our faith
is founded. By consciously arranging the social institutions which so
profoundly affect our lives, in harmony with these laws, we shall cease
to be the slaves of a blind necessity.
As Engels has well said: “Man’s social organization, hitherto
confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now
becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective
forces, that have hitherto governed history, pass under the control
of man himself. Only from that time will man himself more and more
consciously, make his own history--only from that time will the social
causes set in motion by him have, in the main and in a constantly
growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man
from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”
VIII.
SPENCER’S “SOCIAL ORGANISM.”
The crowning generalization of modern thought is that which presents
the Universe as a unity, inter-related in all its parts. By it,
the defenders of dualism are discredited, and their theological,
metaphysical philosophy is thrown aside. It is no longer God and Man,
nor even Man and God, but Man only, with God an anthropomorphic shadow,
related to man not as his creator, but as created by him. God and Man
are not “two,” but in reality “one.”
Modern science has reversed the order of their appearance, and also the
order of their dependence. That which seemed to our primitive ancestors
a living reality, a separate and independent being, proves, when
submitted to the tests of anthropology and psychology, to have been a
creature of their own dreams.
And thus, as a result of scientific research into the origin of dualism
and the nature of dreams, as Professor Clifford says: “The dim and
shadowy outline of the superhuman deity fades slowly from before
us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with
greater and greater clearness, the shape of a yet grander and nobler
figure--the figure of him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From
the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the
face of our father man looks out upon us, with the fire of eternal
youth in his eyes, and says: ‘Before Jehovah was, I am.’”
The thinker who would expand his intellectual wings in this monistic
atmosphere, must possess not only a “discriminating” mind, but also, as
Marcus Hitch suggests, a “unifying” mind. There are two errors he must
avoid; the creation of distinctions that do not exist and the ignoring
of distinctions that do.
The chief sinner against this first canon of dialectical thinking
is our old friend the theologian. When the evolutionary naturalists
demonstrated the hopeless untruth of his “revealed” legends about the
origin of men and things, he sought refuge in the ingenious theory that
these fables while scientifically indefensible were, notwithstanding,
spiritually true. In short, scientific truth and spiritual truth were
so distinct as to have no vital relations. These “artful dodgers” have
relieved controversial literature of much of its wonted heaviness and
contributed generally to the gaiety of the nations.
Socialists have always been among the first to enjoy these entertaining
performances, and it seems like divine retribution when these same
theological and “Reverend” persons tumble over into the Socialist camp
and bring their obsolete methods of thinking with them.
They dub themselves “Christian” Socialists and proceed to show that
“Socialism is a philosophy concerning the social and economic life of
man, and not the religious at all.” When Marx declared that political
and legal and other social institutions and ideas were the result of
economic conditions and class interests, religious institutions and
ideas were, of course, exempt.
After a mental contortion like that, what is to prevent a
reconciliation between the 17th century twaddle of the methodist pulpit
and the materialist conception of history?
Those who break the second canon given, are not all theologians. Among
those who ignore distinctions that do exist, the biological sociologist
is entitled to conspicuous mention.
August Comte, who “attempted to make of sociology a sort of
transcendental biology,” had at least this excuse that he wrote his
positivist philosophy before Darwin published his “Origin of Species”
and, therefore, while biology was yet in long clothes and sociology
was unborn. Although Comte is generally regarded as the founder of
sociology, these limitations made it impossible to do little more than
invent the name and foresee its possibility.
These excuses, however, can scarcely be invoked for Haeckel, who, as
we have already seen, wholly ignored in his inferences, fundamental
differences between the division of labor in animal societies and
that division in human societies. Haeckel’s biological sociology
conveniently overlooks the rather important fact that while a working
bee can not by any possibility act as a drone, the working man has
at least no physical disabilities to prevent him from doing anything
that pertains to the role of a prince. Reasoning by analogy is always
dangerous, especially when the analogy itself breaks down.
While it is well to keep these rules in mind, it must be conceded
that their critical application is somewhat limited when we come to
Spencer’s famous analogy between animal organisms and human societies.
The “synthetic” philosopher was much Haeckel’s superior in sociology,
and he possessed an immense fund of biological lore that was
unavailable to Comte writing a quarter of a century earlier.
Thus Spencer seems to recognize that his essay on “The Social Organism”
is largely an ingenious analogy, from which conclusions must be drawn
with caution. Not that bourgeois scientists have always exhibited a
very scientific temper in this regard. On the contrary they have, on
every possible occasion, proclaimed that certain alleged truths in
physics or biology were in irreconcilable contradiction to certain
Socialist conclusions in sociology.
But we may find a key to Spencer’s chariness in the matter of drawing
conclusions in the rather surprising fact, which will appear presently,
that the one legitimate conclusion which the analogy will thoroughly
sustain, is an exact contradiction to all that Spencer had ever
proclaimed on social questions.
The essay itself, like a great deal of Spencer’s writing, is prolix
and wearisome, so we shall select only his most important and striking
comparisons.
The introduction is excellent and has for its text Sir James
Mackintosh’s great saying--great in his non-evolutionary age though
very common-place today--“Constitutions are not made, but grow.” He
then declares “the central idea of Plato’s model republic” to be “the
correspondence between the parts of a society and the faculties of the
human mind.”
Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury, comes next with his celebrated
“Leviathan.” Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite
parallelism; not, however between a society and the mind, but between
a society and the human body. Hobbes’ “Leviathan” was the Commonwealth
and he “carries this comparison so far as to actually give a drawing
of the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are
made up of multitudes of men.”
Spencer criticizes these analogies of Plato and Hobbes in detail, but
finds the chief error of both writers to consist in the assumption by
both “that the organization of a society is comparable, not simply to
the organization of a living body in general, but to the organization
of a human body in particular. There is no warrant whatever for
assuming this. It is in no way implied by the evidence; and is simply
one of those fancies which we commonly find mixed up with the truths
of early speculation.” But, insists Spencer: “The untenableness of
the particular parallelisms above instanced, is no ground for denying
an essential parallelism; since early ideas are usually but vague
adumbrations of the truth.”
Lacking the great generalizations of biology, it was, as we have said,
“impossible to trace out the real relations of special organizations to
organizations of another order.” Therefore he proposes “to show what
are the analogies which modern science discloses.”
Spencer then discovers four points in which an individual organism and
a society agree, and four in which they differ. The points of agreement
are:
(1.) “That commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment
in mass; some of them eventually reaching ten thousand times what they
originally were.”
(2.) “That while at first so simple in structure as to be considered
structureless, they assume in the course of their growth a continually
increasing complexity of structure.”
(3.) “That though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in
them scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually
acquire a mutual dependence; which becomes at last so great, that the
activity and life of each part is made possible only by the activity
and life of the rest.”
(4.) “That the life of a society is independent of, and far more
prolonged than the lives of any of its component units; who are
severally born, grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body politic
composed of them survives generation after generation, increasing in
mass, in completeness of structure, and in functional activity.”
The four points of difference are:
(1.) “That societies have no specific external forms.”
(2.) “That though the living tissue whereof an individual organism
consists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do
not form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over
some portion of the earth’s surface.”
(3.) “That while the ultimate living elements of an individual organism
are mostly fixed in their relative positions, those of the social
organism are capable of moving from place to place.”
(4.) “The last and perhaps the most important distinction is, that
while in the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with
feeling, in a society all the members are endowed with feeling.”
It is worthy of note that, while Spencer finds the parallelisms to
increase in significance the more they are examined, the differences
tend to break down when they are worked out in detail.
The advantage which Spencer had over Plato and Hobbes is very clearly
seen in the first and fourth parallelisms, neither of which could have
been made until twenty-one years before, when in 1839, Theodore Schwann
developed his great theory that the body is an organized society of
interconnected cells. “The importance of this theory,” says Professor
Thatcher, “can hardly be estimated. It gave an entirely new view to
animal and vegetable life.” At any rate, it served Spencer greatly in
this essay.
The next ten pages are devoted to organic development from the
protozoa, the lowest tiny animal forms, to crustacea--crabs
etc.,--which are materially higher in the animal scale. This
development is marked by increasing mutual dependence of parts and
a growing division of labor. It is compared to the development of
society from primitive Bushmen to the early Anglo-Saxons, during which
corresponding phenomena are traced.
He escapes Haeckel’s blunder at least to the extent of calling the
two divisions of labor by their proper names. Among animals it is
the “physiological” division of labor; in society, the “economical”
division of labor. Whether he would have been able to still perceive
that distinction in dealing with those ant and bee communities where
Haeckel got lost, there is nothing to show.
Spencer’s middle-class predilections come out strongly, and a very
pretty physiological justification is provided for that wholly
admirable section of the community.
The first step in the development of an embryo is its division into
two main layers of cells--the mucous layer and the serous layer. The
mucous layer, that fine inside skin of the body so to speak, absorbs
nutriment. But that nutriment must be transferred to the serous layer
which builds up the nerves and muscles. Presently there arises between
these two a third--the vascular layer. Out of this third layer the
chief blood vessels are developed and these vessels serve to transport
the nutriment from the inner or mucous layer, which gathers it, to
the outer or serous layer, which uses it for the whole organization’s
upbuilding.
“Well,” says Spencer, “may we not trace a parallel step in social
progress? Between the governing and the governed, there at first exists
no intermediate class; and even in some societies that have reached
considerable size, there are scarcely any but the nobles and their
kindred on the one hand, and their serfs on the other; the social
structure being such that transfer of commodities takes place directly
from slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher type, there
grows up, between these two primitive classes, another--the trading
or middle class. Equally at first as now, we may see that, speaking
generally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle layer in the
embryo.”
It is a pity to disturb this serene complacency, by pointing out that
the real transporters of commodities are not the members of the middle
class who, as a rule, do little and live well, but that section of
the working class which mans freight trains, drives teams and shoves
trucks. As for that “higher” class of cells which receives these
commodities and consumes them while usefully engaged in building up
the nervous and muscular system; such comparison could only apply to
society’s brain workers, and it contains no justification for the
useless parasitic type represented by such charming persons as Harry
Thaw and Reggie Vanderbilt.