§ 362. Considering the difficulties of inductive verification, we

have, I think, as clear a correspondence between the _à priori_ and

_à posteriori_ conclusions, as can be expected. The many factors

co-operating to bring about the result in every case, are so

variable in their absolute and relative amounts, that we can rarely

disentangle the effect of each one, and have usually to be content

with qualified inferences. Though in the mass organisms show us an

unmistakable relation between great size and small fertility, yet

special comparisons among them are nearly always partially vitiated

by differences of structure, differences of nutrition, differences

of expenditure. Though it is beyond question that the more complex

organisms are the less prolific, yet as complexity has a certain

general connexion with bulk, and in animals with expenditure, we cannot

often identify its results as independent of these. And, similarly,

though the creatures which waste much matter in producing motion,

sensible and insensible, have lower rates of multiplication than those

which waste less, yet, as the creatures which waste much are generally

larger and more complex, we are again met by an obstacle which limits

our comparisons, and compels us to accept conclusions less definite

than are desirable.

Such difficulties arise, however, only when we endeavour, as in

foregoing chapters, to prove the inverse variation between Genesis

and each separate element of Individuation--growth, development,

activity. We are scarcely at all hampered by qualifications when,

from contemplating these special relations, we return to the general

relation. The antagonism between Individuation and Genesis is shown

by all the facts which have been grouped under each head. We have

seen that in ascending from the lowest to the highest types, there is

a decrease of fertility so great as to be absolutely inconceivable,

and even inexpressible by figures; and whether the superiority of

type consists in relative largeness, in greater complexity, in

higher activity, or in some or all of these combined, matters not

to the ultimate inference. The broad fact, enough for us here, is

that organisms in which the integration and differentiation of

matter and motion have been carried furthest, are those in which the

rate of multiplication has fallen lowest. How much of the decline

of reproductive power is due to the greater integration of matter,

how much to its greater differentiation, how much to the larger

amounts of integrated and differentiated motions generated, it may

be impossible to say; and it is not needful to say. These are all

elements of a higher degree of life, an augmented ability to maintain

the organic equilibrium amid environing actions, an increased power

of self-preservation; and we find their invariable accompaniment

to be, a diminished expenditure of matter, or motion, or both, in

race-preservation.

In brief, then, examination of the evidence shows that there _does_

exist that relation which we inferred _must_ exist. Arguing from

general data, we saw that for the maintenance of a species, the ability

to produce offspring must be great, in proportion as the ability

of the individuals to contend with destroying forces is small; and

conversely. Arguing from other general data, we saw that, derived as

the self-sustaining and race-sustaining forces are from a common stock

of force, it necessarily happens that, other things equal, increase

of one involves decrease of the other. And then, turning to special

facts, we have found that this inverse variation is clearly traceable

throughout both the animal and vegetal kingdoms. We may therefore set

it down as a law, that every higher degree of organic evolution, has

for its concomitant a lower degree of that peculiar organic dissolution

which is seen in the production of new organisms.

§ 363. Something remains to be said in reply to the inquiry--how is the

ratio between Individuation and Genesis established in each case? This

inquiry has been but partially answered in the course of the foregoing

argument.

Many specialities of the reproductive process are manifestly due to

the natural selection of favourable variations. Whether a creature

lays a few large eggs or many small ones equal in weight to the few

large, is not determined by any physiological necessity: here the only

assignable cause is the survival of varieties in which the matter

devoted to reproduction happens to be divided into portions of such

size and number as most to favour multiplication. Whether in any case

there are frequent small broods or larger broods at longer intervals,

depends wholly on the constitutional peculiarity that has arisen from

the dying out of families in which the sizes and intervals of the

broods were least suited to the conditions of life. Whether a species

of animal produces many offspring of which it takes no care or a few

of which it takes much care--that is, whether its reproductive surplus

is laid out wholly in germs or partly in germs and partly in labour on

their behalf--must have been decided by that moulding of constitution

to conditions slowly effected through the more frequent preservation

of descendants from those whose reproductive habits were best adapted

to the circumstances of the species. Given a certain surplus available

for race-preservation, and it is clear that by indirect equilibration

only, can there be established the more or less peculiar distribution

of this surplus which we see in each case. Obviously, too, survival

of the fittest has a share in determining the proportion between the

amount of matter that goes to Individuation and the amount that goes

to Genesis. Whether the interests of the species are most subserved

by a higher evolution of the individual joined with a diminished

fertility, or by a lower evolution of the individual joined with an

increased fertility, are questions ever being experimentally answered.

If the more-developed and less-prolific variety has a greater number of

survivors, it becomes established and predominant. If, contrariwise,

the conditions of life being simple, the larger or more-organized

individuals gain nothing by their greater size or better organization;

then the greater fertility of the less evolved ones, will insure to

their descendants an increasing predominance.

But direct equilibration all along maintains the limits within which

indirect equilibration thus works. The necessary antagonism we have

traced, rigidly restricts the changes that natural selection can

produce, under given conditions, in either direction. A greater demand

for Individuation, be it a demand caused by some spontaneous variation

or by an adaptive increase of structure and function, inevitably

diminishes the supply for Genesis; and natural selection cannot, other

things remaining the same, restore the rate of Genesis while the higher

Individuation is maintained. Conversely, survival of the fittest,

acting on a species that has, by spontaneous variation or otherwise,

become more prolific, cannot again raise its lowered Individuation, so

long as everything else continues constant.

§ 364. Here, however, a qualification must be made. It was

parenthetically remarked in § 327, that the inverse variation between

Individuation and Genesis is not exact; and it was hinted that a slight

modification of statement would be requisite at a more advanced stage

of the argument. We have now reached the proper place for specifying

this modification.

Each increment of evolution entails a decrement of reproduction which

is not accurately proportionate, but somewhat less than proportionate.

The gain in the one direction is not wholly cancelled by a loss in

the other direction, but only partially cancelled: leaving a margin

of profit to the species. Though augmented power of self-maintenance

habitually necessitates diminished power of race-propagation, yet the

product of the two factors is greater than before; so that the forces

preservative of race become, thereafter, in excess of the forces

destructive of race, and the race spreads. We shall soon see why this

happens.

Every advance in evolution implies an economy. That any increase in

bulk, or structure, or activity, may become established, the life of

the organism must be to some extent facilitated by the change--the

cost of self-support must be, on the average, reduced. If the greater

complexity, or the larger size, or the more agile movement, entails

on the individual an outlay that is not repaid in food more-easily

obtained, or danger more-easily escaped; then the individual will

be at a relative disadvantage, and its diminished posterity will

disappear. If the extra outlay is but just made good by the extra

advantage, the modified individual will not survive longer, or leave

more descendants, than the unmodified individuals. Consequently, it

is only when the expense of greater individuation is out-balanced by

a subsequent saving, that it can tend to subserve the preservation of

the individual, and, by implication, the preservation of the race.

The vital capital invested in the alteration must bring a more than

equivalent return. A few instances will show that, whether the change

results from direct equilibration or from indirect equilibration, this

must happen. Suppose a creature takes to performing some act in an

unusual way--leaps where ordinarily its kindred crawl, eludes pursuit

by diving instead of, like others of its kind, by swimming along the

surface, escapes by doubling instead of by speed. Clearly, perseverance

in the modified habit will, other things equal, imply that it takes

less effort. The creature’s sensations will ever prompt desistance from

the more laborious course; and hence a congenital habit is not likely

to be diverged from unless an economy of force is achieved by the

divergence. Assuming, then, that the new method has no advantage over

the old in directly diminishing the chances of death, the establishment

of it, and of the structural complications involved, nevertheless

implies a physiological gain. Suppose, again, that an animal takes

to some abundant food previously refused by its kind. It is likely

to persist only if the comparative ease in obtaining this food, more

than compensates for any want of adaptation to its digestive organs;

so that superposed modifications of the digestive organs are likely

to arise only when an average economy results. What now must be the

influence on the creature’s system as a whole? Diminished expenditure

in any direction, or increased nutrition however effected, will leave

a greater surplus of materials. The animal will be physiological

richer. Part of its augmented wealth will go towards its own greater

individuation--its size, or its strength, or both, will increase; while

another part will go towards more active genesis. Just as a state of

plethora directly produced enhances fertility; so will such a state

indirectly produced.

In another way, the same thing must result from those additions

to bulk or complexity or activity that are due to survival of the

fittest. Any change which prolongs individual life will, other things

remaining the same, further the production of offspring. Even when it

is not, like the foregoing, a means of economizing the forces of the

individual, still, if it increases the chances of escaping destruction,

it increases the chances of leaving posterity. Any further degree of

evolution, therefore, will be established only where the cost of it

is more than repaid: part of the gain being shown in the lengthened

life of the individual, and part in the greater production of other

individuals.

We have here the solution of various minor anomalies by which the

inverse variation of Individuation and Genesis is obscured. Take as an

instance the fertility of the Blackbird as compared with that of the

Linnet. Both birds lay five eggs, and both usually have two broods. Yet

the Blackbird is far the larger of the two, and ought, according to the

general law, to be much less prolific. What causes this nonconformity?

We shall find an answer in their respective foods and habits. Except

during the time that it is rearing its young, the Linnet collects only

vegetal food--lives during the winter on the seeds it finds in the

fields, or, when hard pressed, picks up around farms; and to obtain

this spare diet is continually flying about. The result, if it survives

the frost and snow, is a considerable depletion; and it recovers its

condition only after some length of spring weather. The Blackbird, on

the other hand, is omnivorous. While it eats grain and fruit when they

come in its way, it depends largely on animal food. It cuts to pieces

and devours the dew-worms which, morning and evening, it finds on the

surface of a lawn, and, even discovering where they are, unearths

them; it swallows slugs, and breaking snail-shells, either with its

beak or by hammering them against stones, tears out their tenants; and

it eats beetles and larvæ. Thus the strength of the Blackbird opens

to it a store of good food, much of which is inaccessible to so small

and weak a bird as a Linnet--a store especially helpful to it during

the cold months, when the hybernating snails in hedge-bottoms yield

it abundant provision. The result is that the Blackbird is ready to

breed very early in spring, and is able during the summer to rear

a second, and sometimes even a third, brood. Here, then, a higher

degree of Individuation secures advantages so great, as to much more

than compensate its cost. It is not that the decline of Genesis is

less than proportionate to the increase of Individuation, but there

is no decline at all. Comparison of the Rat with the Mouse yields a

parallel result. Though they differ greatly in size, yet the one is as

prolific as the other. This absence of difference cannot be ascribed

to their unlike degrees of activity. We must seek its cause in some

facility of living secured to the Rat by its greater intelligence,

greater power and courage, greater ability to utilize what it finds.

The Rat is notoriously cunning; and its cunning gives success to its

foraging expeditions. It is not, like the Mouse, limited mainly to

vegetal food; but while it eats grain and beans like the Mouse, it also

eats flesh and carrion, devours young poultry and eggs. The result is

that, without a proportionate increase of expenditure, it gets a far

larger supply of nourishment than the Mouse; and relative excess of

nourishment makes possible a larger size without a smaller rate of

multiplication. How clearly this is the cause, we see in the contrast

between the common Rat and the Water-Rat. While the common Rat has

ordinarily several broods a-year of from 10 to 12 each, the Water-Rat,

though somewhat smaller, has but 5 or 6 in a brood, and but one brood,

or sometimes two broods, a-year. But the Water-Rat lives on vegetal

food, and it lacks all that its bold, sagacious, omnivorous congener

gains from the warmth as well as the abundance which men’s habitations

yield.

The inverse variation of Individuation and Genesis is, therefore, but

approximate. Recognizing the truth that every increment of evolution

which is appropriate to the circumstances of an organism, brings an

advantage somewhat in excess of its cost; we see the general law, as

more strictly stated, to be that Genesis decreases not quite so fast

as Individuation increases. Whether the greater Individuation takes

the form of a larger bulk and accompanying access of strength; whether

it be shown in higher speed or agility; whether it consists in a

modification of structure which facilitates some habitual movement,

or in a visceral change that helps to utilize better the absorbed

aliment; the ultimate effect is identical. There is either a more

economical performance of the same actions, internal or external, or

there is a securing of greater advantages by modified actions, which

cost no more, or have an increased cost less than the increased gain.

In any case the result is a greater surplus of vital capital, part

of which goes to the aggrandizement of the individual, and part to

the formation of new individuals. While the higher tide of nutritive

matters, everywhere filling the parent-organism, adds to its power of

self-maintenance, it also causes a reproductive overflow larger than

before.

Hence every type which is best adapted to its conditions, (and this

on the average means every higher type), has a rate of multiplication

that insures a tendency to predominate. Survival of the fittest, acting

alone, is ever replacing inferior species by superior species. But

beyond the longer survival, and therefore greater chance of leaving

offspring, which superiority gives, we see here another way in which

the spread of the superior is insured. Though the more-evolved organism

is the less fertile absolutely, it is the more fertile relatively.

CHAPTER XII.

MULTIPLICATION OF THE HUMAN RACE.

§ 365. The relative fertility of Man considered as a species, and

those changes in Man’s fertility which occur under changed conditions,

must conform to the laws which we have traced thus far. As a matter

of course, the inverse variation between Individuation and Genesis

holds of him as of all other organized beings. His extremely low rate

of multiplication--far below that of all terrestrial Mammals except

the Elephant, (which though otherwise less evolved is, in extent

of integration, more evolved)--we shall recognize as the necessary

concomitant of his much higher evolution. And the causes of increase or

decrease in his fertility, special or general, temporary or permanent,

we shall expect to find in those changes of bulk, of structure, or of

expenditure, which we have in all other cases seen associated with such

effects.

In the absence of detailed proof that these parallelisms exist, it

might suffice to contemplate the several communities between the

reproductive function in human beings and other beings. I do not refer

simply to the fact that genesis proceeds in a similar manner; but I

refer to the similarity of the relation between the generative function

and the functions which have for their joint end the preservation

of the individual. In Man, as in other creatures that expend much,

genesis commences only when growth and development are declining in

rapidity and approaching their termination. Among the higher organisms

in general, the reproductive activity, continuing during the prime

of life, ceases when the vigour declines, leaving a closing period of

infertility; and in like manner among ourselves, barrenness supervenes

when middle age brings the surplus vitality to an end. So, too, it is

found that in Man, as in beings of lower orders, there is a period

at which fecundity culminates. In § 341, facts were cited showing

that at the commencement of the reproductive period, animals bear

fewer offspring than afterwards; and that towards the close of the

reproductive period, there is a decrease in the number produced. In

like manner it is shown by the tables of Dr. Duncan’s recent work,

that the fecundity of women increases up to the age of about 25

years, and continuing high with but slight diminution till after 30,

then gradually wanes. It is the same with the sizes and weights of

offspring. Infants born of women from 25 to 29 years of age, are both

longer and heavier than infants born of younger or older women; and

this difference has the same implication as the greater total weight

of the offspring produced at a birth, during the most fecund age of

a pluriparous animal. Once more, there is the fact that a too-early

bearing of young produces on a woman the same injurious effects as

on an inferior creature--an arrest of growth and an enfeeblement of

constitution.

Considering these general and special parallelisms, we might safely

infer that variations of human fertility conform to the same laws

as do variations of fertility in general. But it is not needful to

content ourselves with an implication. Evidence is assignable that

what causes increase or decrease of genesis in other creatures, causes

increase or decrease of genesis in Man. It is true that, even more

than hitherto, our reasonings are beset by difficulties. So numerous

are the inequalities in the conditions, that but few unobjectionable

comparisons can be made. The human races differ considerably in their

sizes, and notably in their degrees of cerebral development. The

countries they inhabit entail on them widely different consumptions

of matter for maintenance of temperature. Both in their qualities

and quantities the foods they live on are unlike; and the supply is

here regular and there very irregular. Their expenditures in bodily

action are extremely unequal; and even still more unequal are their

expenditures in mental action. Hence the factors, varying so much in

their amounts and combinations, can scarcely ever have their respective

effects identified. Nevertheless there are a few comparisons the

results of which may withstand criticism.

§ 366. The increase of fertility caused by a nutrition that is greatly

in excess of the expenditure, is to be detected by contrasting

populations of the same race, or allied races, one of which obtains

good and abundant sustenance much more easily than the other. Three

cases may here be set down.

The traveller Barrow, describing the Cape-Boers, says:--“Unwilling

to work and unable to think,” ... “indulging to excess in the

gratification of every sensual appetite, the African peasant grows to

an unwieldy size;” and respecting the other sex, he adds--“the women

of the African peasantry lead a life of the most listless inactivity,”

Then, after illustrating these statements, he goes on to note “the

prolific tendency of all the African peasantry. Six or seven children

in a family are considered as very few; from a dozen to twenty are

not uncommon.” The native races of this region yield evidence to the

same effect. Speaking of the cruelly-used Hottentots (he is writing a

century ago), who, while they are poor and ill-fed, have to do all the

work for the idle Boers, Barrow says that they “seldom have more than

two or three children; and many of the women are barren.” This unusual

infertility stands in remarkable contrast with the unusual fertility of

the Kaffirs, of whom he afterwards gives an account. Rich in cattle,

leading easy lives, and living almost exclusively on animal food

(chiefly milk with occasional flesh), these people were then reputed

to have a very high rate of multiplication. Barrow writes:--“They are

said to be exceedingly prolific; that twins are almost as frequent as

single births, and that it is no uncommon thing for a woman to have

three at a time.” Probably both these statements are in excess of the

truth; but there is room for large discounts without destroying the

extreme difference. A third instance is that of the French-Canadians.

“_Nous sommes terribles pour les enfants!_” observed one of them to

Prof. Johnston, who tells us that the man who said this “was one of

fourteen children--was himself the father of fourteen, and assured

me that from eight to sixteen was the usual number of the farmers’

families. He even named one or two women who had brought their husbands

five-and-twenty, and threatened ‘_le vingt-sixième pour le prêtre_.’”

From these large families, joined with the early marriages and low

rate of mortality, it results that, by natural increase, “there are

added to the French-Canadian population of Lower Canada four persons

for every one that is added to the population of England.” Now these

French-Canadians are described by Prof. Johnston as home-loving,

contented, unenterprising; and as living in a region where “land and

subsistence are easily obtained.” Very moderate industry brings to

them liberal supplies of necessaries; and they pass a considerable

portion of the year in idleness. Hence the cost of Individuation

being much reduced, the rate of Genesis is much increased. That this

uncommon fertility is not due to any direct influence of the locality,

is implied by the fact that along with the “restless, discontented,

striving, burning energy of their Saxon neighbours,” no such rate of

multiplication is observed; while further south, where the physical

circumstances are more favourable if anything, the Anglo-Saxons,

leading lives of excessive activity, have a fertility below the

average. And that the peculiarity is not a direct effect of race, is

proved by the fact that in Europe, the rural French are certainly not

more prolific than the rural English.

To every reader there will probably occur the seemingly-adverse

evidence furnished by the Irish; who, though not well fed, multiply

fast. Part of this more rapid increase is due to the earlier marriages

common among them, and consequent quicker succession of generations--a

factor which, as we have seen, has a larger effect than any other on

the rate of multiplication. Part of it is due to the greater generality

of marriage--to the comparative smallness of the number who die without

having had the opportunity of producing offspring. The effects of

these causes having been deducted, we may doubt whether the Irish,

individually considered, would be found more prolific than the English.

Perhaps, however, it will be said that, considering their diet, they

ought to be less prolific. This is by no means obvious. It is not

simply a question of nutriment absorbed. It is a question of how much

remains after the expenditure in self-maintenance. Now a notorious

peculiarity in the life of the Irish peasant is, that he obtains a

return of food which is large in proportion to his outlay in labour.

The cultivation of his potatoe-ground occupies each cottager but a

small part of the year; and the domestic economy of his wife is not of

a kind to entail on her much daily exertion. Consequently the crop,

tolerably abundant in quantity though innutritive in quality, possibly

suffices to meet the comparatively-low expenditure, and to leave a good

surplus for genesis--perhaps a greater surplus than remains to the

males and females of the English peasantry, who, though fed on better

food, are harder worked.

We conclude, then, that in the human race, as in all other races, such

absolute or relative abundance of nutriment as leaves a large excess

after defraying the cost of carrying on parental life, is accompanied

by a high rate of genesis.[66]

§ 367. Evidence of the converse truth, that relative increase of

expenditure, leaving a diminished surplus, reduces the degree of

fertility, is not wanting. Some of it has been set down for the sake of

antithesis in the foregoing section. Here may be grouped a few facts of

a more special kind having the same implication.

To prove that much bodily labour renders women less prolific, requires

more evidence than has at present been collected. Nevertheless it may

be noted that De Boismont in France and Dr. Szukits in Austria, have

shown by extensive statistical comparisons, that the reproductive

age is reached a year later by women of the labouring class than by

middle-class women; and while ascribing this delay in part to inferior

nutrition, we may suspect that it is in part due to greater muscular

expenditure. A kindred fact, admitting of a kindred interpretation,

may be added. Though the comparatively-low rate of increase in France

is attributed to other causes, yet, very possibly, one of its causes

is the greater proportion of hard work entailed on French women, by

the excessive abstraction of men for non-productive occupations,

military and civil. The higher rate of multiplication in England than

in continental countries generally, is not improbably furthered by the

easier lives which English women lead.

That absolute or relative infertility is commonly produced in women

by mental labour carried to excess, is more clearly shown. Though the

regimen of upper-class girls is not what it should be, yet, considering

that their feeding is better than that of girls belonging to the poorer

classes, while, in most other respects, their physical treatment is

not worse, the deficiency of reproductive power among them may be

reasonably attributed to the overtaxing of their brains--an overtaxing

which produces a serious reaction on the physique. This diminution

of reproductive power is not shown only by the greater frequency of

absolute sterility; nor is it shown only in the earlier cessation of

child-bearing; but it is also shown in the very frequent inability of

such women to suckle their infants. In its full sense, the reproductive

power means the power to bear a well-developed infant and to supply

that infant with the natural food for the natural period. Most of the

flat-chested girls who survive their high-pressure education, are

incompetent to do this. Were their fertility measured by the number

of children they could rear without artificial aid, they would prove

relatively very infertile.

The cost of reproduction to males being so much less than it is to

females, the antagonism between Genesis and Individuation is not often

shown in men by suppression of generative power consequent on unusual

expenditure in bodily action. Nevertheless, there are indications that

this results in extreme cases. We read that the ancient _athletæ_

rarely had children; and among such of their modern representatives as

acrobats, an allied relation of cause and effect is alleged. Indirectly

this truth, or rather its converse, appears to have been ascertained

by those who train men for feats of strength--they find it needful to

insist on continence.

Special proofs that in men great cerebral expenditure diminishes or

destroys generative power, are difficult to obtain. It is, indeed,

asserted that intense application to mathematics, requiring as it does

extreme concentration of thought, is apt to have this result; and it is

asserted, too, that this result is produced by the excessive emotional

excitement of gambling. Then, again, it is a matter of common remark

how frequently men of unusual mental activity leave no offspring. But

facts of this kind admit of another interpretation. The reaction of

the brain on the body is so violent--the overtaxing of the nervous

system is so apt to prostrate the heart and derange the digestion; that

the incapacities caused in these cases, are probably often due more to

constitutional disturbance than to the direct deduction which excessive

action entails. Such instances harmonize with the hypothesis; but how

far they yield it positive support we cannot say.

§ 368. An objection must here be guarded against. It is likely to

be urged that since the civilized races are, on the average, larger

than many of the uncivilized races; and since they are also somewhat

more complex as well as more active; they ought, in conformity with

the alleged general law, to be less prolific. There is, however, no

evidence to prove that they are so: on the whole, they seem rather the

reverse.

The reply is that were all other things equal, these superior varieties

of men should have inferior rates of increase. But other things are not

equal; and it is to the inequality of other things that this apparent

anomaly is attributable. Already we have seen how much more fertile

domesticated animals are than their wild kindred; and the causes of

this greater fertility are also the causes of the greater fertility,

relative or absolute, which civilized men exhibit when compared with

savages.

There is the difference in amount of food. Australians, Fuegians, and

sundry races that might be named as having low rates of multiplication,

are obviously underfed. The sketches of natives contained in the

volumes of Livingstone, Baker, and others, yield clear proofs of the

extreme depletion common among the uncivilized. In quality as well

as in quantity, their feeding is bad. Wild fruits, insects, larvæ,

vermin, &c., which we refuse with disgust, often enter largely into

their dietary. Much of this inferior food they eat uncooked; and they

have not our elaborate appliances for mechanically-preparing it, and

rejecting its useless parts. So that they live on matters of less

nutritive value, which cost more both to masticate and to digest.

Further, to uncivilized men supplies of food come very irregularly.

Long periods of scarcity are divided by short periods of abundance.

And though by gorging when opportunity occurs, something is done

towards compensating for previous fasting, yet the effects of prolonged

starvation cannot be neutralized by occasional enormous meals. Bearing

in mind, too, that improvident as they are, savages often bestir

themselves only under pressure of hunger, we may fairly consider them

as habitually ill-nourished--may see that even the poorer classes of

civilized men, making regular meals on food separated from innutritive

matters, easy to masticate and digest, tolerably good in quality and

adequate if not abundant in quantity, are much better nourished.

Then, again, though a greater consumption in muscular action appears

to be undergone by civilized men than by savages; and though it is

probably true that among our labouring people the daily repairs cost

more; yet in many cases there does not exist so much difference as we

are apt to suppose. The chase is very laborious; and great amounts of

exertion are gone through by the lowest races in seeking and securing

the odds and ends of wild food on which they largely depend. We

naturally assume that because barbarians are averse to regular labour,

their muscular action is less than our own. But this is not necessarily

true. The monotonous toil is what they cannot tolerate; and they may

be ready to go through as much or more exertion when it is joined with

excitement. If we remember that the sportsman who gladly scrambles

up and down rough hill-sides all day after grouse or deer, would

think himself hardly used had he to spend as much effort and time in

digging; we shall see that a savage who is the reverse of industrious,

may nevertheless be subject to a muscular waste not very different in

amount from that undergone by the industrious. When it is added that a

larger physiological expenditure is entailed on the uncivilized than

on the civilized by the absence of good appliances for shelter and

protection--that in some cases they have to make good a greater loss

of heat, and in other cases suffer much wear from irritating swarms of

insects; we shall see that the total cost of self-maintenance among

them is probably in many cases little less, and in some cases more,

than it is among ourselves.

So that though, on the average, the civilized are probably larger than

the savage; and though they are, in their nervous systems at least,

somewhat more complex; and though, other things equal, they ought to

be the less prolific; yet other things are so unequal as to make it

quite conformable to the general law that they should be more prolific.

In § 365 we observed how, among inferior animals, higher evolution

sometimes makes self-preservation far easier, by opening the way to

resources previously unavailable: so involving an undiminished, or

even an increased, rate of genesis. And similarly we may expect that

among races of men, those whose slight further developments have been

followed by habits and arts which immensely facilitate life, will not

exhibit a lower degree of fertility, and may even exhibit a higher.

§ 369. One more objection has to be met--a kindred objection to which

there is a kindred reply. Cases may be named of men conspicuous

for activity, bodily and mental, who were also noted, not for less

generative power than usual, but for more. As their superiorities

indicate higher degrees of evolution, it may be urged that such men

should, according to the theory, have lower degrees of reproductive

activity. The fact that here, along with increased powers of

self-preservation, there go increased powers of race-propagation,

seems irreconcilable with the general doctrine. Reconciliation is not

difficult however.

The cases are analogous to some before named, in which more abundant

food simultaneously aggrandizes the individual and adds to the

production of new individuals: the difference between the cases

being, that instead of a better external supply of materials there

is a better internal utilization of materials. Creatures of the same

species notoriously differ in goodness of constitution. Here there

is some visceral defect, showing itself in feebleness of all the

functions; while here some peculiarity of organic balance, some high

quality of tissue, some abundance or potency of the digestive juices,

gives to the system a perpetual high tide of rich blood, which serves

at once to enhance the vital activities and to raise the power of

propagation. Such variations, however, are independent of changes in

the _proportion_ between Individuation and Genesis. This remains the

same, while both are increased or decreased by the increase or decrease

of the common stock of materials.

An illustration will best clear up any perplexity. Let us say that

the fuel burnt in the furnace of a locomotive steam-engine, answers

to the food which a man consumes. Let us say that the produced steam

expended in working the engine, corresponds to that portion of absorbed

nutriment which carries on the man’s functions and activities. And

let us say that the steam blowing off at the safety-valve, answers to

that portion of the absorbed nutriment which goes to the propagation

of the race. Such being the conditions of the case, several kinds of

variations are possible. All other circumstances remaining the same,

there may be changes of proportion between the steam used for working

the engine and the steam that escapes by the safety-valve. There may

be a structural or organic change of proportion. By enlarging the

safety-valve or weakening its spring, while the cylinders are reduced

in size, there may be established a constitutionally-small power of

locomotion and a constitutionally-large amount of escape-steam; and

inverse variations so produced, will answer to the inverse variations

between Individuation and Genesis which different types of organisms

show us. Again, there may be a functional change of proportion. If the

engine has to draw a considerable load, the abstraction of steam by

the cylinders greatly reduces the discharge by the safety-valve; and

if a high velocity is kept up, the discharge from the safety-valve

entirely ceases. Conversely, if the velocity is low, the escape-steam

bears a large ratio to the steam consumed by the motor apparatus;

and if the engine becomes stationary the whole of the steam escapes

by the safety-valve. This inverse variation answers to that which

we have traced between Expenditure and Genesis, as displayed in the

contrasts between species of the same type but unlike activities,

and in the contrasts between active and inactive individuals of the

same species. But now beyond these inverse variations between the

quantities of consumed steam and escape-steam, which are structurally

and functionally caused, there are coincident variations, producible

in both by changes in the quantity of steam supplied--changes which

may be caused in several ways. In the first place, the fuel thrown

into the furnace may be increased or made better. Other things equal,

there will result a more active locomotion as well as a greater escape;

and this will answer to that simultaneous addition to its individual

vigour and its reproductive activity, caused in an animal by a larger

quantity, or a superior quality, of food. In the second place, the

steam generated may be economized. Loss by radiation from the boiler

may be lessened by a covering of non-conducting substances; and part

of the steam thus prevented from condensing, will go to increase the

working power of the engine, while part will be added to the quantity

blowing off. This variation corresponds to that simultaneous addition

to bodily vigour and propagative power, which results in animals

that have to expend less in keeping up their temperatures. In the

third place, by improvement of the steam-generating apparatus, more

steam may be obtained from a given weight of fuel. A better-formed

evaporating surface, or boiler tubes which conduct more rapidly, or

an increased number of them may cause a larger absorption of heat

from the burning mass or the hot gases it gives off; and the extra

steam generated by this extra heat will, as before, augment both the

motive force and the emission through the safety-valve. And this last

case of coincident variation, is parallel to the case with which we

are here concerned--the augmentation of individual expenditure and of

reproductive energy, that may be caused by a superiority of some organ

on which the utilizing or economizing of materials depends.

Manifestly, therefore, an increased expenditure for Genesis, or an

increased expenditure for Individuation, may arise in one of two quite

different ways--either by diminution of the antagonistic expenditure,

or by addition to the store which supplies both expenditures; and

confusion results from not distinguishing between these. Given the

ratio 4 to 20, as expressive of the relative costs of Genesis and

Individuation; then the expenditure for Genesis may be raised to 5

while the expenditure for Individuation is raised to 25, without any

alteration of type, merely by favourable circumstances or superiority

of constitution. On the other hand, circumstances remaining the same,

the expenditure for Genesis may be raised from 4 to 5, by lowering the

expenditure for Individuation from 20 to 19: which change of ratio may

be either functional and temporary, or structural and permanent. And

only when it is the last does it illustrate that inverse variation

between degree of evolution and degree of procreative dissolution,

which we have everywhere seen.

§ 370. There is no reason to suppose, then, that the laws of

multiplication which hold of other beings, do not hold of the human

being. On the contrary, there are special facts which unite with

general implications to show that these laws do hold of the human

being. The absence of direct evidence in some cases where it might be

looked for, we find fully explained when all the factors are taken into

account. And certain seemingly-adverse facts prove, on examination, to

be facts belonging to a different category from that in which they are

placed, and harmonize with the rest when rightly interpreted.

The conformity of human fertility to the laws of multiplication in

general, being granted, it remains to inquire what effects must be

caused by permanent changes in men’s natures and circumstances. Thus

far we have observed how, by their exceptionally-high evolution and

exceptionally-low fertility, mankind display the inverse variation

between Individuation and Genesis, in one of its extremes. And we have

also observed how mankind, like other kinds, are functionally changed

in their rates of multiplication by changes of conditions. But we have

not observed how alteration of structure in Man entails alteration

of fertility. The influence of this factor is so entangled with the

influences of other factors which are for the present more potent, that

we cannot recognize it. Here, if we proceed at all, we must proceed

deductively.

* * * * *

[NOTE.--From among the publications of the American Academy of

Political and Social Science, there was sent to me some years ago an

essay entitled “The Significance of a Decreasing Birth Rate” by (Miss)

J. L. Brownell, Fellow in Political Science, Bryn Mawr College. This

essay contains a number of elaborate comparisons drawn from the vital

statistics of the tenth United States Census. The results of these

comparisons are thus summed up:--

“1. Whether or not it be true that the means spoken of by Dr.

Billings, M. Dumont, M. Levasseur, and Dr. Edson has become an

important factor in the diminishing birth-rate of civilized

countries, it is evident that it is not the only factor, and

that, quite apart from voluntary prevention, there is a distinct

problem to be investigated. This is shown by the fact that the

white and the colored birth-rate vary together.

“2. Mr. Spencer’s generalization that the birth-rate diminishes

as the rate of individual evolution increases is confirmed by a

comparison of the birth-rates with the death-rates from nervous

diseases, and also with the density of population, the values

of agricultural and manufactured products, and the mortgage

indebtedness.”

Of course multitudinous differences of race, class, mode of living,

occupation, locality, make it difficult to draw positive inferences

from the data; but the inferences above drawn are held to remain

outstanding after allowing for all the qualifying conditions.]

CHAPTER XIII.

HUMAN POPULATION IN THE FUTURE.

§ 371. Any further evolution in the most highly-evolved of terrestrial

beings, Man, must be of the same nature as evolution in general.

Structurally considered, it may consist in greater integration,

or greater differentiation, or both--augmented bulk, or increased

heterogeneity and definiteness, or a combination of the two.

Functionally considered, it may consist in a larger sum of actions,

or more multiplied varieties of actions, or both--a larger amount of

sensible and insensible motion generated, or motions more numerous in

their kinds and more intricate and exact in their co-ordinations, or

motions that are greater alike in quantity, complexity, and precision.

Expressing the change in terms of that more special evolution displayed

by organisms; we may say that it must be one which further adapts the

moving equilibrium of organic actions. As was pointed out in _First

Principles_, § 173, “the maintenance of such a moving equilibrium,

requires the habitual genesis of internal forces corresponding in

number, directions, and amounts to the external incident forces--as

many inner functions, single or combined, as there are single or

combined outer actions to be met.” And it was also pointed out that

“the structural complexity accompanying functional equilibration, is

definable as one in which there are as many specialized parts as are

capable, separately and jointly, of counteracting the separate and

joint forces amid which the organism exists.” Clearly, then, since

all incompletenesses in Man as now constituted, are failures to meet

certain of the outer actions (mostly involved, remote, irregular), to

which he is exposed; every advance implies additional co-ordinations of

actions and accompanying complexities of organization.

Or, to specialize still further this conception of future progress, we

may consider it as an advance towards completion of that continuous

adjustment of internal to external relations, which Life shows us.

In Part I. of this work, where it was shown that the correspondence

between inner and outer actions which under its phenomenal aspect,

we call Life, is a particular kind of what, in terms of Evolution,

we called a moving equilibrium; it was shown that the degree of life

varies as the degree of correspondence. Greater evolution or higher

life implies, then, such modifications of human nature as shall make

more exact the existing correspondences, or shall establish additional

correspondences, or both. Connexions of phenomena of a rare, distant,

unobtrusive, or intricate kind, which we either suffer from or do not

take advantage of, have to be responded to by new connexions of ideas,

and acts properly combined and proportioned: there must be increase

of knowledge, or skill, or power, or of all these. And to effect this

more extensive, more varied, and more accurate, co-ordination of

actions, there must be organization of still greater heterogeneity and

definiteness.

§ 372. Let us, before proceeding, consider in what particular ways this

further evolution, this higher life, this greater co-ordination of

actions, may be expected to show itself.

Will it be in strength? Probably not to any considerable degree.

Mechanical appliances are fast supplanting brute force, and doubtless

will continue doing this. Though at present civilized nations largely

depend for self-preservation on vigour of limb, and are likely to do

so while wars continue; yet that progressive adaptation to the social

state which must at last bring wars to an end, will leave the amount

of muscular power to adjust itself to the requirements of a peaceful

_regime_. Though, taking all things into account, the muscular power

then required may not be less than now, there seems no reason why more

should be required.

Will it be swiftness or agility? Probably not. In savages these are

important elements of the ability to maintain life; but in civilized

men they aid self-preservation in quite minor degrees, and there

seems no circumstance likely to necessitate an increase of them.

By games and gymnastic competitions, such attributes may indeed be

artificially increased; but no artificial increase which does not bring

a proportionate advantage can be permanent; since, other things equal,

individuals and societies that devote the same amounts of energy in

ways which subserve life more effectually, must by and by predominate.

Will it be in mechanical skill, that is, in the better-co-ordination

of complex movements? Most likely in some degree. Awkwardness is

continually entailing injuries and deaths. Moreover the complicated

tools which civilization brings into use, are constantly requiring

greater delicacy of manipulation. All the arts, industrial and

æsthetic, as they develop, imply a corresponding development of

perceptive and executive faculties in men: the two act and react.

Will it be in intelligence? Largely, no doubt. There is ample room

for advance in this direction, and ample demand for it. Our lives are

universally shortened by our ignorance. In attaining complete knowledge

of our own natures and of the natures of surrounding things--in

ascertaining the conditions of existence to which we must conform,

and in discovering means of conforming to them under all variations

of seasons and circumstances; we have abundant scope for intellectual

progress.

Will it be in morality, that is, in greater power of self-regulation?

Largely also: perhaps most largely. Right conduct is usually come short

of more from defect of will than defect of knowledge. For the right

co-ordination of those complex actions which constitute human life in

its civilized form, there goes not only the pre-requisite--recognition

of the proper course; but the further pre-requisite--a due impulse to

pursue that course. On calling to mind our daily failures to fulfil

often-repeated resolutions, we shall perceive that lack of the needful

desire, rather than lack of the needful insight, is the chief cause of

faulty action. A further endowment of those feelings which civilization

is developing in us--sentiments responding to the requirements of the

social state--emotive faculties that find their gratifications in the

duties devolving on us--must be acquired before the crimes, excesses,

diseases, improvidences, dishonesties, and cruelties, that now so

greatly diminish the duration of life, can cease.

Thus, looking at the several possibilities, and asking what direction

this further evolution, this more complete moving equilibrium, this

better adjustment of inner to outer relations, this more perfect

co-ordination of actions, is likely to take; we conclude that it must

take mainly the direction of a higher intellectual and emotional

development.

§ 373. This conclusion we shall find equally forced on us if we

inquire for the causes which are to bring about such results. No

more in the case of Man than in the case of any other being, can

we presume that evolution has taken place, or will hereafter take

place, spontaneously. In the past, at present, and in the future, all

modifications, functional and organic, have been, are, and must be,

immediately or remotely consequent on surrounding conditions. What,

then, are those changes in the environment to which, by direct or

indirect equilibration, the human organism has been adjusting itself,

is adjusting itself now, and will continue to adjust itself? And how

do they necessitate a higher evolution of the organism?

Civilization, everywhere having for its antecedent the increase

of population, and everywhere having for one of its consequences

a decrease of certain race-destroying forces, has for a further

consequence an increase of certain other race-destroying forces. Danger

of death from predatory animals lessens as men grow more numerous.

Though, as they spread over the Earth and divide into tribes, men

become wild beasts to one another, yet the danger of death from this

cause also diminishes as tribes coalesce into nations. But the danger

of death which does not diminish, is that produced by augmentation of

numbers itself--the danger from deficiency of food. Supposing human

nature to remain unchanged, the mortality hence resulting would, on

the average, rise as human beings multiplied. If mortality, under

such conditions, does not rise, it must be because the supply of food

also augments; and this implies some change in human habits wrought

by stress of human needs. Here, then, is the permanent cause of

modification to which civilized men are exposed. Though the intensity

of its action is ever being mitigated in one direction by greater

production of food, it is, in the other direction, ever being added

to by the greater production of individuals. Manifestly, the wants of

their redundant numbers constitute the only stimulus mankind have to

obtain more necessaries of life. Were not the demand beyond the supply,

there would be no motive to increase the supply. And manifestly, this

excess of demand over supply is perennial: this pressure of population,

of which it is the index, cannot be eluded. Though by the emigration

that takes place when the pressure arrives at a certain intensity,

temporary relief is from time to time obtained; yet as, by this

process, all habitable countries must become peopled, it follows that

in the end the pressure, whatever it may then be, must be borne in full.

This constant increase of people beyond the means of subsistence

causes, then, a never-ceasing requirement for skill, intelligence, and

self-control--involves, therefore, a constant exercise of these and

gradual growth of them. Every industrial improvement is at once the

product of a higher form of humanity, and demands that higher form of

humanity to carry it into practice. The application of science to the

arts, is the bringing to bear greater intelligence for satisfying our

wants, and implies continued progress of that intelligence. To get more

produce from the acre, the farmer must study chemistry, must adopt new

mechanical appliances, and must, by the multiplication of processes,

cultivate both his own powers and the powers of his labourers. To

meet the requirements of the market, the manufacturer is perpetually

improving his old machines and inventing new ones; and by the

premium of high wages incites artizans to acquire greater skill. The

daily-widening ramifications of commerce entail on the merchant a need

for more knowledge and more complex calculations; while the lessening

profits of the ship-owner force him to build more scientifically, to

get captains of higher intelligence and better crews. In all cases

pressure of population is the original cause. Were it not for the

competition this entails, more thought and energy would not daily be

spent on the business of life; and growth of mental power would not

take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive to a

higher education of children, and to a more intense and long-continued

application in adults. In the mother it prompts foresight, economy,

and skilful house-keeping; in the father, laborious days and constant

self-denial. Nothing but necessity could make men submit to this

discipline; and nothing but this discipline could produce a continued

progression.

In this case, as in many others, Nature secures each step in advance by

a succession of trials; which are perpetually repeated, and cannot fail

to be repeated, until success is achieved. All mankind in turn subject

themselves more or less to the discipline described; they either

may or may not advance under it; but, in the nature of things, only

those who _do_ advance under it eventually survive. For, necessarily,

families and races whom this increasing difficulty of getting a living

which excess of fertility entails, does not stimulate to improvements

in production--that is, to greater mental activity--are on the high

road to extinction; and must ultimately be supplanted by those whom

the pressure does so stimulate. This truth we have recently seen

exemplified in Ireland. And here, indeed, without further illustration,

it will be seen that premature death, under all its forms and from all

its causes, cannot fail to work in the same direction. For as those

prematurely carried off must, in the average of cases, be those in whom

the power of self-preservation is the least, it unavoidably follows

that those left behind to continue the race, must be those in whom the

power of self-preservation is the greatest--must be the select of their

generation. So that, whether the dangers to existence be of the kind

produced by excess of fertility, or of any other kind, it is clear that

by the ceaseless exercise of the faculties needed to contend with them,

and by the death of all men who fail to contend with them successfully,

there is ensured a constant progress towards a higher degree of skill,

intelligence, and self-regulation--a better co-ordination of actions--a

more complete life.[67]

§ 374. The proposition at which we have thus arrived is, then, that

excess of fertility, through the changes it is ever working in Man’s

environment, is itself the cause of Man’s further evolution; and the

obvious corollary here to be drawn is, that Man’s further evolution so

brought about, itself necessitates a decline in his fertility.

All future progress in civilization which the never-ceasing pressure

of population must produce, will be accompanied by an enhanced cost of

Individuation, both in structure and function; and more especially in

nervous structure and function. The peaceful struggle for existence in

societies ever growing more crowded and more complicated, must have

for its concomitant an increase of the great nervous centres in mass,

in complexity, in activity. That larger body of emotion needed as a

fountain of energy for men who have to hold their places and rear their

families under the intensifying competition of social life, is, other

things equal, the correlative of larger brain. Those higher feelings

presupposed by the better self-regulation which, in a better society,

can alone enable the individual to leave a persistent posterity, are,

other things equal, the correlatives of a more complex brain; as are

also those more numerous, more varied, more general, and more abstract

ideas, which must also become increasingly requisite for successful

life as society advances. And the genesis of this larger quantity of

feeling and thought, in a brain thus augmented in size and developed

in structure, is, other things equal, the correlative of a greater

wear of nervous tissue and greater consumption of materials to repair

it. So that both in original cost of construction and in subsequent

cost of working, the nervous system must become a heavier tax on the

organism. Already the brain of the civilized man is larger by nearly

thirty per cent. than the brain of the savage. Already, too, it

presents an increased heterogeneity--especially in the distribution

of its convolutions. And further changes like these which have taken

place under the discipline of civilized life, we infer will continue

to take place. But everywhere and always, evolution is antagonistic

to procreative dissolution. Whether it be in greater growth of the

organs which subserve self-maintenance, whether it be in their added

complexity of structure, or whether it be in their higher activity,

the abstraction of the required materials implies a diminished reserve

of materials for race-maintenance. And we have seen reason to believe

that this antagonism between Individuation and Genesis, becomes

unusually marked where the nervous system is concerned, because of the

costliness of nervous structure and function. In § 346 was pointed out

the apparent connexion between high cerebral development and prolonged

delay of sexual maturity; and in §§ 366, 367, the evidence went to show

that where exceptional fertility exists there is sluggishness of mind,

and that where there has been during education excessive expenditure

in mental action, there frequently follows a complete or partial

infertility. Hence the particular kind of further evolution which Man

is hereafter to undergo, is one which, more than any other, may be

expected to cause a decline in his power of reproduction.

The higher nervous development and greater expenditure in nervous

action, here described as indirectly brought about by increase of

numbers, and as thereafter becoming a check on the increase of numbers,

must not be taken to imply an intenser strain--a mentally-laborious

life. The greater emotional and intellectual power and activity above

contemplated, must be understood as becoming, by small increments,

organic, spontaneous, and pleasurable. As, even when relieved from

the pressure of necessity, large-brained Europeans voluntarily enter

on enterprises and activities which the savage could not keep up even

to satisfy urgent wants; so, their still larger-brained descendants

will, in a still higher degree, find their gratifications in careers

entailing still greater mental expenditures. This enhanced demand for

materials to establish and carry on the psychical functions, will be a

constitutional demand. We must conceive the type gradually so modified,

that the more-developed nervous system irresistibly draws off, for its

normal and unforced activities, a larger proportion of the common stock

of nutriment; and while so increasing the intensity, completeness, and

length of the individual life, necessarily diminishing the reserve

applicable to the setting up of new lives--no longer required to be so

numerous.

Though the working of this process will doubtless be interfered

with and modified in the future, as it has been in the past, by the

facilitations of living which civilization brings; yet nothing beyond

temporary interruptions can so be caused. However much the industrial

arts may be improved, there must be a limit to the improvement; while,

with a rate of multiplication in excess of the rate of mortality,

population must continually tread on the heels of production. So that

though, during the earlier stages of civilization, an increased amount

of food may accrue from a given amount of labour, there must come a

time when this relation will be reversed, and when every additional

increment of food will be obtained by a more than proportionate labour:

the disproportion growing ever higher, and the diminution of the

reproductive power becoming greater.

§ 375. There now remains but to inquire towards what limit this

progress tends. So long as the fertility of the race is more than

sufficient to balance the diminution by deaths, population must

continue to increase. So long as population continues to increase,

there must be pressure on the means of subsistence. And so long

as there is pressure on the means of subsistence, further mental

development must go on, and further diminution of fertility must

result; provided that the actions and reactions which have been

described are not artificially interfered with. I append this

qualifying clause advisedly, and especially emphasize it, because

these actions and reactions have been hitherto, and are now,

greatly interfered with by governments, and the continuance of the

interferences may retard, if not stop, that further evolution which

would else go on.

I refer to those hindrances to the survival of the fittest which

in earlier times resulted from the undiscriminating charities of

monasteries and in later times from the operation of Poor Laws. Of

course if the competition which increasing pressure of population

entails, is prevented from acting on a considerable part of the

community, such part, saved from the needed intellectual and moral

stress, will not undergo any further mental development; and must

ever tend to leave a posterity, and an increasing posterity, in which

none of that higher individuation which checks genesis takes place.

Such State-meddlings with the natural play of actions and reactions

produce a further evil equally great or greater. For those who are

not self-maintained, or but partially self-maintained, are supplied

with the means they lack by the better members of the community; and

these better members have thus not only to support themselves and

their offspring, but also to support or aid the inferior members and

their offspring. The under-working of one part is accompanied by the

over-working of the other part--by a working which at each stage of

progress exceeds that which the normal conditions necessitate, and

results sometimes in illness, premature age, or death, or in lessened

number of children, or in imperfect rearing of children: the bad are

fostered and the good are repressed.

It does not follow that the struggle for life and the survival of the

fittest must be left to work out their effects without mitigation. It

is contended only that there shall not be a forcible burdening of the

superior for the support of the inferior. Such aid to the inferior as

the superior voluntarily yield, kept as it will be within moderate

limits, may be given with benefit to both--relief to the one, moral

culture to the other. And aid willingly given (little to the least

worthy and more to the most worthy) will usually be so given as not

to further the increase of the unworthy. For in proportion as the

emotional nature becomes more evolved, and there grows up a higher

sense of parental responsibility, the begetting of children that cannot

be properly reared will be universally held intolerable. If, as we

see, public opinion in many places and times becomes coercive enough

to force men to fight duels, we can scarcely doubt that at a higher

stage of evolution it may become so coercive as to prevent men from

marrying improvidently. If the frowns of their fellows can make men

commit immoral acts, surely they may make men refrain from immoral

acts--especially when the actors themselves feel that the threatened

frowns would be justified. Hence with a higher moral nature will come a

restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.

In brief, the sole requirement is that there shall be no extensive

suspension of that natural relation between merit and benefit which

constitutes justice. Holding, then, that this all-essential condition

will itself come to be recognized and enforced by a more evolved

humanity, let us consider what is the goal towards which the restraint

on genesis by individuation progresses.

§ 375_a_. Supposing the Sun’s light and heat, on which all terrestrial

life depends, to continue abundant for a period long enough to allow

the entire evolution we are contemplating; there are still certain

changes which must prevent such complete adjustment of human nature

to surrounding conditions, as would permit the rate of multiplication

to become equal to the rate of mortality. As before pointed out (§

148), during an epoch of 21,000 years each hemisphere goes through

a cycle of temperate seasons and seasons extreme in their heat and

cold--variations which are themselves alternately exaggerated and

mitigated in the course of far longer cycles; and we saw that these

cause perpetual ebbings and flowings of species over different parts

of the Earth’s surface. Further, by slow but inevitable geologic

changes, especially those of elevation and subsidence, the climate and

physical characters of every habitat are modified; while old habitats

are destroyed and new are formed. This, too, we noted as a constant

cause of migrations and of resulting alterations of environment. Now

though the human race differs from other races in having a power of

artificially counteracting external changes, yet there are limits to

this power; and, even were there no limits, the changes could not

fail to work their effects indirectly, if not directly. If, as is

thought probable, these astronomic cycles entail recurrent glacial

periods in each hemisphere, then parts of the Earth which are at one

time thickly peopled, will at another time be almost deserted, and

_vice versâ_. The geologically-caused alterations of climate and

surface, must produce further slow re-distributions of population;

and other currents of people, to and from different regions, will be

necessitated by the rise of successive centres of higher civilization.

Consequently, mankind cannot but continue to undergo changes of

environment, physical and moral, analogous to those which they have

thus far been undergoing. Such changes may eventually become slower

and less marked; but they can never cease. And if they can never cease

there can never arise a perfect adaptation of human nature to its

conditions of existence. To establish that complete correspondence

between inner and outer actions which constitutes the highest life

and greatest power of self-preservation, there must be a prolonged

converse between the organism and circumstances which remain the

same. If the external relations are being altered while the internal

relations are being adjusted to them, the adjustment can never become

exact. And in the absence of exact adjustment, there cannot exist that

theoretically-highest power of self-preservation with which there would

co-exist the theoretically-lowest power of race-production.

Hence though the number of premature deaths may ultimately become very

small, it can never become so small as to allow the average number of

offspring from each pair to fall so low as two. Some average number

between two and three may be inferred as the limit--a number, however,

which is not likely to be quite constant, but may be expected at

one time to increase somewhat and afterwards to decrease somewhat,

according as variations in physical and social conditions lower or

raise the cost of self-preservation.

To this qualification must be added a further qualification. The

foregoing argument tacitly assumes that the causes described will

continuously operate on all mankind; whereas a survey of the facts

makes it clear that some parts only of the Earth’s surface are capable

of bearing high types of civilization, and consequently high types

of Man. There must remain hereafter, as there are now, considerable

parts of its surface which can support only groups of nomads, or other

groups obliged by their habitats to lead simple and inferior kinds of

life. Only by subjection to the discipline we have been contemplating

can there be produced the fully-developed Man; and evidently in many

parts of the world this discipline will continue to be eluded. Not

only must we conclude that the varieties of our race now living in

desert regions and arctic climates will continue hereafter to do so,

but we may conclude that always, as now, a certain proportion of men

who are born in civilized societies, impatient of the stress which

pressure of population puts on them, will escape into unoccupied or

sparsely-peopled regions, where they can lead unrestrained lives

though lives of hardship. Recognizing as we must the probability

that in common with all other things, humanity will continue to

differentiate and produce a more heterogeneous assemblage of types,

we must infer that only in some of the highest of these will the

antagonism of individuation and genesis have the anticipated effects.

Restricting ourselves to these, then, we may conclude that in the

end, pressure of population and its accompanying evils will almost

disappear; and will leave a state of things requiring from each

individual little more than a normal and pleasurable activity.

Cessation in the decrease of fertility implies cessation in the

development of the nervous system; and this implies a nervous system

which has become equal to all that is demanded of it--has not to do

more than is natural to it. But that exercise of faculties which does

not exceed what is natural, constitutes gratification.

The necessary antagonism of Individuation and Genesis, not only,

then, fulfils the _à priori_ law of maintenance of race, from the

monad up to Man, but ensures final attainment of the highest form of

this maintenance--a form in which the amount of life shall be the

greatest possible and the births and deaths the fewest possible. From

the beginning pressure of population has been the proximate cause of

progress. It produced the original diffusion of the race. It compelled

men to abandon predatory habits and take to agriculture. It led to

the clearing of the Earth’s surface. It forced men into the social

state; made social organization inevitable; and has developed the

social sentiments. It has stimulated to progressive improvements

in production, and to increased skill and intelligence. It is

daily thrusting us into closer contact and more mutually-dependent

relationships. And after having caused, as it ultimately must, the due

peopling of the globe, and the raising of its habitable parts into the

highest state of culture--after having perfected all processes for the

satisfaction of human wants--after having, at the same time, developed

the intellect into competence for its work, and the feelings into

fitness for social life--after having done all this, the pressure of

population must gradually approach to an end--an end, however, which

for the reasons given it cannot absolutely reach.

§ 377. In closing the argument let us not overlook the

self-sufficingness of those universal processes by which the results

reached thus far have been wrought out, and which may be expected to

work out these future results.

Evolution under all its aspects, general and special, is an advance

towards equilibrium. We have seen that the theoretical limit towards

which the integration and differentiation of every aggregate advances,

is a state of balance between all the forces to which its parts are

subject, and the forces which its parts oppose to them (_First Prin._ §

170). And we have seen that organic evolution is a progress towards a

moving equilibrium completely adjusted to environing actions.

It has been also pointed out that, in civilized Man, there is going

on a new class of equilibrations--those between his actions and the

actions of the societies he forms (_First Prin._ § 175). Social

restraints and requirements are ever altering his activities and by

consequence his nature; and as fast as his nature is altered, social

restraints and requirements undergo more or less re-adjustment. Here

the organism and the conditions are both modifiable; and by successive

conciliations of the two, there is effected a progress towards

equilibrium.

More recently we have seen that in every species, there establishes

itself an equilibrium of an involved kind between the total

race-destroying forces and the total race-preserving forces--an

equilibrium which implies that where the ability to maintain individual

life is small, the ability ta propagate must be great, and _vice

versâ_. Whence it follows that the evolution of a race more in

equilibrium with the environment, is also the evolution of a race in

which there is a correlative approach towards equilibrium between the

number of new individuals produced and the number which survive and

propagate.

The final result to be observed is that in Man, all these

equilibrations between constitution and conditions, between the

structure of society and the nature of its members, between fertility

and mortality, advance simultaneously towards a common climax. In

approaching an equilibrium between his nature and the ever-varying

circumstances of his inorganic environment, and in approaching an

equilibrium between his nature and all the requirements of the social

state, Man is at the same time approaching that lowest limit of

fertility at which the equilibrium of population is maintained by the

addition of as many infants as there are subtractions by death in old

age. But in a universe of which all parts are in motion and every

part is consequently subject to change of conditions, neither this

equilibrium nor any other equilibrium can become complete.

THE END.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

SUBSTITUTION OF AXIAL FOR FOLIAR ORGANS IN PLANTS.

I append here the evidences referred to in § 190. The most numerous and

striking I have met with among the _Umbelliferæ_. Monstrosities having

the alleged implication, are frequent in the common Cow-Parsnep--so

frequent that they must be familiar to botanists; and wild Angelica

supplies many over-developments of like meaning. Omitting numerous

cases of more or less significance, I will limit myself to two.

[Illustration: Fig. 69.]

One of them is that of a terminal umbel, in which nine of the outer

umbellules are variously transformed--here a single flower being

made monstrous by the development of some of its members into buds;

there several such malformed flowers being associated with rays that

bear imperfect umbellules; and elsewhere, flowers being replaced by

umbellules: some of which are perfect, and others imperfect only in

the shortness of the flower-stalks. The annexed Fig. 69, representing

in a somewhat conventionalized way, a part of the dried specimen,

will give an idea of this Angelica. At _a_ is shown a single flower

partially changed; in the umbellule marked _b_, one of the rays bears a

secondary umbellule; and there may be seen at _c_ and _d_, several such

over-developments.

But the most conclusive instance is that of a Cow-Parsnep, in which a

single terminal umbel, besides the transformations already mentioned,

exhibits higher degrees of such transformations.[68] The components

of this complex growth are;--three central umbellules, abnormal only

in minor points; one umbellule, external to these, which is partially

changed into an umbel; one rather more out of the centre, which is

so far metamorphosed as to be more an umbel than an umbellule: nine

peripheral clusters formed by the development of umbellules into

umbels, some of which are partially compounded still further. Examined

in detail, these structures present the following facts:--1. The

innermost umbellule is normal, save in having a peripheral flower of

which one member (apparently a petal) is transformed into a flower-bud.

2. The next umbellule, not quite so central, has one of its peripheral

flowers made monstrous by the growth of a bud from the base of the

calyx. 3. The third of the central umbellules has two abnormal outer

flowers. One of them carries a flower-bud on its edge, in place of

a foliar member. The other is half flower and half umbellule: being

composed of three petals, three stamens, and five flower-buds growing

where the other petals and stamens should grow. 4. Outside of these

umbellules comes one of the mixed clusters. Its five central flowers

are normal. Surrounding these are several flowers transformed in

different degrees: one having a stamen partially changed into a flower

bud. And then, at the periphery of this mixed cluster, come three

complete umbellules and an incomplete one in which some petals and

stamens of the original flower remain. 5. A mixed cluster, in which

the umbel-structure predominates, stands next. Its three central

flowers are normal. Surrounding them are five flowers over-developed in

various ways, like those already described. And on its periphery are

seven complete umbellules in place of flowers; besides an incomplete

umbellule that contains traces of the original flower, one of them

being a petal imperfectly twisted up into a bud. 6. Of the nine

external clusters, in which the development of simple into compound

umbels is most decided, nearly all present anomalies. Three of them

have each a central flower untransformed; and in others, the central

umbellule is composed of two, three, or four flowers. 7. But the most

remarkable fact is, that in sundry of these peripheral clusters,

resulting from the metamorphosis of simple umbels into compound umbels,

the like metamorphosis is carried a stage higher. Some of the component

rays, are themselves the bearers of compound umbels instead of simple

umbels. In Fig. 70, a portion of the dried specimen is represented.

Two of the central umbellules are marked _a_ and _b_; those marked

_c_ and _d_ are mixed clusters; at _e_ and _f_ are compound umbels

replacing simple ones; and _g_ shows one of the rays on which the

over-development goes still further.

[Illustration: Fig. 70.]

Does not this evidence, enforced as it is by much more of like kind,

go far to prove that foliar organs may be developed into axial organs?

Even were not the transitional forms traceable, there would still,

I think, be no other legitimate interpretation of the facts last

detailed. The only way of eluding the conclusion here drawn, is by

assuming that where a cluster of flowers replaces a single flower, it

is because the axillary buds which hypothetically belong to the several

foliar organs of the flower, become developed into axes; and assuming

this, is basing an hypothesis on another hypothesis that is directly at

variance with facts. The foliar organs of flowers do _not_ bear buds

in their axils; and it would never have been supposed that such buds

are typically present, had it not been for that mistaken conception of

“type” which has led to many other errors in Biology. Goethe writes:

“Now as we cannot realize the idea of a leaf apart from the node out of

which it springs, or of a node without a bud, we may venture to infer,”

&c. See here an example of a method of philosophizing not uncommon

among the Germans. The method is this--Survey a portion of the

facts, and draw from them a general conception; project this general

conception back into the objective world, as a mould in which Nature

casts her products; expect to find it everywhere fulfilled; and allege

potential fulfilment where no actual fulfilment is visible.

If instead of imposing our ideal forms on Nature, we are content to

generalize the facts as Nature presents them, we shall find no warrant

for the morphological doctrine above enunciated. The only conception

of type justified by the logic of science, is--that correlation

of parts which remains constant under all modifications of the

structure to be defined. To ascertain this, we must compare all these

modifications, and note what traits are common to them. On doing so

with the successive segments of a phænogamic axis, we are brought to

a conclusion widely different from that of Goethe. Axillary buds are

almost universally absent from the cotyledons; they are habitually

present in the axils of fully-developed leaves higher up the axis; they

are often absent from leaves that are close to the flower; they are

nearly always absent from the bracts; absent from the sepals; absent

from the petals; absent from the stamens; absent from the carpels.

Thus, out of eight leading forms which folia assume, one has the

axillary bud and seven are without it. With these facts before us, it

seems to me not difficult to “realize the idea” “of a node without a

bud.” If we are not possessed by a foregone conclusion, the evidence

will lead us to infer, that each node bears a foliar appendage and

_may_ bear an axillary bud.

Even, however, were it granted that the typical segment of a Phænogam

includes an axillary bud, which must be regarded as always potentially

present, no legitimate counter-interpretation of the monstrosities

above described could thence be drawn. If when an umbellule is

developed in place of a flower, the explanation is, that its component

rays are axillary to the foliar organs of the flower superseded; we may

fairly require that these foliar organs to which they are axillary,

shall be shown. But there are none. In the last specimen figured,

the inner rays of each such umbellule are without them; most of the

outer rays are also without them; and in one cluster, only a single

ray has a bract at its point of origin. There is a rejoinder ready,

however: the foliar organs are said to be suppressed. Though Goethe

could not “realize the idea” “of a node without a bud,” those who

accept his typical form appear to find no difficulty in realizing the

idea of an axillary bud without anything to which it is axillary. But

letting this pass, suppose we ask what is the warrant for this assumed

suppression. Axillary buds normally occur where the nutrition is high

enough to produce fully-developed leaves; and when axillary buds are

demonstrably present in flowers, they accompany foliar organs that

are more leaf-like than usual--always greener if not always larger.

That is to say, the normal and the abnormal axillary buds, are

alike the concomitants of foliar organs coloured by that chlorophyll

which habitually favours foliar development. How, then, can it be

supposed that when, out of a flower there is developed a cluster

of flower-bearing rays, the implied excess of nutrition causes the

foliar organs to abort? It is true that very generally in a branched

inflorescence, the bracts of the several flower-branches are very

small (their smallness being probably due to that defective supply of

certain chlorophyll-forming matters, which is the proximate cause of

flowering); and it is true that, under these conditions, a flowering

axis of considerable size, for the development of which chlorophyll is

less needful, grows from the axil of a dwarfed leaf. But the inference

that the foliar organ may therefore be entirely suppressed, seems

to me irreconcilable with the fact, that the foliar organ is always

developed to some extent _before_ the axillary bud appears. Until it

has been shown that in some cases a lateral bud first appears, and a

foliar organ _afterwards_ grows out beneath it, to form its axil, the

conception of an axillary bud of which the foliar organ is suppressed,

will remain at variance with the established truths of development.

* * * * *

The above originally formed a portion of § 190. I have transferred it

to the Appendix, partly because it contains too much detail to render

it fit for the general argument, and partly because the interpretations

being open to some question, it seemed undesirable to risk compromising

that argument by including them. The criticisms passed upon these

interpretations have not, however, sufficed to convince me of their

incorrectness. Unfortunately, I have since had no opportunity of

verifying the above statements by microscopic examinations, as I had

intended.

Though unable to enforce the inference drawn by further facts more

minutely looked into, I may add some arguments based on facts that are

well known. One of these is the fact that the so-called axillary bud

is not universally axillary--is not universally seated in the angle

made by the axis and an appended foliar organ. In certain plants the

axillary bud is placed far above the node, half-way between it and the

succeeding node. So that not only may a segment of a phæenogamic axis

be without the axillary bud, but the axillary bud, when present, may be

removed from that place in which, according to Goethe, it necessarily

exists. Another fact not congruous with the current doctrine, is the

common occurrence of “adventitious” buds--the buds that are put out

from roots and from old stems or branches bare of leaves. The name

under which they are thus classed, is meant to imply that they may be

left out of consideration. Those, however, who have not got a theory to

save by putting anomalies out of sight, may be inclined to think that

the occurrence of buds where they are avowedly unconnected with nodes,

and are axillary to nothing, tells very much against the assumption

that every bud implies a node and a corresponding foliar organ. And

they may also see that the development of these adventitious buds at

places where there is excess of nutritive materials, favours the view

above set forth. For if a bud thus arises at a place where it is not

morphologically accounted for, simply because there happens to be at

that place an abundance of unorganized protoplasm; then, clearly, it is

likely that if the mass of protoplasm from which a leaf would usually

arise, is greatly increased in mass by excess of nutrition, it may

develop into an axis instead of a leaf.

* * * * *

Many years after this work was published, I discovered among my papers

a memorandum which unfortunately I had overlooked, containing further

evidence in support of the foregoing conclusion. With the omission of

an error concerning the species of plant, I reproduce this memorandum

just as it stood:--

“I found at Dieppe, July 1, 1860, in a garden near the sea a sample of

cultivated wild flower (I thought it was grown as an ornamental flower)

in which some of the single flowers of the umbel were developed into

groups of flowers thus:--

[Illustration]

“In the case where the transformation was fully effected the umbellule

had _six_ flowers, answering to the _six petals_ of the original

flowers. In other cases the transformation was incomplete. There were

instances where but _two_ of the petals were developed into flowers;

and the other petals remained unchanged. Others in which _three_ were

developed; and others where four were developed. In some cases, too,

the development of a petal into a flower was imperfect, in the absence

of the flower-stalk--the flowers were sessile in the place where the

petals would have been. In one case there was an _imperfect_ flower

sessile; another _imperfect_ flower on a short stalk; and three perfect

flowers on long stalks.

“I was in some doubt whether the petals or the stamens were developed.

In cases of imperfect transformation the petals at the base of the

umbellule seemed to stand in the position of calyx or involucrum,

giving the idea that the stamens were developed into flowers. But in

the case where there were _six_ flowers developed there were no petals

at the base.

“That it was a matter of extra nutrition was shown by this:--

“1. That they were cultivated as garden flowers.

“2. That where there was one perfectly developed umbellule, it was the

only one in the umbel.

“3. That where there were three umbellules they were all imperfect.

“4. That in this imperfect umbellule the perfect flowers were on long

stalks and the imperfect ones sessile.

“5. That the umbellules were on stalks both longer and thicker than

those of single flowers.”

* * * * *

[Concerning the foregoing argument at large an expert writes:--“The

abnormalities you describe certainly show that an axis may arise

abnormally in the place of a normal leaf-structure, and every modern

botanist would be in agreement with you in your criticism of the

older form of the doctrine of axillary buds. I think we are largely

emancipated from the dextrous juggling with the arrangements and

relations of organs which used to pass current as morphology.

“You have quoted sufficient evidence in the text (§ 190) to establish

the conclusion that no sharp line can be drawn between axes and

leaf-structure; and a very great deal more could be added in the same

sense. Petioles for instance, exist which the most highly trained

histological observer could not distinguish from stems.

“But I must demur to the suggestion that the replacement of one by the

other is primarily a question of nutrition. We are as ignorant as ever

of the proximate cause of the production of a leaf or a shoot at a

certain spot in meristematic tissue.”

To this last remark I had at first made only the reply that the plants

exhibiting the abnormalities were in all cases excessively luxuriant in

their growths; but to this I am now able to add a more definite reply.

The expert from whom I have just quoted, had read this appendix before

there had been made to it the above addition describing the flower

from Dieppe; and I was not myself aware, until I came to read over

this addition, what clear evidence it contains that extra nutrition

was the cause of these transformations of foliar structures into axial

structures; but the above paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, contain different

evidences conspiring to prove this.]

APPENDIX B.

A CRITICISM ON PROF. OWEN’S THEORY OF THE VERTEBRATE SKELETON.

[_From the_ BRITISH & FOREIGN MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL REVIEW FOR OCT., 1858.]

I. _On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton._

_By_ RICHARD OWEN, _F.R.S._--_London_, 1848. _pp._ 172.

II. _Principes d’Ostéologie Comparée, ou Recherches sur

l’Archétype et les Homologies du Squelette Vertébré._ _Par_

RICHARD OWEN.--_Paris._

_Principles of Comparative Osteology; or, Researches on the

Archetype and the Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton._ _By_

RICHARD OWEN.

III. _On the Nature of Limbs. A Discourse delivered on Friday,

February 9, at an Evening Meeting of the Royal Institution of

Great Britain._ _By_ RICHARD OWEN, _F.R.S._--_London_, 1849.

_pp._ 119.

Judging whether another proves his position is a widely different thing

from proving your own. To establish a general law requires an extensive

knowledge of the phenomena to be generalized; but to decide whether an

alleged general law is established by the evidence assigned, requires

merely an adequate reasoning faculty. Especially is such a decision

easy where the premises do _not_ warrant the conclusion. It may be

dangerous for one who has but little previous acquaintance with the

facts, to say that a generalization is demonstrated; seeing that the

argument may be one-sided: there may be many facts unknown to him which

disprove it. But it is not dangerous to give a negative verdict when

the alleged demonstration is manifestly insufficient. If the data put

before him do not bear out the inference, it is competent for every

logical reader to say so.

From this standpoint, then, we venture to criticize some of Professor

Owen’s osteological theories. For his knowledge of comparative

osteology we have the highest respect. We believe that no living man

has so wide and detailed an acquaintance with the bony structure of

the _Vertebrata_. Indeed, there probably has never been any one whose

information on the subject was so nearly exhaustive. Moreover, we

confess that nearly all we know of this department of biology has been

learnt from his lectures and writings. We pretend to no independent

investigations, but merely to such knowledge of the phenomena as he has

furnished us with. Our position, then, is such that, had Professor Owen

simply enunciated his generalizations, we should have accepted them on

his authority. But he has brought forward evidence to prove them. By

so doing he has tacitly appealed to the judgments of his readers and

hearers--has practically said, “Here are the facts; do they not warrant

these conclusions?” And all we propose to do, is to consider whether

the conclusions _are_ warranted by the facts brought forward.

Let us first limit the scope of our criticisms. On that division

of comparative osteology which deals with what Professor Owen

distinguishes as “special homologies,” we do not propose to enter. That

the wing of a bird is framed upon bones essentially parallel to those

of a mammal’s fore-limb; that the cannon-bone of a horse’s leg answers

to the middle metacarpal of the human hand; that various bones in the

skull of a fish are homologous with bones in the skull of a man--these

and countless similar facts, we take to be well established. It may

be, indeed, that the doctrine of special homologies is at present

carried too far. It may be that, just as the sweeping generalization

at one time favoured, that the embryonic phases of the higher animals

represent the adult forms of lower ones, has been found untrue in a

literal sense, and is acceptable only in a qualified sense; so the

sweeping generalization that the skeletons of all vertebrate animals

consist of homologous parts, will have to undergo some modification.

But that this generalization is substantially true, all comparative

anatomists agree.

The doctrine which we are here to consider, is quite a separate

one--that of “general homologies.” The truth or falsity of this may

be decided on quite apart from that of the other. Whether certain

bones in one vertebrate animal’s skeleton correspond with certain

bones in another’s, or in every other’s, is one question; and whether

the skeleton of every vertebrate animal is divisible into a series of

segments, each of which is modelled after the same type, is another

question. While the first is answered in the affirmative, the last

may be answered in the negative; and we propose to give reasons why it

should be answered in the negative.

* * * * *

In so far as his theory of the skeleton is concerned, Professor Owen

is an avowed disciple of Plato. At the conclusion of his _Archetype

and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton_, he quotes approvingly

the Platonic hypothesis of ἰδέαι, “a sort of models, or moulds in

which matter is cast, and which regularly produce the same number and

diversity of species.” The vertebrate form in general (see diagram of

the _Archetypus_), or else the form of each kind of vertebrate animal

(see p. 172, where this seems implied), Professor Owen conceives to

exist as an “idea”--an “archetypal exemplar on which it has pleased the

Creator to frame certain of his living creatures.” Whether Professor

Owen holds that the typical vertebra also exists as an “idea,” is not

so certain. From the title given to his figure of the “ideal typical

vertebra,” it would seem that he does; and at p. 40 of his _Nature of

Limbs_, and indeed throughout his general argument, this supposition is

implied. But on the last two pages of the _Archetype and Homologies_,

it is distinctly alleged that “the repetition of similar segments in

a vertebral column, and of similar elements in a vertebral segment,

is analogous to the repetition of similar crystals as the result of

polarizing force in the growth of an inorganic body;” it is pointed

out that, “as we descend the scale of animal life, the forms of the

repeated parts of the skeleton approach more and more to geometrical

figures;” and it is inferred that “the Platonic ἰδέα or specific

organizing principle or force, would seem to be in antagonism with the

general polarizing force, and to subdue and mould it in subserviency

to the exigencies of the resulting specific form.” If Professor Owen’s

doctrine is to be understood as expressed in these closing paragraphs

of his _Archetype and Homologies_--if he considers that “the ἰδέα”

“which produces the diversity of form belonging to living bodies of the

same materials,” is met by the “counter-operation” of “the polarizing

force pervading all space,” which produces “the similarity of forms,

the repetition of parts, the signs of unity of organization,” and which

is “_subdued_” as we ascend “in the scale of being;” then we may pass

on with the remark that the hypothesis is too cumbrous and involved to

have much _vraisemblance_. If, on the other hand, Professor Owen holds,

as every reader would suppose from the general tenor of his reasonings,

that not only does there exist an archetypal or ideal vertebrate

skeleton, but that there also exists an archetypal or ideal vertebra;

then he carries the Platonic hypothesis much further than Plato does.

Plato’s argument, that before any species of object was created it

must have existed as an idea of the Creative Intelligence, and that

hence all objects of such species must be copies of this original

idea, is tenable enough from the anthropomorphic point of view. But

while those who, with Plato, think fit to base their theory of creation

upon the analogy of a carpenter designing and making a table, must

yield assent to Plato’s inference, they are by no means committed

to Professor Owen’s expansion of it. To say that before creating a

vertebrate animal, God must have had the conception of one, does not

involve saying that God gratuitously bound himself to make a vertebrate

animal out of segments all moulded after one pattern. As there is

no conceivable advantage in this alleged adhesion to a fundamental

pattern--as, for the fulfilment of the intended ends, it is not only

needless, but often, as Professor Owen argues, less appropriate than

some other construction would be (see _Nature of Limbs_, pp. 39, 40),

to suppose the creative processes thus regulated, is not a little

startling. Even those whose conceptions are so anthropomorphic as to

think they honour the Creator by calling him “the Great Artificer,”

will scarcely ascribe to him a proceeding which, in a human artificer,

they would consider a not very worthy exercise of ingenuity.

But whichever of these alternatives Professor Owen contends

for--whether the typical vertebra is that more or less crystalline

figure which osseous matter ever tends to assume in spite of “the ἰδέα

or organizing principle,” or whether the typical vertebra is itself

an “ἰδέα or organizing principle”--there is alike implied the belief

that the typical vertebra has an abstract existence apart from actual

vertebræ. It is a form which, in every endo-skeleton, strives to embody

itself in matter--a form which is potentially present in each vertebra;

which is manifested in each vertebra with more or less clearness; but

which, in consequence of antagonizing forces, is nowhere completely

realized. Apart from the philosophy of this hypothesis, let us here

examine the evidence which is thought to justify it.

* * * * *

And first as to the essential constituents of the “ideal typical

vertebra.” Exclusive of “_diverging appendages_” which it “may also

support,” “it consists in its typical completeness of the following

elements and parts”:--A _centrum_ round which the rest are arranged in

a somewhat radiate manner; above it two _neurapophyses_--converging

as they ascend, and forming with the centrum a trianguloid space

containing the neural axis; a _neural spine_, surmounting the two

neurapophyses, and with them completing the neural arch; below the

centrum two _hæmapophyses_ and a _hæmal spine_, forming a hæmal arch

similar to the neural arch above, and enclosing the hæmal axis;

two _pleurapophyses_ radiating horizontally from the sides of the

centrum; and two _parapophyses_ diverging from the centrum below the

pleurapophyses. “These,” says Professor Owen, “being usually developed

from distinct and independent centres, I have termed ‘autogenous

elements.’” The remaining elements, which he classes as “exogenous,”

because they “shoot out as continuations from some of the preceding

elements,” are the _diapophyses_ diverging from the upper part of the

centrum as the parapophyses do below, and the _zygapophyses_ which grow

out of the distal ends of the neurapophyses and hæmapophyses.

If, now, these are the constituents of the vertebrate segment “in its

typical completeness;” and if the vertebrate skeleton consists of a

succession of such segments; we ought to have in these constituents,

representatives of all the elements of the vertebrate skeleton--at

any rate, all its essential elements. Are we then to conclude

that the “diverging appendages,” which Professor Owen regards as

rudimental limbs, and from certain of which he considers actual

limbs to be developed, are typically less important than some of the

above-specified exogenous parts--say the zygapophyses?

That the meaning of this question may be understood, it will be needful

briefly to state Professor Owen’s theory of _The Nature of Limbs_;

and such criticisms as we have to make on it must be included in the

parenthesis. In the first place, he aims to show that the scapular

and pelvic arches, giving insertion to the fore and hind limbs

respectively, are displaced and modified hæmal arches, originally

belonging in the one case to the occipital vertebra, and in the

other case to some trunk-vertebra not specified. In support of this

assumption of displacement, carried in some cases to the extent of

_twenty-seven_ vertebræ, Professor Owen cites certain acknowledged

displacements which occur in the human skeleton to the extent of half

a vertebra--a somewhat slender justification. But for proof that such

a displacement _has_ taken place in the scapular arch, he chiefly

relies on the fact that in fishes, the pectoral fins, which are the

homologues of the fore-limbs, are directly articulated to certain bones

at the back of the head, which he alleges are parts of the occipital

vertebra. This appeal to the class of fishes is avowedly made on the

principle that these lowest of the _Vertebrata_ approach closest to

archetypal regularity, and may therefore be expected to show the

original relations of the bones more nearly. Simply noting the facts

that Professor Owen does not give us any transitional forms between

the alleged normal position of the scapular arch in fishes, and its

extraordinary displacement in the higher _Vertebrata_; and that he

makes no reference to the embryonic phases of the higher _Vertebrata_,

which might be expected to exhibit the progressive displacement; we

go on to remark that, in the case of the pelvic arch, he abandons

his principle of appealing to the lowest vertebrate forms for proof

of the typical structure. In fishes, the rudimentary pelvis, widely

removed from the spinal column, shows no signs of having belonged to

any vertebra; and here Professor Owen instances the perennibranchiate

_Batrachia_ as exhibiting the typical structure: remarking that

“mammals, birds, and reptiles show the rule of connexion, and fishes

the exception.” Thus in the case of the scapular arch, the evidence

afforded by fishes is held of great weight, _because_ of their

archetypal regularity; while in the case of the pelvic arch, their

evidence is rejected as exceptional. But now, having, as he considers,

shown that these bony frames to which the limbs are articulated are

modified hæmal arches, Professor Owen points out that the hæmal

arches habitually bear certain “diverging appendages;” and he aims

to show that the “diverging appendages” of the scapular and pelvic

arches respectively, are developed into the fore and hind limbs.

There are several indirect ways in which we may test the probability

of this conclusion. If these diverging appendages are “rudimental

limbs”--“future possible or potential arms, legs, wings, or feet,” we

may fairly expect them always to bear to the hæmal arches a relation

such as the limbs do. But they by no means do this. “As the vertebræ

approach the tail, these appendages are often transferred gradually

from the pleurapophysis to the parapophysis, or even to the centrum

and neural arch.” (_Arch. and Hom._, p. 93.) Again, it might naturally

be assumed that in the lowest vertebrate forms, where the limbs are

but little developed, they would most clearly display their alliance

with the appendages, or “rudimental limbs,” by the similarity of their

attachments. Instead of this, however, Professor Owen’s drawings

show that whereas the appendages are habitually attached to the

pleurapophyses, the limbs, in their earliest and lowest phase, alike in

fishes and in the _Lepidosiren_, are articulated to the hæmapophyses.

Most anomalous of all, however, is the process of development. When

we speak of one thing as being developed out of another, we imply

that the parts next to the germ are the first to appear, and the most

constant. In the evolution of a tree out of a seed, there come at the

outset the stem and the radicle; afterwards the branches and divergent

roots; and still later the branchlets and rootlets; the remotest parts

being the latest and most inconstant. If, then, a limb is developed out

of a “diverging appendage” of the hæmal arch, the earliest and most

constant bones should be the humerus and femur; next in order of time

and constancy should come the coupled bones based on these; while the

terminal groups of bones should be the last to make their appearance,

and the most liable to be absent. Yet, as Professor Owen himself shows,

the actual mode of development is the very reverse of this. At p. 16 of

the _Archetype and Homologies_, he says:--

“The earlier stages in the development of all locomotive

extremities are permanently retained or represented in the

paired fins of fishes. First the essential part of the member,

the hand or foot, appears: then the fore-arm or leg, both much

shortened, flattened, and expanded, as in all fins and all

embryonic rudiments of limbs: finally come the humeral and

femoral segments; but this stage I have not found attained in

any fish.”

That is to say, alike in ascending through the _Vertebrata_, generally,

and in tracing up the successive phases of a mammalian embryo, the

last-developed and least constant division of the limb, is that basic

one by which it articulates with the hæmal arch. It seems to us that,

so far from proving his hypothesis, Professor Owen’s own facts tend

to show that limbs do not belong to the vertebræ at all: that they

make their first appearance peripherally; that their development is

centripetal; and that they become fixed to such parts of the vertebrate

axis as the requirements of the case determine.

But now, ending here this digressive exposition and criticism,

and granting the position that limbs “are developments of costal

appendages,” let us return to the question above put--Why are not

these appendages included as elements of the “ideal typical vertebra?”

It cannot be because of their comparative inconstancy; for judging

from the illustrative figures, they seem to be as constant as the

hæmal spine, which is one of the so-called autogenous elements: in

the diagram of the _Archetypus_, the appendage is represented as

attached to every vertebrate segment of the head and trunk, which the

hæmal spine is not. It cannot be from their comparative unimportance;

seeing that as potential limbs they are essential parts of nearly

all the _Vertebrata_--much more obviously so than the diapophyses

are. If, as Professor Owen argues, “the divine mind which planned the

archetype also foreknew all its modifications;” and if, among these

modifications, the development of limbs out of diverging appendages was

one intended to characterize all the higher _Vertebrata_; then, surely,

these diverging appendages must have been parts of the “ideal typical

vertebra.” Or, if the “ideal typical vertebra” is to be understood as

a crystalline form in antagonism with the organizing principle; then

why should not the appendages be included among its various offshoots?

We do not ask this question because of its intrinsic importance. We

ask it for the purpose of ascertaining Professor Owen’s method of

determining what are true vertebral constituents. He presents us with a

diagram of the typical vertebra, in which are included certain bones,

and from which are excluded certain others. If relative constancy

is the criterion, then there arises the question--What degree of

constancy entitles a bone to be included? If relative importance is the

criterion, there comes not only the question--What degree of importance

suffices? but the further question--How is importance to be measured?

If neither of these is the criterion, then what is it? And if there is

no criterion, does it not follow that the selection is arbitrary?

* * * * *

This question serves to introduce a much wider one:--Has the “ideal

typical vertebra” any essential constituents at all? It might

naturally be supposed that though some bones are so rarely developed

as not to seem worth including, and though some that are included are

very apt to be absent, yet that certain others are invariable: forming,

as it were, the basis of the ideal type. Let us see whether the facts

bear out this supposition. In his “summary of modifications of corporal

vertebræ” (p. 96), Professor Owen says--“The _hæmal spine_ is much

less constant as to its existence, and is subject to a much greater

range of variety, when present, than its vertical homotype above,

which completes the neural arch.” Again he says--“The _hæmapophyses_,

as osseous elements of a vertebra, are less constant than the

pleurapophyses.” And again--“The _pleurapophyses_ are less constant

elements than the neurapophyses.” And again--“Amongst air-breathing

vertebrates the _pleurapophyses_ of the trunk segments are present

only in those species in which the septum of the heart’s ventricle is

complete and imperforate, and here they are exogenous and confined

to the cervical and anterior thoracic vertebræ.” And once more, both

the _neurapophyses_ and the _neural spine_ “are absent under both

histological conditions, at the end of the tail in most air-breathing

vertebrates, where the segments are reduced to their central elements.”

That is to say, of all the peripheral elements of the “ideal typical

vertebra,” there is not one which is always present. It will be

expected, however, that at any rate the _centrum_ is constant: the bone

which “forms the axis of the vertebral column, and commonly the central

bond of union of the peripheral elements of the vertebrate (p. 97), is

of course an invariable element. No: not even this is essential.

“The centrums do not pass beyond the primitive stage of the

notochord (undivided column) in the existing lepidosiren, and

they retained the like rudimental state in every fish whose

remains have been found in strata earlier than the permian

æra in Geology, though the number of vertebræ is frequently

indicated in Devonian and Silurian ichthyolites by the

fossilized neur-and hæmapophyses and their spines” (p. 96).

Indeed, Professor Owen himself remarks that “the neurapophyses are

more constant as osseous or cartilaginous elements of the vertebræ

than the centrums” (p. 97). Thus, then, it appears that the several

elements included in the “ideal typical vertebra” have various degrees

of constancy, and that no one of them is essential. There is no one

part of a vertebra which invariably answers to its exemplar in the

pattern-group. How does this fact consist with the hypothesis? If

the Creator saw fit to make the vertebrate skeleton out of a series

of segments, all formed on essentially the same model--if, for the

maintenance of the type, one of these bony segments is in many cases

formed out of a coalesced group of pieces, where, as Professor Owen

argues, a single piece would have served as well or better; then we

ought to find this typical repetition of parts uniformly manifested.

Without any change of shape, it would obviously have been quite

possible for every actual vertebra to have contained all the parts

of the ideal one--rudimentally where they were not wanted. Even one

of the terminal bones of a mammal’s tail might have been formed

out of the nine autogenous pieces, united by suture but admitting

of identification. As, however, there is no such uniform typical

repetition of parts, it seems to us that to account for the typical

repetition which _does_ occur, by supposing the Creator to have fixed

on a pattern-vertebra, is to ascribe to him the inconsistency of

forming a plan and then abandoning it.

If, on the other hand, Professor Owen means that the “ideal typical

vertebra” is a crystalline form in antagonism with “the idea or

organizing principle;” then we might fairly expect to find it most

clearly displaying its crystalline character, and its full complement

of parts, in those places where the organizing principle may be

presumed to have “subdued” it to the smallest extent. Yet in the

_Vertebrata_ generally, and even in Professor Owen’s _Archetypus_,

the vertebræ of the tail, which must be considered as, if anything,

less under the influence of the organizing principle than those

of the trunk, do not manifest the ideal form more completely. On

the contrary, as we approach the end of the tail, the successive

segments not only lose their remaining typical elements, but become as

uncrystalline-looking as can be conceived.

* * * * *

Supposing, however, that the assumption of suppressed or undeveloped

elements be granted--supposing it to be consistent with the hypothesis

of an “ideal typical vertebra,” that the constituent parts may

severally be absent in greater or less number, sometimes leaving only

a single bone to represent them all; may it not be that such parts

as _are_ present, show their respective typical natures by some

constant character: say their mode of ossification?

To this question some parts of the _Archetype and Homologies_ seem

to reply, “Yes;” while others clearly answer, “No.” Criticising the

opinions of Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Cuvier, who agreed in thinking

that ossification from a separate centre was the test of a separate

bone, and that thus there were as many elementary bones in the skeleton

as there were centres of ossification, Professor Owen points out that,

according to this test, the human femur, which is ossified from four

centres, must be regarded as four bones; while the femur in birds and

reptiles, which is ossified from a single centre, must be regarded as

a single bone. Yet, on the other hand, he attaches weight to the fact

that the skull of the human fœtus presents “the same ossific centres”

as do those of the embryo kangaroo and the young bird. (_Nature of

Limbs_, p. 40.) And at p. 104 of the _Homologies_, after giving

a number of instances, he says--

“These and the like correspondences between the points of

ossification of the human fœtal skeleton, and the separate

bones of the adult skeletons of inferior animals, are pregnant

with interest, and rank among the most striking illustrations of

unity of plan in the vertebrate organization.”

It is true that on the following page he seeks to explain this seeming

contradiction by distinguishing

“between those centres of ossification that have homological

relations, and those that have teleological ones--_i.e._,

between the separate points of ossification of a human bone

which typify vertebral elements, often permanently distinct

bones in the lower animals; and the separate points which,

without such signification, facilitate the progress of

osteogeny, and have for their obvious final cause the well-being

of the growing animal.”

But if there are thus centres of ossification which have homological

meanings, and others which have not, there arises the question--How are

they always to be distinguished? Evidently independent ossification

ceases to be a homological test, if there are independent ossifications

that have nothing to do with the homologies. And this becomes the

more evident when we learn that there are cases where neither a

homological nor a teleological meaning can be given. Among various

modes of ossification of the centrum, Professor Owen points out that

“the body of the human atlas is sometimes ossified from two, rarely

from three, distinct centres placed side by side” (p. 89); while at

p. 87 he says:--“In osseous fishes I find that the centrum is usually

ossified from six points.” It is clear that this mode of ossification

has here no homological signification; and it would be difficult to

give any teleological reason why the small centrum of a fish should

have more centres of ossification than the large centrum of a mammal.

The truth is, that as a criterion of the identity or individuality of

a bone, mode of ossification is quite untrustworthy. Though, in his

“ideal typical vertebra,” Professor Owen delineates and classifies

as separate “autogenous” elements, those parts which are “usually

developed from distinct and independent centres;” and though by

doing so he erects this characteristic into some sort of criterion;

yet his own facts show it to be no criterion. The parapophyses are

classed among the autogenous elements; yet they are autogenous in

fishes alone, and in these only in the trunk vertebræ, while in all

air-breathing vertebrates they are, when present at all, exogenous.

The neurapophyses, again, “lose their primitive individuality by

various kinds and degrees of confluence:” in the tails of the higher

_Vertebrata_ they, in common with the neural spine, become exogenous.

Nay, even the centrum may lose its autogenous character. Describing

how, in some batrachians, “the ossification of the centrum is completed

by an extension of bone from the bases of the neurapophyses, which

effects also the coalescence of these with the centrum,” Professor Owen

adds:--“In _Pelobates fuscus_ and _Pelobates cultripes_, Müller found

the entire centrum ossified from this source, without any independent

points of ossification” (p. 88). That is to say, the centrum is in

these cases an exogenous process of the neurapophyses. We see, then,

that these so-called typical elements of vertebræ have no constant

developmental character by which they can be identified. Not only

are they undistinguishable by any specific test from other bones not

included as vertebral elements; not only do they fail to show their

typical characters by their constant presence; but, when present, they

exhibit no persistent marks of individuality. The central element may

be ossified from six, four, three, or two points; or it may have no

separate point of ossification at all: and similarly with various of

the peripheral elements. The whole group of bones forming the “ideal

typical vertebra” may severally have their one or more ossific centres;

or they may, as in a mammal’s tail, lose their individualities in a

single bone ossified from one or two points.

* * * * *