CHAPTER V

EGOISM AND ALTRUISM IN EVOLUTION

Carneri, in consistency with his scepticism as to feeling in animals,

remarks that, with man, the struggle for happiness is added to the

struggle for existence. Wallace and others regard man as comparatively

withdrawn from the struggle for existence and the operation of natural

selection. Much depends on definition in any statement; but it may be

repeated that the analogy of nervous organization does not permit us to

suppose the absence of pleasure and pain in many species, and that man

is no exception to the rule that the disharmonious is the unstable, and

doomed, by its nature, to destruction.

However, analogy does not, as we have seen, carry us far in deciding

upon the presence or absence of consciousness, or in determining the

exact nature of the ends it posits even where we may suppose it to be

present and conscious of ends. If, then, we apply the terms "egoism" and

"altruism" to the action of plants or even of other animal species,

meaning, by these terms, that, in the action referred to, such ends are

sought and willed as render human conduct what we call altruistic, we

may be falling into error. However, in considering egoism and altruism

in their relations to human development, it may be useful to note their

prototypes, as far as external form is concerned, in life on lower

planes, without making any assumption as to the internal meaning of

these prototypes, except in so far as, in special instances, we may be

warranted by further particular examination of facts.

It is evident that the action of animals is of a sort that has as its

immediate and most prominent result their own protection and

preservation, and that they show themselves generally hostile to other

kinds and even, in many cases, if not hostile, at least indifferent,

under most circumstances, to their own kind. Yet a certain amount of

mutual support may occasionally be observed even among lower species.

One of the forms of such aid most common in the whole range of animal

species is the care of the parent animal for its offspring. This care is

more usual on the part of the female than on that of the male, and where

it is exercised it is not the exception, but rather the rule, that the

mother will sacrifice life itself in the defence of her young. Such care

and self-sacrifice, especially marked in mammals and birds, are too well

known to need illustration here.

Mutual aid between the sexes is not so common or so strongly marked as

the care of parent animals for their young. There is often no

companionship at all between the sexes, and even at the time of mating

male and female may show themselves hostile to each other. It often

happens with certain _Epeiridae_ the males of whom are smaller than the

females, that, after copulation or sometimes even before, the female

seizes upon the male and makes a meal of him. Sometimes, also, during

the battle of two males for the possession of a female, the latter

throws her web about both and devours them.[141] Female deer wandering

in the company of a male have been observed to watch with indifference

the contest of the latter with some newly arrived male, and on his death

to lick the wounds of their new suitor and follow him as they before

followed his predecessor. The relations of male and female among the

birds, especially among some sorts of birds, have, on the other hand,

often been made the theme of the poet.

But mutual aid among the animals is not confined to the relations of

parents and offspring, and male and female. Whether or not we explain

the societies of animals as merely huge families, as some authors are

inclined to do, the fact of the association remains, and it continues to

be true that, in this association, much mutual assistance is given. In

this connection, however, may be cited the experiments of Lubbock,

showing the exceeding irregularity and apparent caprice with which such

assistance is rendered among even such creatures as the ants, with whom

organization is generally regarded as having arrived at an unusual

degree of development. Lubbock found that, wherever a regular battle was

in progress, the ants gave aid to each other, but that where a single

ant was attacked by an enemy, the others of the nest generally took no

part in the matter. In many cases, they passed by wounded or helpless

members of their own colony, leaving them to perish where a very small

amount of help would have saved them. In some cases, they cared for the

slightly wounded; but those who were severely wounded they threw from

the nest. In their hostility to their enemies, they were merciless and

more persistent than in their help of friends.[142] Lubbock, arguing

from such facts as these, differs in opinion from Grote, who regards it

as necessary to the maintenance of any society that some moral feeling

should exist. Indeed, that which Carneri asserts with regard to the care

of offspring might be claimed in this case, namely, that the assistance

reaches exactly so far as is necessary for the preservation of species.

The implication is that all this apparent altruism is mere automatism.

In support of a view similar to this, Benno Scheitz quotes the following

case,[143] "which Dr. Altum relates from his own experience": "'In the

Gens d'Armes Market in Berlin, I saw several larks and a robin in a

cage; the former cowered sorrowfully, with somewhat roughened feathers,

in a corner, but the robin was in full activity. It ran to the food-cup,

seized as many ant-larvae as it could grasp in its bill, and hastened

with these to the nearest lark. The latter, however, did not honor the

solicitous robin and its food with as much as a look. But scarcely had

the robin offered its disdained food than it let this fall and hastened

after fresh food, offered this, let it fall, fetched fresh again,--only

to begin the same performance anew. As long as I watched this

interesting spectacle, the robin was thus employed, and very soon the

greater portion of the ant-larvae had been carried from the food-vessel

and lay scattered before the different larks. And what was here the

motive of the redbreast in permitting itself no nourishment (I did not

see that it ate a single one of the ant-larvae itself), but carrying it

all to its fellow-prisoners,--sympathy and love for the larks, who

disdained all food, and who could have taken the same food for

themselves, in the same manner, and with exactly the same amount of

trouble? The redbreast had been caught and carried away from its young;

the impulse to feed was strongly awakened and had before been strongly

active, but not satisfied; the bird was obliged, therefore, to continue

to bring food, although there was no longer anything to feed.'" The care

which female animals of many species, when deprived of their young,

often show for the young of other animals of the same or other species

that come in their way is well known. Among domestic animals, the cat

appears particularly susceptible in this respect, though comparisons

here are perhaps scarcely fair, since, of all domestic animals that are

habitually deprived of their young, the cat is about the only one that

has the chance of coming in contact with young animals near the size of

its own kind. The cat has been known to adopt young rats, chickens,

puppies, ducks, and will generally, during the time of suckling, take up

readily with kittens of another litter. Galton, in his "Inquiry into

Human Faculty," mentions that the records of many nations have legends

like that of Romulus and Remus, these being surprisingly confirmed by

General Sleeman's narrative of six cases where children were nurtured

for many years by wolves, in Oude. The working ants of certain species

show as great care for the slave-larvae robbed from other nests as do

many parent animals for their own offspring. Again, the care for their

eggs shown by many animals who give no care to their young may be cited

as evidence in favor of the theory of automatism. In the vegetable world

also, similar protection is afforded flower and fruit, the most

wonderful instances of such protection being, perhaps, those of the

insectivorous plants.

But to all these arguments in favor of automatism may be answered: (1)

that functions which are preserved and inherited must evidently be, not

only in animals and plants, but also and equally in man, such as favor

the preservation of the species; those which do not so favor it must

perish with the individuals or species to which they belong; (2) that it

cannot, indeed, be assumed that a result which has never come within the

experience of the species can be willed as an end, although, with the

species, function securing results which, from a human point of view,

might be regarded as ends, may be preserved; but (3) that, as far as we

assume the existence of consciousness at all in any species or

individual, we must assume pleasure and pain, pleasure in customary

function, pain in its hindrance; and (4) that, as far as we can assume

memory, we may also feel authorized to assume that a remembered action

may be associated with remembered results that come within the

experience of the animal, some phases of which may thus become, as

combined with pleasure or pain, ends to seek or consequences to avoid.

There is no reason to be given why care for the young should be more

pleasurable than care for eggs; the one may be as pleasurable to some

species as the other is to other species. If we assume consciousness in

Dr. Altum's robin, we may assume pleasure in the care of its young and

also, as a possibility, pleasure in the results of such care, the

preservation and prosperity of the young; whether the consciousness of

the robin includes abstract concepts of preservation and prosperity, is

another question. The human mother, too, is wont to be peculiarly tender

to children in general, but we do not for that reason infer that her

kindness towards them is mere automatism. There is no necessary

opposition between reason and instinct, and certainly none between

emotion and instinct. To the very functions from which we derive the

most pleasure we are impelled by an irresistible innate tendency. In any

particular case, it may be very difficult to determine the amount of

reasoning power possessed by the animal, the exact relation of ends to

means in its consciousness; but it may be remarked that there are human

mothers who reason little with regard to the preservation of the species

or other so-called ends secured by the care they give their offspring;

the care is spontaneous, but may not be the less a matter of warm

affection. It appears strange, therefore, that exactly that constancy

and strength of tendency, with need of satisfaction by other channels if

the usual ones fail, which we use as proof of extreme mother-tenderness

in the case of human beings should, in the case of other species, be

turned into an argument to disprove the existence of this feeling.

It is sometimes argued that the feeling of the parent animal in the care

of its young is, in any case, merely one of pleasure in the activity,

and has no connection with the good of the offspring. In such a case as

that of the robin, where the effects of the care come within the

experience of the mother, this is a mere arbitrary assumption, although

direct proof of the contrary may be impossible. Naturally, in the case

of an animal which cares for its eggs, but never comes in contact with

the offspring that are hatched from them, it would be impossible to

suppose any affection for the offspring as such; their existence does

not come within the range of the animal's experience. With regard to an

animal whose connection with its young is constant, the theory that

pleasure in their care has no reference to their welfare, has no

evidence to support it and is unjustifiable. If we cannot directly

disprove it, we have, at least, the evidence of many facts unfavorable

to it. The distress manifested not only by many mammals (who might be

supposed to find physical discomfort merely in the absence of the means

of relief of the milk-glands), but also by other animals and notably

birds, in the loss of their young and even in any danger that threatens

them,--the indescribably mournful sounds at deprivation, the after

depression, and the capacity for self-sacrifice in their defence, would

lead us naturally, from an unprejudiced standpoint, to a belief in

something very like what we term mother-love in human beings. From

Letourneau's "Sociology based upon Ethnography,"[144] I quote the

following: "A female wren, observed by Montagu, spent sixteen hours a

day in looking for food for her little ones. At Delft, when there was a

fire raging, a female white stork, not being able to carry away her

young ones, allowed herself to be burnt with them.... J. J. Hayes tells

us of a female white bear forgetting the Esquimaux dogs, the huntsmen,

and her own wounds, in order to hide her own little bear with her body,

to lick her and to protect her. In Central Africa, a female elephant,

all covered and pierced with javelins, hurled at her by the escort of

black men attending upon Livingstone, was all the while protecting her

young one with her trunk which her own large body enabled her to

cover.... In Sumatra, a female orang-outang, pursued with her little one

by Captain Hall and wounded by a gunshot, threw her infant on to the

highest branches of the tree on to which she had climbed, and continued,

until she died, exhorting her young one to escape. In Brazil, Sphix saw

a female of the stentor niger who, wounded by a gunshot, collected her

last remaining strength to throw her young one on to one of the branches

close by; when she had performed this last act of duty, she fell from

the tree and died." In Romanes' "Animal Intelligence," occurs the

following quotation from Dr. Franklin:[145] "'I have known two parrots,'

said he, 'which had lived together four years, when the female became

weak and her legs swelled. These were symptoms of gout, a disease to

which all birds of this family are very subject in England. It became

impossible for her to descend from the perch, or to take her food as

formerly, but the male was most assiduous in carrying it to her in his

beak. He continued feeding her in this manner during four months, but

the infirmities of his companion increased from day to day, so that at

last she was unable to support herself on the perch. She remained at the

bottom of the cage, making, from time to time, ineffectual efforts to

regain the perch. The male was always near her, and with all his

strength aided the attempts of his dear better half. Seizing the poor

invalid by the beak or the upper part of the wing, he tried to raise

her, and renewed his efforts several times. His constancy, his gestures,

and his continued solicitude, all showed in this affectionate bird the

most ardent desire to relieve the sufferings and assist the weakness of

his companion. But the scene became still more interesting when the

female was dying. Her unhappy spouse moved around her incessantly, his

attention and tender cares redoubled. He even tried to open her beak to

give her some nourishment. He ran to her, then returned with a troubled

and agitated look. At intervals, he uttered the most plaintive cries;

then, with his eyes fixed on her, kept a mournful silence. At length his

companion breathed her last; from that moment he pined away, and died in

the course of a few weeks.'"

Moreover, care of animals for other animals shows itself often where

neither the relation of parent to offspring, nor the relation of sex,

nor even that of species, furnishes the basis. Aside from the friendship

and self-sacrifice of domestic animals for man, friendships, under

domestication, between individuals of all manner of ordinarily most

hostile species are reported. Such friendship is not at all infrequent

between dog and cat. In the family of a relative of my own were once a

quail and cat who were most devoted to each other. They would spend

hours playing together, and were often left alone together for long

periods. The cat never manifested any tendency to regard the bird in the

light of food; she seemed, however, well aware of the danger it might be

under from other cats, and invariably drove these away when they

endeavored to approach the house. This cat was also friendly to a tame

robin which preceded the quail as pet in the same family.

And furthermore, assistance is frequently given spontaneously where

there has been no association before the act. There are a number of

instances on record, and supported by good authority, where dogs have

brought suffering individuals of their own kind to places where they had

themselves received aid. Romanes cites from Mr. Oswald Fitch the story

of a domestic cat who "was observed to take out some fish-bones from the

house to the garden, and, being followed, was seen to have placed them

in front of a miserably thin and evidently hungry stranger cat, who was

devouring them; not satisfied with that, our cat returned, procured a

fresh supply, and repeated its charitable offer, which was apparently as

gratefully accepted. This act of benevolence over, our cat returned to

its customary dining-place, the scullery, and ate its own dinner off the

remainder of the bones."[146] Romanes says further: "An almost precisely

similar case has been independently communicated to me by Dr. Allen

Thomson, F.R.S. The only difference was that Dr. Thomson's cat drew the

attention of the cook to the famishing stranger outside by pulling her

dress and leading her to the place. When the cook supplied the hungry

cat with some food, the other one paraded round and round while the meal

was being discussed, purring loudly." "Mr. H. A. Macpherson writes me

that in 1876 he had an old male cat and a kitten aged a few months. The

cat, who had long been a favorite, was jealous of the kitten and 'showed

considerable aversion to it.' One day the floor of a room in the

basement of the house was taken up in order to repair some pipes. The

day after the boards had been replaced, the cat 'entered the kitchen (he

lived almost wholly on the drawing-room floor above), rubbed against the

cook, and mewed without ceasing until he had engaged her attention. He

then, by running to and fro, drew her to the room in which the work had

taken place. The servant was puzzled until she heard a faint mew from

beneath her feet. On the boards being lifted, the kitten emerged safe

and sound, though half-starved. The cat watched the proceedings with the

greatest interest until the kitten was released; but, on ascertaining

that it was safe, he at once left the room, without evincing any

pleasure at its return. Nor did he subsequently become really friendly

with it.'"

I cite still one other instance of animal affection from Romanes: "One

of a shooting-party under a banian tree killed a female monkey, and

carried it to his tent, which was soon surrounded by forty or fifty of

the tribe, who made a great noise and seemed disposed to attack the

aggressor. They retreated when he presented his fowling-piece, the

dreadful effect of which they had witnessed, and appeared perfectly to

understand. The head of the troop, however, stood his ground, chattering

furiously; the sportsman, who perhaps felt some little degree of

compunction for having killed one of the family, did not like to fire at

the creature, and nothing short of firing would suffice to drive him

off. At length he came to the door of the tent, and finding threats of

no avail, began a lamentable moaning and by the most expressive gesture

seemed to beg for the dead body. It was given him; he took it

sorrowfully in his arms and bore it away to his expecting companions.

They who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again

to fire at one of the monkey race."[147]

As to the changeable and capricious appearance of the assistance

rendered in animal associations, by one member to another, it may be

said that any being of a different species who could look into our towns

and cities might easily find as great problems of caprice here as among

the ants and bees. We, too, leave our fellows to perish unaided; we,

too, kill off, by neglect and hard usage, often not only or chiefly our

drones, but even some of our most industrious, useful members of

society. With us, too, there is very often greater hostility towards

enemies than kindness towards friends. Many savage tribes, that we

certainly concede to be endowed with intelligence, could learn of the

ants, rather than teach them, with regard to the duties of mutual aid.

With regard to other species than his own, even so-called civilized man

is often eminently selfish and cruel. Among the savages the most extreme

cruelty is often shown. Bain, in an essay entitled "Is there Such a

Thing as Pure Malevolence?" cites from a book, "Siberian Pictures,"

together with mention of the pleasure shown by onlookers in the drowning

of a man, an instance where boys seemed to find a genuine and peculiar

delight in slowly roasting a dog to death.[148] And Bruce describes in

his travels the feasts of the Abyssinians, where the flesh was cut from

an ox alive and bellowing with pain. But our police courts frequently

bear witness to the possibility of the most wanton cruelty performed by

people within our own most enlightened societies, although we may claim

that cruelty is not so general in civilized societies. I personally have

known of a case where, a horse becoming suddenly ill and falling upon

the road, it was prodded by its owner with a pitchfork until it died of

its wounds; and of another case where a man fastened to a tree a

harmless kitten that had wandered into his yard, and deliberately stoned

it to death. Surely we have very little right to criticise the slaughter

of animals by other species, while we ourselves name the taking of life

"sport." Our criticism of the play of the cat with the mouse as "cruel"

is humorous--if there can be any humor connected with cruelty--as long

as we ourselves find delight in the prolonged struggle of the trout and

the torture of the fox-chase. Perhaps the cat may be under the

impression that the mouse takes pleasure in being played with; certainly

we can believe that this is possible, when beings who claim to possess

so much higher intelligence can gravely assert that the fox enjoys the

chase.

Amongst so-called civilized human beings, too, the care of parents for

offspring is by no means universal, and mothers are known whom not even

the fear of the law can hinder from sacrificing their children by the

slow torture of starvation for the gain of a few pounds or for even

simple relief from the trouble of their rearing. The reports of the

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children show that not

strangers but parents are the most frequent sinners against the child.

Nor is infanticide and neglect confined to the poorer classes. I repeat,

if a being of some other species enabled to obtain only such external

knowledge of us as we have of other species, some being beholding us,

for instance, from distant planets, should endeavor to form a theory of

our inner egoism and altruism, of sentiment and motive, he might be as

puzzled as we are when we study the conduct of bees and ants. Even the

helplessness of the ant species, _Polyergus rufescens_, at which we

often wonder as stupidity, has its parallel in some of the former

slave-owners of the southern states of North America, who live in the

utmost poverty and ignorance because they have lost the habits of

industry and consider work beneath them. Mother-love is certainly the

rule amongst us; but it is not more constant or self-sacrificing than

with some other species, though it, in general, accompanies the child

farther in his career. This rule is not, however, universal. Human

mothers of a lower type, who show fondness for their children when they

are little, often exhibit little or none for them after they have grown

out of arms.

It is claimed that altruism was, in its origin, egoism. Everything

depends, in theory on this point, on our definition of the terms

"origin" and "altruism." If we regard the life of animals in general or

the life of any particular species as having been non-social before it

was social, and as having become social through increase of numbers, the

"chance" association which arose naturally in this way being favored by

natural selection, we must assume function fundamentally advantageous to

self without regard to the results to other beings to have been primary,

whether or not we call this function egoism. With regard to animal life

in general, we cannot avoid adopting some such view as this, since we

find few species forming lasting bonds of association, a large number

forming only exceedingly short ones, and some forming none at all, and

since we must furthermore suppose a scarcity of living individuals to

have preceded their multiplicity. Moreover, we cannot suppose

consciousness to have been absent, in the case of many of the animal

species, during the whole of this development. And where there is

consciousness, pleasure must be a concomitant along the line of

development, and customary forms of action come to present ends, whether

or not the individual has the abstract concept of "ends."

But we need to remember that even the human race has not yet arrived at

perfection, and that even moral altruism (for not all altruism is

necessarily moral) is not yet absolutely attained in any species. Our

ordinary use of the term is progressive; that which is altruistic at one

period of history is often looked upon, at a later period, as merely a

higher form of egoism. This fact should be borne in mind when, in Ethics

or Political Economy, we inquire whether man was, in the beginning,

altruistic. What do we mean here by "altruism," and what by "beginning"?

A similar criticism may be made on the rather more usual question as to

whether man was, in the beginning, social; what is the beginning of our

species, and what degree of association is necessary in order that the

individuals associating may be termed "social"? The question is a

difficult one to answer from any point of view. While the majority of

human beings, even the most savage, show some degree of gregariousness,

there appear to be some tribes that are even less social in their habits

than the most of our ape-cousins. Mr. Dalton says of the savages of

Inner Borneo that they live in the most perfect state of nature, do not

cultivate the earth or live in huts, do not eat either rice or salt, and

do not associate with each other, but wander like wild animals in the

forest. "The sexes meet in the jungle, or the man carries away a woman

from some campong. When the children are old enough to shift for

themselves, they usually separate, neither one afterwards thinking of

the other."[149]

As to just what form the development of altruism from egoism may have

assumed in the case of any particular species, or how the individuals of

the species may first have been led to association, the state of science

does not, at present, enable us to say. Most authors, indeed, incline to

class all social development as having its origin in some one form of

family relation. Rolph, for instance, refers it to the necessary

association of the sexes, at certain times, for the purpose of

copulation. Others regard the care of the female for its young as the

primary form from which all social organization has developed. Inasmuch,

however, as the line of ascent from primitive protoplasm to man cannot

be regarded as straight, but has very many branches, it is quite

conceivable that the development may have taken place in different ways

in different branches or different species; and the very various forms

which social organization shows in different species is direct evidence

in favor of such a supposition. Thus it is not, for instance, in some

species, the mother animal, but the male, who cares for the young, and

again, in other cases, affectionate relations of the sexes are not a

prominent feature of the social structure. The attitude of a swarm of

bees towards the queen, her progeny, and the drones, presents aspects

entirely different from those of ant-nests or human tribal or state

organization. In some species where the female exhibits considerable

care and concern for her eggs or offspring, there is no especial

friendliness between the sexes, and in other cases, where no care is

given to offspring, there is still apparently some degree of

friendliness, or at least of physical attraction, between male and

female. It is not only conceivable that the habit of association may

have been developed by different means in different species, but it is

also conceivable that, in some cases, several forms of family relation

may have assisted equally, and in other cases have united, even if not

in equal measure, in producing the result. The association of parent

with offspring, for instance, is in most cases impossible without some

degree of association between the offspring.

However we may suppose social relations to have originated in the case

of any particular species, whether through the sexual or the parental

relations or through both combined, and whether we trace these relations

themselves back, in the one instance, to the original union of the sexes

in the individual, and propagation as self-division, in the other to the

unity of mother and offspring before the individual life commences, or

whether we simply begin with some non-hostile contact of individuals as

already existent, it is evident that, with increasing competition,

cooeperation must be to the advantage of those cooeperating. Those

individuals whose single strength is supplemented by the aid of others

must succeed best in the struggle for existence. Moreover, with the

exercise of altruistic forms of action, we must suppose pleasure in its

exercise to increase, in so far as we suppose any consciousness at all

in the animal performing the action. The greater the degree of exercise,

the greater the pleasure connected with the action, and the more readily

the organism will respond to conditions permitting its accomplishment;

while repetition, again, must increase tendency to repetition. This is

true not only of exactly the same form of action, but also of similar

forms, that is, of forms having some like elements. The conditions of

action are never exactly the same; the environment is continually

changing; but the animal tends to choose, among possible forms of

action, that which corresponds most nearly to most exercised and

pleasurable forms.

At just what period we are to regard the altruistic forms of action as

becoming in spirit altruistic depends, as has already been said, on our

definition of the degree of disinterested feeling necessary to altruism

proper, aside from our theories of the existence and form of

consciousness in the case of any particular species at any particular

point of development. In the case of even disinterested human action,

the altruism is not generally, or at least in very many cases, wholly

unmixed with _any_ thought of self, though this thought may not hold

first place. If self-sacrifice be the test of altruistic feeling, then

we must suppose the latter to exist, in some relations, even far down in

the scale of being. In this case, just as in other cases where choice is

necessary, the stronger tendency conquers even with the result of pain

of disappointment in some other direction. The case of altruistic action

is hence not unique in this respect, and it might perhaps be argued that

such self-sacrifice would therefore be possible without any

consideration or consciousness of the good accruing to others through

its performance. But if we analyze the development of any habit, we find

that the pleasure of the act speedily connects itself with all the

constant results of the act that come within the experience of the

performer of the act and are recognized as its results. Any result at

first unpleasant must, if it is constant, either lead to the

discontinuance of the act or else, with time, lose much of its quality

of unpleasantness. Either the expected pain of this one factor is

sufficient to counterbalance the pleasure awaited in the act, and a

repetition of the act is thus avoided, or, as in all other cases of

habitual experience, the pain or discomfort gradually diminishes, until,

if the habit be long enough continued, pleasure takes its place. The

pleasure of others must be a constant result of action that secures

their welfare, and if this result comes within the conscious experience

of the performer of the action, we can scarcely avoid supposing that,

even if his action is in the beginning purely selfish, the pleasure of

those benefited must come in time to play a part in the pleasure of the

performer. The part it plays will not be, in the beginning, naturally, a

very important one, but its importance will increase with time. If this

is true in a measure even of the individual, it is doubly true of the

species. Wherever, therefore, we may suppose the existence of sufficient

intelligence for the inference of pleasure from its outer signs in

others, it must be admitted to be possible and even probable that

constant habits of self-sacrifice and helpfulness to others will be

accompanied by some measure of altruistic feeling. And even if we

suppose an insufficiency of intelligence for such inference, it is still

possible and even probable that the constant symptoms of pleasure in

others will come to be a part of the conditions of the pleasure of the

individual or the species in whom habits of self-sacrifice have become

constant, although their inner significance is not recognized. It may be

objected that, if actual altruistic feeling were present in animals

which show a certain amount of helpfulness towards others of their

kind, this altruism would not desert these others at the very time of

their greatest need or when any great peril to self is involved, or that

it would show itself in many other acts than just those which, as in the

case of the ants, secure the preservation of a society, or in that of

some other species give a certain protection to the female during

breeding time. The argument is wholly inconclusive, and has already been

answered. The action of natural selection in the preservation of those

forms of tendency that secure the preservation of the species does not

annul the action of the will or render the presence of strong emotion in

the direction of the tendency thus preserved impossible; on the

contrary, we must suppose all tendency, in man equally with other animal

species, to be the result of natural selection. And in man, too,

altruism that is sufficient for some degree of sacrifice is insufficient

for a greater. In man, as in other species, altruistic feeling and

altruistic action vary according to the particular directions in which

habit in the species and in the individual has been cultivated. Men and

women who are not kind to each other will frequently be kind to little

children. The average Englishman is kind to his dog in spite of his

total indifference to the pain inflicted on the very nearly if not quite

as intelligent fox; and he will grow indignant to the verge of tears

over abuse of a horse, while he will regard the like abuse with little

or no emotion when it is inflicted on a miserable donkey. I doubt if the

average Englishman would shoot horses or dogs, even if they were good

for food and useless otherwise, and abounded wild in Great Britain. But

this is merely because association and habit have made him acquainted

with the capacity of feeling in the horse and dog, and have accustomed

him to humane treatment of them.

An argument sometimes advanced against the theory of a derivation of

altruism from egoism is that such altruism has no premises or reasons;

if, say the advocates of this argument, a man performs an apparently

altruistic act to-day from selfish motives, and performs the same act

to-morrow without calculation of the benefit to self to be gained from

it,--if such a change were possible,--then this man must simply have

forgotten his motives for the act. But this is not altruism proper. Such

action is the result of a logical confusion, but it can never be

altruism. Altruism proper has a motive, and this motive is the desire to

do good to others. With regard to this argument it may simply be said

that it is wholly untenable from any evolutionist standpoint; it

destroys at once the possibility of any moral progress. Intended to

defend altruism and moral principle in general from what is designated

as degradation, it is itself degrading in its denial of the

compatibility of natural and moral advance. It posits the assertion that

nothing can ever become that which it was not from the beginning, an

assertion utterly inconsistent with any theory of growth, whether

evolutional or otherwise. It is contradictory, too, of the directly

observed every-day facts of individual experience. The ends with which

we perform our acts, and the same acts, certainly change from day to

day. The adult would have reason for shame were the ends with which he

performs certain acts the same with those with which he performed those

same acts when he was a child. The emotions with which we regard life

and its various relations alter every day. If the change from egoism to

altruism could be pronounced logical confusion, then all mental

evolution must constitute an increase of intellectual disorder, a

continuous progress towards less instead of greater intelligence. Where

is the beginning of feeling and what was feeling in the beginning? Of

what nature were the motives of our ape-like progenitors, and of what

nature the first motive that appeared in the universe? and how have we

ever arrived at the possession of other motives than these? What a

confusion worse confounded must be our present motives, and of what a

chaos of thought and emotion must the human intellect consist! The

origin of any such argument as this, intended to disprove the theory of

a derivation of altruism from egoism, is probably in the failure to

distinguish the fact that both altruism and egoism, as we know them, are

comparative, not absolute. Naturally, absolute altruism could not

develop immediately from absolute egoism, that is, the one could not

change immediately into the other. But there are very few human beings

in whom some degree of altruism does not exist; and all we may note

directly of change of motive in ourselves, as well as all we ever could

note of change in external action in other species, is gradual increase

in this direction. In the individual case it is quite possible for

change to take place in the opposite direction of the development of

greater egoism.

In connection with the discussion of the development of motives, we may

inquire what is the final end of action; I refer not to the ideal end

but the actual end, although the two are not always distinguished in the

answer to this question. The confusion of the two generally arises from

forgetfulness of the fact that an end is the part of the result of an

act particularly willed by the performer. The concept is again a

teleological one, although often advanced, in some form, by persons of

materialistic views. Thus some authors, looking at the process of

evolution as continual survival of the fittest, and observing that

natural selection thus tends continually towards health, so that the

action of existing species is, in a large and ever increasing measure,

favorable to health, assert that the latter is the end of action.

Others, in like manner and from similar premises, argue that the

preservation of the species is the end of action; or sometimes the

logical inaccuracy involved in making health or the preservation of

species the universal end of action is partly concealed by giving the

assertion the form that one or the other of these is "the end attained"

by action. To these statements may be answered: The health of the

individual, although it sometimes appears as the end willed, is by no

means the constant and universal end, but, on the contrary, rather an

infrequent end. As to the preservation of the species, the concept has

never been heard of by a majority of human beings, and a thing cannot be

an end to those who have not heard of it. It is doubtful, moreover,

whether even those to whom it is familiar often, if ever, make it the

end of action. With regard to pleasure, it has already been said that

special calculation of the pleasure to accrue to self is by no means a

necessary part of the motive to action. Attention may again be called to

the fact that it is not the future pleasure that decides the will to

action in the case of struggle of conflicting tendencies, but that it is

the more pleasurable representation, and that it is present pleasure

which decides in any case. Or, rather, it is not the pleasure, the

feeling alone, that decides, for feeling is never found alone; it is

always combined with thought-images. The strength of pleasurable feeling

is the "tone" in which the intensity of the function manifests itself,

and according to which it tends to further expression in action. In the

imagination of action and its results, or the thought of it, reflection

may linger especially on any one of its elements,--on any part of the

action or its results as inferred from the analogy of past experience;

the pleasure to self is not necessarily the element on which the mind

lays stress, and the pleasure to others may be the element with which

thought is particularly occupied and which turns the scale of choice;

just as, also, in the actual action and its results, the pleasure in

pleasure or benefit accruing to others may more than counterbalance the

pain which some other inevitable phase of the action or its results

brings with it.

Much that has been said of the development of egoism from altruism still

holds true of the individual, even if the idea of a progress in altruism

through heredity be surrendered. The consideration of the question of

heredity is, however, necessary to any complete or wide-reaching theory

of moral progress. Hitherto, the actuality of the inheritance of

altruistic tendency has been assumed on the strength of previous

considerations with regard to heredity in general, according to which we

could not conceive all the multifarious differences which appear in all

the species and varieties of animal nature to have been present in

simplest primal organisms, or all the differences of the different

species and varieties which have arisen through sexual propagation from

common ancestors to have been present as inherent potentialities in the

germ-plasm, as such, of their common ancestors, and so cannot consider

the lesser variations which go to make up the larger ones as due merely

to the germ-plasm. It remains for us to examine the facts more

particularly with respect to this special form of tendency. Stephen

says: "An unreasoning animal can only adapt itself to new circumstances,

except within a very narrow range, by acquiring a new organization; or,

in other words, by becoming a different animal. Its habits and instincts

may therefore remain fixed through countless generations. But man, by

accumulating experiences, can virtually alter both his faculties and his

surroundings without altering his organization. When this accumulation

extends beyond the individual, it implies a social development, and

explains the enormous changes wrought within historical times, and which

define the difference between the savage and the civilized man."[150]

"Briefly, society exists as it exists in virtue of this organization,

which is as real as the organization of any material instrument, though

it depends upon habits and instincts instead of arrangements of tangible

and visible objects."[151] "Children, no doubt, start with infinitely

varying aptitudes for moral culture, as they start with stomachs of

varying strength of digestion; but, in every case, the action of the

social medium is an essential factor of the result."[152] Now, in the

first place, objection may be made to the term "unreasoning animal," in

that, whatever we may think with regard to inorganic matter and

plant-life or even with regard to the lower forms of animal-life, the

whole theory of evolution is opposed to the supposition that reason

suddenly arises in man; and in that we have, moreover, in the case of

many of the higher species, very conclusive evidence of the presence of

some degree of reason. Mr. Stephen does not elsewhere make any positive

assertion of the entire absence of reason in animals; yet to his remark

that "It may be that germs of this capacity [_i.e._ the capacity to

learn by experience and impart this knowledge to others] are to be found

in the lower animals" he adds, "but we shall make no sensible error if

we regard it, as it has always been regarded, as the exclusive

prerogative of humanity."[153] That is, we make no sensible error if we

regard the progress of other animal species than our own to be wholly

"organic," that of our own species, on the other hand, to be wholly an

accumulation of common knowledge. The division between man and the rest

of the animal kingdom is thus made a very distinct and absolute line. It

may be noticed, second, that the third quotation of the three cited

consecutively above contains a very different statement from that of the

first quotation. And it may be said, third, that the second quotation,

while seeming to bear out the first, is in reality a contradiction of

it, since it makes social organization dependent upon "habits" and

"instincts."

Exactly what is it that is meant by the alteration of organization which

is pronounced unnecessary to the "virtual" alteration of human

faculties? From the modern spiritualistic, the materialistic, the

positivistic, or any modern standpoint at all, it is difficult to

perceive how mental alteration can be supposed without the assumption of

an exactly corresponding physiological change. In view of the

exceedingly minute structure of the nervous system, which is chiefly

affected by such change, we may suppose this change to be so fine as to

be imperceptible to sense-perception, but, since it must, in any case,

be exactly cooerdinate with the psychical change, I fail to see how we

can scientifically regard the one and at the same time ignore the other

and pronounce it of no significance. And if we suppose any fixation of

psychical alteration, we cannot avoid likewise supposing an exactly

cooerdinate fixation of physiological alteration. Of course the question

remains as to the extent to which fixation takes place in either case,

and this question we have yet to consider. The weakness of Mr. Stephen's

position lies in his assumption of fixation on the one side and his

denial of it on the other.

How far are the moral qualities acquired in one generation inherited by

the next? Inasmuch as all development is by inappreciable increments,

all change of organization gradual, or, in psychical terms, inasmuch as

character varies only slowly from the grooves of established habit,

there is a general truth in the statement that all habit prominent

enough to be noticed as such can generally be traced farther back than

the next generation only. Nevertheless, here are a few cases for the

Weismannites:--

"Gall speaks of a Russian family in which the father and grandfather had

died prematurely, the victims of taste for strong drink. The grandson,

at the age of five, manifested the same liking in the highest degree."

"Trelat, in his work 'Folie Lucide,' states that a lady of regular life

and economical habits was subject to fits of uncontrollable dipsomania.

Loathing her state, she called herself a miserable drunkard, and mixed

the most disgusting substances with her wine, but all in vain; the

passion was stronger than her will. The mother and the uncle of this

lady had also been subject to dipsomania."

"Charles X----, son of an eccentric and intemperate father, manifested

instincts of great cruelty from infancy. He was sent at an early age to

various schools, but was expelled from them all. Being forced to enlist

in the army, he sold his uniform for drink and only escaped a sentence

of death on the testimony of physicians, who declared that he was the

victim of an irresistible appetite. He was placed under restraint, and

died of general paralysis."

"A man belonging to the educated class, and charged with important

functions, succeeded for a long time in concealing his alcoholic habits

from the eyes of the public; his family were the only sufferers by it.

He had five children, only one of whom lived to maturity. Instincts of

cruelty were manifested in this child, and from an early age its sole

delight was to torture animals in every conceivable way. He was sent to

school, but could not learn. In the proportions of the head he

presented the character of microcephalism, and in the field of

intellectual acquisition he could only reach a certain low stage, beyond

which further progress was impossible. At the age of nineteen he had to

be sent to an asylum for the insane."

"A man of an excellent family of laboring people was early addicted to

drink, and died of chronic alcoholism, leaving seven children. The first

two of these died, at an early age, of convulsions. The third became

insane at twenty-two, and died an idiot. The fourth, after various

attempts at suicide, fell into the lowest grade of idiocy. The fifth, of

passionate and misanthropic temper, broke off all relations with his

family. His sister suffers from nervous disorder, which chiefly takes

the form of hysteria, with intermittent attacks of insanity. The

seventh, a very intelligent workman, but of nervous temperament, freely

gives expression to the gloomiest forebodings as to his intellectual

future."

"Dr. Morel gives the history of a family living in the Vosges, in which

the great-grandfather was a drunkard, and died from the effects of

intoxication; and the grandfather, subject to the same passion, died a

maniac. He had a son far more sober than himself, but subject to

hypochondria and of homicidal tendencies; the son of this latter was

stupid, idiotic. Here we see, in the first generation, alcoholic excess;

in the second, hereditary dipsomania; in the third, hypochondria; and in

the fourth, idiocy and probable extinction of the race."[154]

It is the general testimony of authorities that mental disease may thus

appear in one generation as general tendency to excess, in another as

homicidal mania, in another as microcephalism, etc. Here we have

examples of the hereditary character of what we recognize as nervous

disease, which yet has its moral as well as its intellectual side. There

are few who do not recognize the power of the parent, through injury to

his own health, to affect the health of his children; and yet that which

we call disease is not more physical than that which we call moral

characteristic. However, the physical side of that which we call normal

moral characteristic is more withdrawn from observation; that which is

recognized as mental disease forms, in this respect, a link between what

we term ill-health and mental characteristic. The physical features of

what we term ill-health attract our attention especially because of the

weakness and incapacity or the distinct physical pain involved; the

physical side of insanity comes also more or less distinctly to our

notice, but the physical accompaniments of normal characteristic attract

less attention. And yet all these three conditions have each a psychical

and each a physiological side. It is therefore difficult to understand

how the possibility of the inheritance of ill-health from want or excess

can be acknowledged and yet the possibility of the inheritance of

psychical characteristic acquired by the parent be doubted; the latter

has its organic side as much as the former. And no better illustration

of this fact can be found than in just such cases as those above cited,

where that which appears in the first place as mere excess, that is,

moral characteristic as we ordinarily term it, takes finally the form of

microcephalism, idiocy, or insanity.

Man's early existence as an individual is distinguished by the length of

duration of a condition of helplessness, at the beginning of which,

beyond the fundamental so-called organic action, only a few simple

activities manifest themselves. The human being is born with almost

everything to acquire, and the earlier years, during which habits are

slowly accumulating, appear peculiarly adaptive or formative. The human

child is peculiarly susceptible, as regards mental and moral

acquirements, to the nature of his surroundings. But this fact does not

necessarily mean any more than what Stephen asserts in the last of the

three quotations above cited, namely, that the social medium is an

essential factor of the result; it does not necessarily exclude the

inheritance of moral or immoral tendency acquired under civilization or

even by near ancestors. Even in cases of the inheritance of the most

extreme passion for alcohol, we cannot suppose that the taste would ever

have manifested itself, had alcohol never come within the reach of the

inheriting individual. The young kitten that has never tasted meat will

snatch at a piece as soon as it scents it; but we cannot suppose that

the evidently inherited taste for flesh would ever appear, did flesh

never come within the range of its sense-perception. Since a suitable

environment must always be conceived as essential to the development

even of the most inveterate inherited qualities, and since man's mental

and especially his moral superiority has been developed in connection

with social conditions, it is conceivable that, these conditions

failing, his mental and moral development may show a lack cooerdinate

with the degree of such failure. And here is an answer to those who, in

contesting the theory of any moral inheritance, state their views in the

final form that if any inheritance at all can be claimed, it can only be

as a certain degree of readiness in responding to the conditions of

civilization; _no_ inheritance can ever be anything more than this; the

existence, to a sufficient degree, of complementary conditions in the

environment is always necessary to the development of tendency. It is,

therefore, conceivable that the child of civilized parents of a higher

type of morality, if carried off, in infancy, by savages, might fail to

exhibit the high character of its parents, just as it is conceivable and

more than probable that it would fail to exhibit their higher

intellectual gifts. It is also conceivable that the child of moral

parentage may inherit the capacity of high moral development and yet

fall into crime, if circumstances afford him no education save that of

association with hardened criminals. We might only with reason expect to

find, in the case of the supposed child abducted by savages, a certain

mental acuteness applied to savage affairs and some greater degree of

humane feeling, dominated, however, by savage conceptions; as also

greater ease in the acquirement of civilized ideas and customs in case

of a return to higher surroundings before maturity; and we might only

expect to find, in the case of the child brought up among criminals, a

greater degree of that primitive honor and faithfulness which may exist

among criminals. Modern reformatories have testified to the possibility

of the redemption of a large number of criminals from their evil life,

but they have shown, nevertheless, that there is a lust of cupidity, a

love of meanness, and an animality from which rescue is almost if not

quite impossible. The reaction of men whose past opportunities have been

about equal, upon effort for their reform, exhibits also very different

degrees of readiness. The testimony of reformatories for the young is

especially of worth on this point; and I once heard Mrs. Mary A.

Livermore, whose interest in reformatories and prisons is well known,

describe the faces of many of the children to be found in a certain

institution of this sort, as bearing fearful witness to the fact that

they had been "mortgaged to the devil before they were born." I remember

a number of cases cited by the matron of a certain orphan asylum showing

that children taken from their home at too early an age to have learned

the sins of their parents by imitation may yet repeat those sins. Out of

three children of the same parents, the one of whom was a drunkard and

prostitute, the other a thief, one developed, at a very early age, a

tendency to dishonesty, another an extreme morbid eroticism, and the

third child appeared to have escaped the evil inheritance; but he was

still very young when I last heard of him. The two children did not

exhibit these evil traits at their entrance to the home, but developed

them later.

And here it may be noticed that the fact of the unformed character of

the infant does not prove that the tendencies which make their

appearance in later life are wholly the result of the environment. It

has been remarked by biologists and pathologists that inherited

characteristics tend to appear at an age corresponding to that at which

they appeared in the progenitor. The caterpillar does not undergo

metamorphosis with a less regularity because it is not, in the

beginning, a butterfly, and the beard does not the less appear in the

adult human male because he was not born bearded. Diseases of the brain

often develop, for several generations, at nearly the same age, and

there seems to be no reason why we should not suppose the like to be

true in the case of many normal characteristics. Ribot cites from

Voltaire the following case: "'I have with my own eyes,' he writes,

'seen a suicide that is worthy of the attention of physicians. A

thoughtful professional man, of mature age, of regular habits, having no

strong passions, and beyond the reach of want, committed suicide on the

17th of October, 1769, leaving behind him, addressed to the council of

his native city, an apology for his voluntary death, which it was not

thought advisable to publish, lest men should be encouraged to quit a

life whereof so much evil is spoken. So far there is nothing

extraordinary, since instances of this kind are everywhere to be found;

but here is the astonishing feature of the case: his father and his

brother had committed suicide at the same age as himself. What hidden

disposition of mind, what sympathy, what concurrence of physical laws,

caused this father and his two sons to perish by their own hand and by

the same form of death, just when they had acquired the same year of

their age?'"[155] Ribot continues:--

"Since Voltaire's day, the history of mental disease has registered a

great number of similar facts. They abound in Gall, Esquirol, Moreau of

Tours, and in all the writers on insanity. Esquirol knew a family in

which the grandmother, mother, daughter, and grandson, committed

suicide. 'A father of taciturn disposition,' says Falret, 'had five

sons. The eldest, at the age of forty, threw himself out of a

third-story window; the second strangled himself at the age of

thirty-five; the third threw himself out of a window; the fourth shot

himself; a cousin of theirs drowned himself for a trifling cause. In the

Oroten family, the oldest in Teneriffe, two sisters were affected with

suicidal mania, and their brother, grandfather, and two uncles, put an

end to their own lives.'... The point which excited Voltaire's surprise,

viz. the heredity of suicide at a definite age, has been often noticed:

'M. L----, a monomaniac,' says Moreau of Tours, 'put an end to his life

at the age of thirty. His son had hardly attained the same age when he

was attacked with the same monomania, and made two attempts at suicide.

Another man, in the prime of life, fell into a melancholy state and

drowned himself; his son, of good constitution, wealthy, and the father

of two gifted children, drowned himself at the same age. A wine-taster

who had made a mistake as to the quality of a wine threw himself into

the water in a fit of desperation. He was rescued, but afterwards

accomplished his purpose. The physician who had attended him ascertained

that this man's father and one of his brothers had committed suicide at

the same age and in the same way.'...

"A woman named Olhaven fell ill of a serious disorder, which obliged her

to wean her daughter, six weeks old. This complaint of the mother began

by an irresistible desire to kill her child. This purpose was discovered

in season to prevent it. She was next seized with a violent fever which

utterly blotted the fact from her memory, and she afterwards proved a

most devoted mother to her daughter. This daughter, become a mother in

her turn, took two children to nurse. For some days she had suffered

from fatigue and from 'movements in the stomach,' when one evening as

she was in her room with the infants, one of them on her lap, she was

suddenly seized by a strong desire to cut its throat. Alarmed by the

horrible temptation, she ran from the spot with the knife in her hand,

and sought in singing, dancing, and sleep, a refuge from the thoughts

that haunted her. Hardly had she fallen asleep when she started up, her

mind filled with the same idea, which now was irresistible. She was,

however, controlled, and in a measure calmed. The homicidal delirium

recurred, and finally gave way, only after many remedies had been

employed."

These are only a few out of the many instances that might be given of

recurrence, at the same age or under the stimulation of similar

conditions, of so-called pathological states. Science has hitherto given

more study to such cases than to the inheritance of healthful

conditions, though the line between healthful mental conditions and

mental disease is very difficult to draw, and the assumption that all

suicides are more insane than many of the people who are regarded as

sane is unwarranted; of course if one starts with the premise that

suicide is always a symptom of insanity, then the conclusion follows

naturally that all suicides are insane; but this is a mere argument in a

circle. As far as the inheritance of healthy or normal mental

characteristics is concerned, we do know at least, from general

observation, that a child often exhibits, as it develops, more and more

rather than less and less the characteristics of some progenitor; and

this, moreover, in many cases where the possibility of imitation is

excluded. Observations might possibly be made here in a line with former

reflections on man's adaptability and Haeckel's theory of the prenatal

existence of the individual as repeating the history of his species. In

the case of postnatal as well as in that of prenatal existence, the

action of the environment can no more be left out of account than can

that of heredity; and the influence of favorable or of unfavorable

conditions at corresponding periods of development may explain the

exaggerated growth or, on the other hand, the dwarfed character or

non-appearance of tendencies associated in their development with these

periods. But at present such observations can be little more than

speculation. We may at least say, however, that Mr. Leslie Stephen's

statement of the case, namely, that children "start with infinitely

varying capacities" but that the environment of civilization is that

which finally makes them what they become morally and mentally, should

rather be reversed; for it is rather true that children are born into

the world on about the same level mentally and morally (for we observe

but little difference in the faculties of new-born babes), but that they

by no means react, in development, upon the same or a similar

environment in a similar manner. The case of the Athenian baby, whose

probable equality with the modern infant is used by Mr. Stephen as an

argument that the human race has made no progress as far as innate

qualities are concerned, would therefore scarcely be a case in point,

even if it were capable of proof,--as it is not. But it cannot be called

a case in point in any sense, the English baby with which Mr. Stephen

compares the Athenian infant not being of Athenian descent. Any

comparison of this sort, to be of worth in the discussion of the element

of heredity in human progress, must be between the baby of the primitive

savage Briton and the modern British infant. The Athenians arrived at a

high degree of social development; but the very fact that neither their

civilization nor even that of Rome was acquired by the less civilized

races who were their conquerors is rather testimony in favor of the

theory of the hereditary, organic character of the habits and capacities

acquired in the course of civilization. Nor have the Athenians

transmitted their type unmixed; there is no pure Athenian or Greek race

at the present day with which we could compare the ancient Greeks, even

if we desired to affirm so great an independence of circumstances as

would assure to such a race the unimpaired faculties of their ancestors

in spite of all the changes in their environment which history records.

Not only the environment was changed and mixed; the stock, also, of that

race which once regarded all strangers as barbarians became equally

impure. And assuredly the comparison of the "average child of to-day"

with an Archimedes or a Themistocles is anything but a fair one.[156]

Taken with the qualification of the predicate which Mr. Stephen

cautiously introduces in asserting that the innate qualities of the

average modern child are not "radically" superior to those of the

greatest ancients, it leads us to suspect that Mr. Stephen is not,

himself, very thoroughly convinced of what he attempts to prove. We may

agree with Mr. Stephen that "If Homer or Plato had been born amongst the

Hottentots, they could no more have composed the 'Iliad' or the

'Dialogues' than Beethoven could have composed his music, however fine

his ear or delicate his organization, in the days when the only musical

instrument was the tom-tom"[157]; for certainly no one can reach the

same heights under an unfavorable environment that he might have

attained under a favorable one; and that Homer could have expressed, in

the ruder poetry which he might still have composed among Hottentots,

the sentiments of the "Iliad," or Beethoven have produced his sonatas

with the assistance of the tom-tom (provided that remained the only

instrument after the appearance of an individual of such musical

capacity as a Beethoven), cannot be conceived. But it is also

inconceivable that a Beethoven, a Homer, or a Plato, could be born among

the Hottentots, if "to be born among them" means to be born of their

stock.

In order to make any direct comparison between the capacities of the

descendants of civilized parents and those of uncivilized progenitors,

we ought to be able to compare average results obtained in savage

infants removed, in earliest infancy, to the advantages of civilization,

with the average mental and moral acquirements of individuals born under

those influences. We need to compare averages, I say, and not one or two

individual cases alone; for, in order to assert the organic and

hereditary character of human progress up to and under civilization, we

are by no means compelled to prove a like advance in all parts of a

nation or people, or even advance at all in every part. It is

conceivable, and wholly in accordance with the general course of

evolution, that types should remain stationary while other types are

advancing, that lower types should continue to exist side by side with

higher ones that have developed out of them, and even that, in some

lines of descent, retrogression should take place while the species or a

society as a whole is progressing. But our data for comparison of

averages are not, by any means, as satisfactory as could be wished; for

nowhere are the direct descendants of uncivilized races given equal

advantages with those of the descendants of peoples already civilized.

Galton's comparison of the negro with the white man is, for this reason,

too extreme in its conclusions as to the hereditary character of

intellect. Yet some general facts may be noted. And perhaps no better

field for comparison is afforded us than the United States, where the

white population is not the mere offshoot and tributary of a nation the

great majority of whose better representatives inhabit a distant land,

but an independent and successful nation, and where the negro race,

while yet untutored, was suddenly endowed with a liberty nominally as

great as that of the white man, together with a part in the government

and a right to state education. This liberty may be, indeed is, in many

parts of the South, a mere pretence, though even there toleration is

gradually being acquired; but in the North the negro is treated on very

nearly the same footing with the white man, the indignities offered him

having their origin, for the most part, with former slave-holders, not

with the born and bred Northerner. Negro children have free access to

the northern schools, where they may often be seen sitting side by side

with white children; and the best of American universities are open to

negro students. If, then, the average of opinion, even in the North,

maintains a certain amount of condescension towards the African, this

condescension is no greater in degree than that maintained by the

aristocracy of Europe towards the so-called lower (not the lowest)

classes, and in spite of which many have risen to prominence from those

classes. Indeed, the measure of condescension is rather less than the

average manifested by master to underling in many European countries not

so democratic as England; it would compare favorably with the attitude

of the petty German officials to the ordinary citizen of the less

well-to-do classes. It may mean discouragement, but there is no reason

why it should, in all cases, mean failure. Yet, as a fact, very few of

pure negro blood have risen to any prominence whatever, and the average

of intelligence appears comparatively low; the large majority of those

who have risen to eminence have had some admixture of the blood of the

white race. The American Indian appears to be more capable of

cultivation; but he has enjoyed fewer advantages than the negro. The

Indian children at the schools provided for them do not, however, appear

to exhibit the degree of intelligence possessed by white children. On

the other hand, the mixture of white and Indian blood seems to produce,

sometimes, rather more than the average of intelligence. The writer is

acquainted with two cases of this kind. The first was that of the

daughter of an ignorant Indian father, who lived entirely by hunting and

fishing, and of an almost as ignorant white mother. The child, who had

at first no advantages save those afforded by a primitive district

school, nevertheless early developed an insatiable love of study,

gained access to a higher school, and finally to what was, in her time,

the highest school for women in the country. Here she did housework,

during a course of four years, in order partly to pay her expenses,

supplying the remaining sum for tuition afterwards out of her earnings

as a teacher. By clothing herself, summer and winter, in cheap prints,

she also saved enough to buy the time of a sister who had been bound

out, assisted in the education of the rest of the family, and taught a

school whose excellence is remembered and praised to this day. But the

Indian is commonly supposed to be of higher stock than the African

negro; he certainly exhibits, even in his uncivilized state, a cunning,

a courage, and a persistence, of a higher type than that of the African;

and the superiority of a mixture between this alert type and the

intelligence of the white man is thus explained. I repeat, though the

subtle results of many minute accumulating influences of individual

environment must undoubtedly be taken into consideration in our judgment

of different races, the difference of opportunity does not seem to

account fully for the great difference of attainment.

It must be noticed, too, that, in comparing the negro with the white man

in the United States, we have not compared a wholly savage people with a

civilized one; for the negro has been, for several generations, in

contact with civilization, and must have gained something from this

contact. It is to be greatly doubted whether the infants of those

Siberians of whose pleasure in the suffering of other beings an instance

was given above would, even under the best of influences, develop into

individuals of much real benevolence. The average child of civilized

society is somewhat callous to the sufferings of animals, partly because

he does not realize the reality of those sufferings; yet I have seen

lost kittens tenderly cared for by ragged little street urchins; and I

have more than once heard small boys, playing in the gutter, exclaim at

the beating of a donkey or a horse. The child repeats, perhaps, to some

extent, the history of his race's origin in savagery. Yet it is to be

seriously doubted whether the children of the savages described as

delighting in cutting their meat from living animals would attain, even

under the most careful training, the average spontaneous humanity of the

lad of civilized progenitors, or would ever become truly humane men and

women. It is conceivable that superior mental and moral capacity may

remain comparatively undeveloped, proper environment lacking, but we

begin to see the fallacy of concluding, from such cases, the

non-hereditary character of capacity when we suppose such cases as those

above, of the rearing of savage infants under civilization. It must be

added of the very isolated cases--of which much is often made--in which

the children of civilized parents have been stolen by savages, at an

early age, (1) that it is not, and cannot be, maintained that all the

descendants of civilized progenitors are endowed with superior mental

and moral tendency; and (2) that such instances are too few in number to

furnish, alone, the basis of any theory. The evidence furnished us by

the general results of neglect in the midst of civilization is more to

the point; but, even in these cases, it must be shown that the children

came of good parentage in order that the evidence may be admitted as

telling against the theory of heredity. Every breeder of animals counts

with the greatest confidence upon the action of the laws of heredity;

and no reason can be given why these laws should not work in the case of

man, why he should be the one species exempt from them. It is impossible

to cross the dog with the wolf without perceiving the result of the

crossing, in the mental as well as the physical characteristics of the

offspring; and the dog does not differ more from the wolf than does

civilized man, in the most advanced nations, from the savage. Even his

physical characteristics, the contour of the head and face especially,

the form of the features as well as the expression, are different and

imply a higher type.

And, in discussing lower types in the midst of civilization, we cannot

do better than give some consideration to Dugdale's remarkable book on

the Jukes, which has already been mentioned. In this book is traced the

history of five hundred and forty persons belonging to seven generations

of descendants of five sisters, there being much intermarrying among

them. Out of two hundred and fifty-two Juke women, whose history is

traced, thirty-three were illegitimate, eighteen were mothers of

bastards before marriage, twelve the mothers of bastards after marriage,

fifty-three were prostitutes (the cases of eight being unascertained),

thirteen were barren, eleven kept brothels, thirty-seven had syphilis,

forty-five received, at some time, outdoor relief, the total number of

years amounting to two hundred and forty-two, twenty-four received

almshouse relief, the time reaching a total of thirty-five years, and

sixteen were committed for crimes for a total of one and three-fourths

years, the number of offences being twenty-four. Out of two hundred and

twenty-five Juke men, forty-nine were illegitimate, twenty were

prostitutes, one kept a brothel, fourteen were afflicted with syphilis,

fifty received outdoor relief, the time being, in total, two hundred and

seventy years, twenty-nine were in the almshouse for a total of

forty-six years, and thirty-three were committed for crime for a total

of eighty-nine and a half years, the number of offences being

fifty-nine. The lines with which the Jukes cohabited or intermarried

were naturally of a low moral type, but they do not show nearly as high

a percentage of crime and pauperism; thus among the marriageable women

of the Jukes, we find the percentage of harlotry to be 52.40, among

those of the intermarrying or cohabiting lines only 41.76. Of the stock

of Ada Juke, known to the police as "Margaret, the mother of criminals,"

nine offenders were sent to prison for a total of sixty years, their

crimes constituting fifty-four per cent of all the crimes against

property recorded of the Jukes, and including burglary, grand larceny,

and highway robbery; besides one murder and three attempts at rape.

Dugdale thus describes his first acquaintance with the "Jukes." "In

July, 1874, the New York Prison Association having deputed me to visit

thirteen of the county jails of this state and report thereupon, I made

a tour of inspection in pursuance of that appointment. No specially

striking cases of criminal careers, traceable through several

generations, presented themselves till ---- County was reached. Here,

however, were found six persons, under four family names, who turned out

to be blood relations in some degree. The oldest, a man of forty-five,

was waiting trial for receiving stolen goods; his daughter, aged

eighteen, held as witness against him; her uncle, aged forty-two,

burglary in the first degree; the illegitimate daughter of the latter's

wife, aged twelve years, upon which child the latter had attempted rape,

to be sent to the reformatory for vagrancy; and two brothers in another

branch of the family, aged respectively nineteen and fourteen, accused

of an assault with intent to kill, they having maliciously pushed a

child over a high cliff and nearly killed him. Upon trial, the oldest

was acquitted, though the goods stolen were found in his house, his

previous good character saving him; the guilt belonged to his

brother-in-law, the man aged forty-two above-mentioned, who was living

in the house. This brother-in-law is an illegitimate child, an habitual

criminal, and the son of an unpunished and cautious thief. He had two

brothers and one sister, all of whom are thieves, the sister being the

contriver of crime, they its executors. The daughter of this woman, the

girl aged eighteen above-mentioned, testified, at the trial which

resulted in convicting her uncle and procuring his sentence for twenty

years to state prison, that she was forced to join him in his last

foray, that he had loaded her with the booty and beat her on the journey

home, over two miles, because she lagged under the load. When this girl

was released, her family in jail, and thus left without a home, she was

forced to make her lodging in a brothel on the outskirts of the city.

Next morning she applied to the judge to be recommitted to prison 'for

protection' against certain specified carnal outrages required of her

and submitted to. She has since been sent to the house of refuge. Of the

two boys, one was discharged by the grand jury; the other was tried and

received five years' imprisonment in Sing Sing.

"These six persons belonged to a long lineage, reaching back to the

early colonists, and had intermarried so slightly with the emigrant

population of the Old World that they may be called a strictly American

family. They had lived in the same locality for generations, and were so

despised by the respectable community that their family name _had come

to be used generically as a term of reproach_.

"That this was deserved became manifest on slight inquiry. It was found

that out of twenty-nine males, in ages ranging from fifteen to

seventy-five, the immediate blood-relations of these six persons,

seventeen of them were criminals, or fifty-eight per cent; while fifteen

were convicted of some degree of offence, and received seventy-one years

of sentence.... The crimes and misdemeanors they committed were assault

and battery, assault with intent to kill, murder, attempt at rape, petit

larceny, grand larceny, burglary, forgery, cruelty to animals."

But this book of Dugdale's, which traces so clearly and thoroughly long

lines of criminal descent, makes manifest, also, the influence of

environment. We find, for instance, in the line of the illegitimate

posterity of Ada Juke, generation five, the case of a male descendant,

who was sentenced to Sing Sing for three years at the age of twenty-two,

but who, leaving prison at the expiration of his sentence, abandoned

crime and settled down to steady employment. A second case is that of

another male descendant of Ada, who assisted his brother in burglary at

the age of twelve, and served probably some thirteen or fourteen years

in prison, but later reformed and took to stone-quarrying, having

learned, says Dugdale, industrious habits in prison. A brother of this

man, who had also served sentences in jail for assault and battery, and

a term of two years at Sing Sing for burglary (the term beginning at the

age of twenty-two), moved at the age of thirty-one into the same county

as his brother, and went into the business of quarrying. A female

descendant in the illegitimate line of Ada, generation five, who seems

to have followed a dissolute life up to the age of fifteen, at this

point married a German, a "steady, industrious, plodding man," and

settled down into a reputable woman. In the legitimate line of Ada,

again, generation five, we find the case of a girl "said to have been

born in the poorhouse," who "was adopted out from there into a wealthy

family, and is doing well." In all these cases, the reform was the

result of contact, during the earlier period of life, with new elements

inducing industry and sobriety. Such cases might lead us to doubt the

conclusions we should otherwise feel justified in drawing with regard to

the action of heredity, and must certainly render us cautious not to

impute the whole character of the individual to heredity alone. But the

complicated nature of _all_ social relations should restrain us from

laying all stress upon any one element in those relations, in any case.

Here, again, we recur to the conception of conditions and results in

distinction from that of cause and effect. If statistics such as these

of the Jukes included minute and careful statements as to mental and

physical characteristics and resemblances, they would undeniably be much

more reliable basis for conclusions as to the hereditary nature of

character. Nevertheless, incomplete though this evidence be, it is by no

means such that it can be logically disregarded. It is to be said of

such cases of reform and respectability as those noticed under favorable

influences (1) that we are not informed as to its exact extent and

motive and have no means of knowing what these were; (2) that, if

reversion to ancestral types is possible in the sense of deterioration,

there is no reason why it should not be possible in the opposite sense

also,--no reason why better characters should not, through, perhaps,

some favorable prenatal influence at exactly the right period of

development, occasionally crop out in a line of general baseness;[158]

and (3) that the admixture of a strain of somewhat better blood may

produce, or some especial crossing be favorable to, the development of

higher character in a part, though not necessarily all, of the

offspring. "When the domestic pig and the wild boar or the wolf and the

dog are crossed," says Ribot,[159] "some of the progeny inherit the

savage, and others the domestic instincts. Similar facts have been

observed by Girou in the crossing of different races of dogs and cats."

We know quite well that the same law governs the transmission of

character in human beings. In a family of children, some will inherit

the characteristics of the father, some those of the mother. Mr. Jenkins

of the Bureau of Police of Brooklyn, N.Y., related to me a case that had

come under his notice. Of a family consisting of father, mother, two

sons, and a daughter, the mother was a hard-working, honest washerwoman,

while the father was depraved in his tendencies; and of the three

children the daughter resembled the mother in character, the sons, on

the other hand, their father. One of the sons was sentenced to prison

for a bad case of burglary, and was shot while attempting to escape; and

on the same day on which his picture was removed from the rogues'

gallery, his brother's was hung in its place, the latter having, with

calm deliberation and preparation, murdered a girl with whom he had some

relation. A similar case is recorded by Gall, where the mother

represented the good, the father the evil stock, and of five children

three were condemned to severe penalties for thieving, the other two

lived correct lives. It is to be noticed that, of the three cases of

better character among the Jukes cited above, the two reformed

characters were brothers. It is by no means proved by these cases that

all or a majority of the Jukes were capable, even under the best of

influences, of a like betterment of character. On the contrary: the

general characteristics of extreme licentiousness attaching to the whole

family, on which Dugdale lays special stress,--a licentiousness

extending even to cohabitation and marriage with the negroes at a time

when the latter were yet in slavery and regarded as little more than

animals,--as well as the exceeding viciousness and inhumanity exhibited

in some of the crimes (witness the attempted rape on the niece of twelve

and the pushing of the child over the cliff), show a tendency of

character much below the average. Nor was the prison discipline which

accomplished the reform of the two brothers the only opportunity of

steady industry, or the prison the only reformatory environment

afforded. Dugdale mentions an "extensive employer of labor, located near

the original settlement of the Jukes," who "employs several members of

it," treating them "with firmness and unvaryingly scrupulous fairness,"

interposing his authority and checking them in incipient crime. He acts

as their banker and, as school trustee, arranges, "where widows depend

upon their boys for support, that they shall work for him and go to

school alternate weeks." If, indeed, the family is located, as it seems

to be, in the rather sparsely settled districts of northern New York, it

is scarcely likely to suffer great isolation, as it might in the midst

of a city, or to be excluded from means of honest livelihood. Dugdale

mentions, indeed, that this employer "has not taken up this work as a

'mission,' but strictly as a business man, who, finding himself placed

where he must employ the rude laborers of his locality, deals with them

on the sound and healthy basis of commercial contract, honestly carried

out and rigidly enforced." Unfortunately, Dugdale does not furnish us

with any exact information as to the result of this very humane course

of treatment. We can only revert to his remark that, though the Jukes

had lived in this neighborhood for generations where work was evidently

not lacking nor kind and judicious treatment absent, their name was used

generically, by the reputable community, as a term of reproach.

We have already noticed some inconsistencies in Stephen's theory of

human progress as merely that of an accumulation of knowledge. But he

practically contradicts, elsewhere in his work, this view of

advancement. On page 201 of the "Science of Ethics," he says distinctly:

"As men become more intellectual, sympathetic, and so forth, they gain

fresh sensibilities, which are not simple judgments of consequences

hitherto improved, but as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of

the primitive sensibilities." Even if this statement were meant to apply

to the individual alone, a great difficulty must lie in the way of any

theory that sensibilities so inherent, sensibilities "as direct,

imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities," will

not affect the character of descendants through inheritance, in the same

manner as these primitive sensibilities are acknowledged to affect it.

But elsewhere Stephen remarks: "An instinct grows and decays not on

account of its effects on the individual, but on account of its effects

upon the race. The animal which, on the whole, is better adapted for

continuing its species, will have an advantage in the struggle, even

though it may not be so well adapted for pursuing its own happiness." He

is careful to use the word "happiness" here, but the division under

which the sentence appears is headed, "Social and Individual Utility,"

and he distinctly states, on the preceding page, that the social

instincts may be a disadvantage to the individual in the struggle for

existence. He writes, in this connection: "The process by which the

correlation of pernicious and painful states is worked out is one which,

by its very nature, must take a number of generations. Races survive in

virtue of the completeness of this correlation."[160] This is Darwinism

applied to humanity; and, surely, since the human race has existed in

the social state for very many generations, we must suppose, according

to the theory thus stated, continuous organic advance, even if we did

not consider the passage in connection with the assertion of the gain,

with increasing intelligence and sympathy, of sensibilities as direct,

imperative, and substantial as any primitive ones. Again Mr. Stephen

writes: "It is true, generally, that each man has certain capacities for

moral as for every other kind of development, and capacities which vary

from the top to the bottom of the scale. No process of education or

discipline _whatever_ would convert a Judas Iscariot into a Paul or

John."[161] Then education, the environment of civilization, is not the

only factor in the production of character. Nor is it, according to Mr.

Stephen's own words, the only important factor. If capacities vary from

the top to the bottom of the scale, then surely this variation cannot be

an unimportant element of development. As a matter of fact, Mr. Stephen

himself lays especial stress upon inherited characteristic as the basis

of character. He says, for example: "The character is determined for

each individual by its original constitution, though the character is

modified as the reason acts.... But, after all, we start with a certain

balance of feeling, with certain fixed relations between our various

instincts; and, however these may change afterwards, our character is so

far determined from the start. Again, it is plain that this varies

greatly with different peoples and gives rise to different types."[162]

Surely the formation of types at least cannot be a matter of the

individual alone. Furthermore, Mr. Stephen distinctly asserts a growth

of intelligence in the savage--which we cannot suppose to stop short

with the beginning of civilization--while he especially emphasizes the

fact that the emotions develop concomitantly with the intellect. He says

also: "We assume an organic change to occur--no matter how--in certain

individuals of a species, and that change to be inherited by their

descendants; and thus two competing varieties to arise, one of which may

be supplanted by the other, or each of which may supplant the other in a

certain part of the common domain. Some such process is clearly

occurring in the case of human variations. Everywhere we see a

competition between different races, and the more savage vanishing under

the approach of the more civilized. Certain races seem to possess

enormous expansive powers, whilst others remain limited within fixed

regions or are slowly passing out of existence. So far as human

development supposes an organic change in the individual [?], we may

suppose that this process is actually going on and that, for example,

the white man may be slowly pushing savage races out of existence. I do

not ask whether this is the fact, because for my purpose it is

irrelevant. We are considering the changes which take place without such

organic development, not as denying the existence of organic

developments, but simply because they are so slow and their influence so

gradual that they do not come within our sphere. They belong, as

astronomers say, to the secular, not to the periodic changes. Confining

ourselves, therefore, to the changes which are, in my phrase, products

of the 'social factor,' and which assume the constancy of the individual

organism,"[163] etc. The passage is of importance as acknowledging the

reality of organic progress; but it is full of the self-contradictions

which we have already noticed. It starts with the Darwinian assumption

that organic change occurring in _individuals_ is directly inheritable

by their descendants; this assumption, having done its office, however,

is discarded, and we are told that any organic change cannot be that of

individuals but must be that of societies, or at least that it must be

of such sort that we have not only no need to consider it with regard to

the individual life, but even no need to consider it in the study of the

whole development of a society under civilization, or rather that we

have no need to study it at all as soon as we have the "social medium"

to fall back upon for an explanation of progress; and finally, in direct

contradiction to the assumption first made, a constancy of the

individual organism is asserted. This assertion is also in direct

contradiction to the assertion before noticed that character is

determined by original constitution and that original capacity differs

"infinitely"[164] in different individuals. We are indebted to Mr.

Stephen for a very minute analysis of the influence of even smallest

details of circumstance upon character; surely, while we are thus

emphasizing the delicacy of nervous organization that answers, with the

sensibility of a gold-leaf electroscope, to the slightest variations in

the environment, we cannot logically leave out of account the results of

such variation in inheritance because these, too, are minute. And surely

we cannot conceive that an organism so sensitive to the influence of

environment is yet so inflexible and unalterable as far as the

transmission of its changes to offspring is concerned. On any sound

physiological theory, we cannot avoid supposing that all these minute

changes in character which Stephen refers to the action of the social

environment are accompanied by exact physiological equivalents. Then

either these changes of organization are not inheritable,--in which case

the organism does not propagate itself but something different from

itself, and we have no alternative but to resort to some such theory as

that of Weismann,--or else these changes are inheritable (subject, of

course, to all the variations which individual circumstances of

development must induce), in which case their inheritance must be of

quite as much importance as their origin to any theory of social

progress. As we have said, Weismann has gradually come to admit _some_

influence of the environment on the germ-plasm. We can indeed conceive

of the representation of all previous development of the species in the

individual, and of the determination of the degree of importance

assumed, in the organism, by any particular acquirement or tendency by

the coincidence of circumstance, but we can scarcely conceive logically

of a propagation of organization that does not represent all the

influences which have made that organization what it is. Even from

Stephen's standpoint, it is difficult to understand how the organization

of society, which he admits to be no organization on the plane of the

higher animal, but of a much lower type, can be of so much importance in

the advance of mankind, its variations the condition of progress, and

yet the much more interdependent organization of the animal body be

supposed to remain constant and take no part in this progress. It is

difficult to comprehend how so much stress can be laid on the mere

external influence of the units of society on each other, and, at the

same time, the far more intimate and direct influence of parents on

their offspring can be deemed of so little importance as to warrant our

disregarding it altogether. It is especially difficult to understand how

it is that heredity can be disregarded, not merely in its influence on

the individual or even on the generation, but in all its manifold,

intricate, and prolonged workings since man first extended family life

to tribal organization; and this, too, in spite of the acknowledgment

that progress through heredity is real if slow. It is strange that there

should always be a tendency to draw a distinct line between social man

and all the rest of the animal kingdom, as if, when society began, all

former laws ceased from operation. Thus it is sometimes said that

natural selection no longer acts on the individual because it acts on

societies as wholes also; as well say that it cannot act on inner

organization because it acts on the organism as a whole. As a matter of

fact, it affects society through individuals, and the individual

through, or rather in, his organization. If it is true, as Stephen

asserts, that change of social tissue is primary and fundamental to all

external social change, it is not the less true that change of

individual organization is fundamental to all change of external action.

No theory of development which goes beyond the individual life and

considers the progress of society as a whole can scientifically

disregard the element of heredity in this progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] I am indebted for these facts to Dr. Auguste Forel.

[142] "Ants, Wasps, and Bees," Chap. V.

[143] "Zur psychologischen Wuerdigung der darwin'schen Theorie."

[144] Pp. 141, 142, translation by Henry M. Trollope.

[145] Eng. ed. Internat. Scientific Ser., p. 276; quoted from "The

Zooelogist."

[146] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 345; cited from an article in

"Nature," 1883.

[147] "Animal Intelligence," p. 472.

[148] "Mind," Vol. VIII.

[149] Lubbock: "The Origin of Civilisation," pp. 9, 10.

[150] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 103, 104.

[151] Ibid. p. 109.

[152] "The Science of Ethics," p. 419.

[153] Ibid. p. 103.

[154] Ribot: "Heredity." Here we have examples which show that disease,

as well as healthful organization and function, are subject to

variation; and it may occur to us to wonder that no one has thought of

referring these variations to some supernatural interference or special

inner spontaneity; that theories which assume some transcendental agency

or some spontaneously acting vital principle as the cause of normal,

healthful variation have yet either left the variations of disease out

of consideration or else simply referred them to influence of the

environment. The reason for this, as far as transcendental interference

is concerned, is evident; any theory of teleology in such cases must

point to malevolent not benevolent design.

[155] "Heredity," pp. 124, 125. Quoted from the "Dictionnaire

Philosophique," article "Caton."

[156] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 102, 103.

[157] "The Science of Ethics," p. 107.

[158] See previous observations on this subject, p. 408.

[159] "Heredity," Engl. trans., p. 84.

[160] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 91, 92.

[161] Ibid., p. 432. The italics are mine.

[162] Ibid., pp. 72, 73.

[163] P. 121.

[164] See above, p. 400.