CHAPTER XII

INDICATIONS OF INCREASING MORAL DEGRADATION

There are in the Reports of the Registrar-General a few statistics of

special importance because they clearly point to certain kinds of moral

degradation which have been increasing for the last half-century, thus

coinciding with our exceptionally rapid increase in wealth; and also,

as I have shown in preceding chapters, with various forms of national,

economic, and social deterioration.

The first of these is the continuous increase in deaths from

alcoholism, in proportion to population, since the year 1861. Most

persons will be amazed to find that this is the case, because the

drinking habit has certainly diminished; but when the habit becomes

so powerful and lasts so long as to be the direct cause of death, we

are able to see the dimensions of the most exaggerated form of the

drink evil. The following figures are taken from the successive Reports

referred to:—

_Deaths from

_Average Alcoholism per

of Years_ Million living_

1861-1865 41.6

1866-1870 35.4

1871-1875 37.6

1876-1880 42.4

1881-1885 48.2

1886-1890 56.0

1891-1895 67.8

1896-1900 85.8

1901-1905 78.4

1906-1910 54.6

There are some irregularities, the ratio being nearly equal for the

first twenty years, after which there is such a continuous large

increase that from 1876-80 to 1896-1900 the mortality is doubled, but

for the last ten years there has been a decrease, which in the last

five years is very marked.

But a still worse and more disquieting feature is the recent large

increase of mortality from alcoholism in women. Figures for the

separate sexes were not given till 1876, and the following table shows

the comparison up to 1910:—

_Deaths from

_Average Alcoholism

of Years_ per Million_

_Men_ _Women_

1876-1880 60.1 24.0

1881-1885 66.6 31.0

1886-1890 73.6 39.2

1891-1895 86.6 50.2

1896-1900 106.2 66.6

1901-1905 95.0 63.0

1906-1910 66.6 43.6

These figures, however deplorable and startling in themselves, are as

nothing in comparison with what they imply. Death from drink, more

than in the case of any other disease, is the ultimate and rarely

attained result of the vice of habitual intoxication. Men and women may

greatly injure their health, ruin their families, and be disgraceful

drunkards, and yet not die of it, or make any near approach to doing

so. What is the proportion of those who are morally and physically

injured by drink to those who kill themselves by it, is, I suppose,

unknown, but I imagine that one in a thousand is, probably, too high

an estimate, and that one death among ten thousand moderate drinkers

who also occasionally or frequently become intoxicated, would be nearer

the mark. This would imply an increase in the consumption of alcoholic

drinks, instead of which there has been an actual diminution. The fact

probably is that a very large number of moderate drinkers have ceased

to consume alcohol in any form, and this would account for a much

larger reduction in the total than has actually occurred.

On the other hand, owing to the increase of those who are only casually

employed in our great cities, and whose one luxury is the excitement of

drink, a larger quantity of cheap, and injuriously adulterated spirits

and other liquors is consumed, which, combined with a deficiency of

wholesome food, leads more frequently to a fatal result.

_Increase of Suicide_

The increase has been long known and generally admitted. It is supposed

to be largely due to the ever-increasing struggle for subsistence in

our great cities, the consequent increase of unemployment, and the

dread of the workhouse as the only alternative to starvation. The

following are the figures for the last forty-five years for which

official data have been published:—

_Deaths by

_Average Suicide per

of Years_ Million living_

1866-1870 66.4

1871-1875 66.0

1876-1880 73.6

1881-1885 73.8

1886-1890 79.4

1891-1895 88.6

1896-1900 89.2

1901-1905 100.6

1906-1910 102.2

Such a table as this, occurring in a country which boasts of its

enormous wealth, of its ever-increasing commercial prosperity, of its

marvellous advance in science and the arts, and command of natural

forces, should, surely, give us pause, and force upon us the conviction

that there is something radically wrong in a social system which brings

about such terrible evils.

And this should be the more certainly seen to be the case because the

same increase is taking place in all those countries which approach us

in their wealth and their commercial prosperity.

* * * * *

There is a group of diseases which are fatal to infants soon after

birth. They have been steadily increasing during the last half-century,

and call for special notice here, as they seem to indicate physical

degeneration as well as personal immorality of a dangerous and perhaps

even a criminal nature.

_Five-year _Proportion of Deaths

Average_ to 1,000 Births_

_Premature _Congenital

Births_ Defects_

1861-1865 11.19 1.76

1866-1870 11.50 1.84

1871-1875 12.60 1.85

1876-1880 13.38 2.39

1881-1885 14.18 3.23

1886-1890 16.1 4.2

1891-1895 18.4 4.7

1896-1900 19.6 4.9

1901-1905 20.2 5.9

1906-1909 20.0 6.6

The large increase during the last forty-five years of very early

infantile deaths, involving abnormalities of mother or child, seems

very significant. The first may be connected with the increasing

dislike of child-bearing, and unsuccessful attempts to avoid it. The

second indicates some injurious condition of life of the mother, such

as working at unhealthy or even deadly trades, which has certainly been

largely increasing during the same period. Such work for young married

women should be impossible in a civilised community.

* * * * *

On the vast subject of prostitution, of which the present movement for

the suppression of what is called "The White Slave Traffic" is but

one of the aspects, I do not propose to dwell, because I can find no

statistics to show whether it has increased or decreased during the

last century. But as the conditions have all been favourable for it, I

have little doubt that it has increased in proportion to population.

Such conditions are, the enormous growth of great cities; an increasing

number of unmarried and wealthy young men; with an enormous number of

girls and young women whose wages are insufficient to provide them with

the rational enjoyments of life.

The proceedings of the Divorce Courts show other aspects of the result

of wealth and leisure; while a friend who had been a good deal in

London Society assured me that both in country houses and in London

various kinds of orgies were occasionally to be met with which could

hardly have been surpassed in the Rome of the most dissolute emperors.

Of war, too, I need say nothing. It has always been more or less

chronic since the rise of the Roman Empire, but there is now

undoubtedly a disinclination for war among all civilised peoples.

Yet the vast burden of armaments, taken together with the most pious

declarations in favour of peace, must be held to show an almost total

absence of morality as a guiding principle among the governing classes.

In this respect, the increasing power of Labour-parties all over the

world seems to afford the only hope of a real moral advance.

PART II.—THEORETICAL

CHAPTER XIII

NATURAL SELECTION AMONG ANIMALS

While writing the present volume I was led to refer to it during some

of the numerous interviews on the occasion of my recent birthday.

This led to some misrepresentation of my views, and showed me how

few popular press-writers have any real knowledge of the nature and

extent of "natural selection," more especially as it affects the human

race. There is also the same ignorance as regards "heredity"; and this

latter has become almost a word to conjure with, and is thought by

most writers to explain many things to which it is quite inapplicable,

and as the present work is a very condensed argument founded to a

considerable extent upon these great natural laws, I propose devoting

two chapters to explaining and demonstrating the effect of natural

selection in the case of the lower animals and of man respectively.

That such an explanation is necessary may be seen from the following

extract from one of our most influential and well-written daily papers,

the _Pall Mall Gazette_. After referring to the view of the utter

rottenness of our present civilisation, it quotes me as saying: "And

the average of mankind will remain the same until natural selection

steps in to save it." (What I actually said to the interviewer was

"until some form of selection improves it.") The writer then goes on:

"These words must have struck the interviewer like the crack of

doom. For, stated popularly, the theory of natural selection is

the doctrine of 'Devil take the hindmost.' If natural selection

had fair play there would be no Children's Care Committees;

there would be no Poor Law, no Hospitals; there would be no

Old Age Pensions. All the humanitarian effort to care for the

weak and to help them along the path of life, every effort to

bind up the broken-hearted, every combination of labour to

secure equality among the members of a trade, stand condemned

as futile or worse by the doctrine which Dr. Russel Wallace

thinks can alone raise the average of man. His own remedies

for the ills of society—the levelling up which he believes to

be impossible without levelling down, the disinheriting of the

unborn heir, the 'striking' which he applauds, the universal

education which he favours—all these are directly antagonistic

to the workings of natural selection."

Now, as I am credited by all my scientific friends with having

discovered the theory of natural selection more than fifty years ago,

and as the whole reading public have had this hammered into them with

needless repetition during the whole of that period, it is rather

amusing to be told now that I do not know what natural selection is,

nor what it implies. It is also a striking proof that the whole subject

is now held to be so old and commonplace as not to be worth studying by

a popular teacher before writing about it so strongly and dogmatically.

If he had done so he would not deliberately assert that I hold opinions

in regard to the matter which in several of my books I have shown the

fallacy of.

I propose, therefore, to give here a short account of the essential

features of the theory of natural selection; how it has operated in

bringing about the evolution of the almost infinitely varied forms of

plants and of the lower animals; and also to explain as clearly as I

can why, and to what extent, it has acted differently in the case of

man.

_Lamarckism and Darwinism—How they Differ_

The first great naturalist who put forward a detailed explanation of

how he supposed the varied forms of animal life to have been produced

was Lamarck, a contemporary of Buffon and Goethe, both of whom believed

in evolution but offered no explanation of how it could have been

brought about. Lamarck, however, suggested that the various organs

of animals were modified by voluntary effort producing increased

development, as when an antelope escapes from a lion by its swiftness,

which swiftness is increased by the straining of its limbs in flight;

while the long neck and fore-limbs of the giraffe were explained by the

continual stretching of these parts of the body to obtain foliage for

food during severe droughts. In addition to this other causes are at

work, as described in the following passage, translated or paraphrased

by Sir Charles Lyell in his _Principles of Geology_:

"Every considerable alteration in the local conditions under

which each race of animals exists causes a change in their

wants, and these new wants excite them to new actions and

habits. These actions require the more frequent employment of

some parts before but slightly exercised, and then greater

development follows as a consequence of their more frequent

use. Other organs, no longer in use, are impoverished and

diminished in size; nay, are sometimes entirely annihilated,

while in their place new parts are insensibly produced for the

discharge of new functions."

Again, he says:

"Thus otters, beavers, water-fowl, turtles, and frogs were

not made web-footed in order that they might swim; but their

wants having attracted them to the water in search of prey,

they stretched out the toes of their feet to strike the water

and move rapidly along its surface. By the repeated stretching

of their toes the skin which united them at the base acquired

a habit of extension, until, in the course of time, the broad

membranes which now connect their extremities were formed."

In the case of plants, where no voluntary movements occur, the cause

of modification was said to be due almost exclusively to the change of

local conditions, as the various kinds of plants became dispersed over

the earth's surface. The influence of soil, of temperature, of light

and shade, are supposed to produce definite changes which are gradually

increased; just as plants long cultivated in our gardens have become so

changed that the wild progenitors cannot now be recognised.

Sir Charles Lyell, who made a careful study of Lamarck's great work,

notes especially that the whole of the argument is vague and general,

and that no cases are given in which is shown how the alleged causes

can be supposed to have acted so as to bring about the innumerable

changes that must have occurred. What is more important, however, is

the failure to explain how the numerous minute adaptations of each

species to its environment could have arisen by the direct action of

that environment—in plants, the infinitely varied forms of leaves,

flowers, and fruits; in animals, the forms and sizes of the teeth of

mammalia and of the beaks, wings and feet of birds to the food they

obtain; while the enormous range of colour and marking in most groups

of animals are such as no amount of desire or exertion on the one

hand, or direct action of external causes on the other, could possibly

have brought about. It is not, therefore, surprising that, although

a vast amount of evidence was adduced to show that changes had taken

place leading to the evolution of species from pre-existing species,

yet causes adequate to bring about the changes, and especially those

necessary to produce the marvellous adaptations continually being

discovered, had not been shown to exist.

It is necessary to point this out, because the difference between the

almost universal rejection of Lamarck's attempted solution of the

problem of evolution, and the almost immediate and universal acceptance

of that adduced by Darwin, is otherwise unexplained. The belief in the

doctrine of evolution as the only rational explanation of the gradual

development of the innumerable forms of living things became more and

more general. The great body of arguments in its favour were admirably

set forth by Robert Chambers in his _Vestiges of Creation_, published

anonymously in 1844; while Herbert Spencer's masterly exposition of

the argument for universal evolution convinced a large number of

naturalists and men of science. But still the nature of the laws and

forces by which the evolution of the organic world in all its variety

and beauty, could have been brought about remained not only unknown

but unimagined, so that even so great a thinker as Sir John Herschel

termed it "the mystery of mysteries." I will now state as briefly as

possible the essential features of Darwin's solution of the mystery in

his epoch-making work, _The Origin of Species_.

_Natural Selection as the Essential Factor in the Origin of Species_

There are two great, universal, and very conspicuous characteristics of

the whole organic world which, because they are so very common, were

almost ignored before Darwin showed their importance. These are (1) the

great _variability_ in all common and widespread species, and (2) their

enormous powers of _increase_.

The facts of variability are recorded in every book on Darwinism or

on organic evolution, and it is only necessary here to appeal to

the reader's own observation or to state a few illustrative facts.

Everybody sees that among a hundred or a thousand people he knows or

frequently meets no two are alike. This is _variability_. He also

knows that the amount of the differences between them is often very

large, and always, if you have any two of them side by side, easily

perceptible and capable of being described. He also knows that they

differ in every part and organ that can be seen: the height, the bulk

of body; the shape of the hands, feet, head, ears, nose, and mouth; the

proportions of the legs, arms, and body to each other; the abundance

and character of the hair—coarse or fine, straight or curly, and

of all colours between flaxen and intense black. To declare that

variability among men and women, even of the same race and in the same

country, is a rare phenomenon, and that in amount it is infinitesimal,

would be a ludicrous misstatement of the facts or a wilful perversion

of the truth. But, as regards animals or plants in a state of nature,

this misstatement has been made and has been used as an argument

against the Darwinian theory. It is, however, now well known, as a

matter of direct observation and measurement, that when a few scores

or hundreds of individuals are compared, even in the same district and

at the same season, they differ in their proportions to about the same

amount, and to some extent in every visible part or organ, as do human

beings.

This, however, was not well known when Darwin collected the materials

for his various works, and he even sometimes makes the proviso—"if

they vary, for without variation selection can do nothing"; and this

has been taken as an admission that variation is a rare instead of

being a universal phenomenon. He also often spoke of the accumulation

of _small_ or _minute_ variations, and this has led to the statement

that variations are _infinitesimal_ in amount, and therefore could, at

first, be of no use to the possessor in the struggle for existence.

_Rapid Increase of All Organisms_

This is another fact of Nature which requires to be kept in mind in

all discussions of the action of natural selection, yet it is often

altogether ignored by critics of the theory. As an illustrative fact,

a not uncommon European weed of the Cruciferæ family has been found

to produce about 700,000 seeds on a single plant, whence it can be

calculated that if every seed had room to grow for three successive

years their produce would cover a space of about 2,000 times as large

as the whole land surface of the globe. Some of the minute aquatic

forms of life which increase by division in a few hours would, if they

all had the means of living, in the same period occupy a space equal to

that of the entire solar system. Even the largest and slowest breeding

of all known mammals, i.e. the elephant, would, if allowed space to

live and breed freely for 750 years, result in no less than nineteen

million animals.

By far the larger part of the criticisms of Darwinism by popular

writers are due to their continually forgetting these two great natural

facts: enormous _variability_ about a _mean value_ of every part and

organ; and such ever-present powers of multiplication that, even in

the case of vertebrate animals, of those born every year only a small

proportion—one-tenth to one-hundredth or thereabouts—live over the

second year. If they all lived their numbers would go on continually

increasing, which we know is not the case. Hence arises what has been

termed "the struggle for existence," resulting in "the survival of the

fittest."

This "struggle for life" is either against the forces of inorganic or

those of organic nature. Among the former are storms, floods, intense

cold, long-continued droughts, or violent blizzards, all of which take

toll of the weaker or less wary individuals of each species—those that

are less adapted to survive such conditions. In judging how this would

act, we must always remember the enormous scale on which Nature works,

and that although now and then a few of the weaker individuals may live

and a few of the stronger be killed, yet when we deal with hundreds

of millions, of which eighty or ninety millions inevitably die every

year while about ten or twenty millions only survive, it is impossible

to believe that those which survive, not one year only but year after

year throughout the whole existence of each species, are not on the

average better adapted to the complex conditions of their environment

than those which succumb to it. It is a mere truism that the _fittest

survive_.

Exactly the same thing occurs in the case of the organic environment,

to which each species must also be well adapted in order to live. The

two great essentials for animal existence are, to obtain abundant

food through successive years, and to be able to escape from their

various enemies. When food is scarce the strongest, or those who

can feed quickest and digest more rapidly, or those that can detect

food at greater distances or reach it more quickly, will have the

advantage. Enemies are escaped by strength, by swiftness, by acute

vision, by wariness, or by colours which conceal the various species

in their natural surroundings; and those which possess these or any

other advantages will in the long run survive. The weaker, the less

well-defended, and the smaller species often have special protection,

such as nocturnal habits, making burrows in the earth, possessing

poisonous stings or fangs, being covered with protective armour; while

great numbers are coloured or marked so as exactly to correspond with

their surroundings, and are thus concealed from their chief enemies.

_Natural Selection, or Survival of the Fittest_

It may be here noted that the term "Natural Selection," which has often

been misunderstood, was suggested to Darwin by the way in which almost

all our varieties of cultivated plants and domestic animals have been

obtained from wild forms continually improved for many generations. The

method is to breed large quantities, and always preserve or "select"

the best in each generation to be the parents of the next. This

method, carried on by hundreds of farmers, gardeners, dog, horse or

poultry breeders, and especially by pigeon-fanciers, has resulted in

all those useful, beautiful and even wonderful varieties of fruits,

vegetables and flowers, dray-horses and hunters, greyhounds, spaniels

and bull-dogs, cows which give large quantities of the richest milk,

and sheep with the greatest quantity and finest quality of wool. All

these were produced gradually for the special purposes of mankind; but

a similar result has been effected by Nature through rapid increase,

great variability, and continual destruction of all the individuals

less adapted to the conditions of their special environment, so that

only the strongest or the swiftest, the best-concealed or the most

wary, the best armed with teeth, horns, hoofs or claws, those who could

swim best, or those that protected each other by keeping in flocks or

herds—lived the longest and tended to improve still further the next

generation. "Survival of the fittest" was suggested by Herbert Spencer

as best describing exactly what happens, and it is a most useful

descriptive term which should always be kept in mind when discussing

or investigating the process by which the infinitely varied and

beautiful productions of Nature have been developed. There is really

not one single part or organ of any plant or animal that cannot have

been derived by means of the fundamental facts of variability and

reproduction from some allied plant or animal.

It is interesting here to note, that the two _essential factors_ of the

process of constant adaptation to the environment by great variability

and rapid multiplication, formed no part of Lamarck's theory, which

some people still think to be as good as Darwin's. Equally suggestive

is the fact that, while extensive groups of life-phenomena, such as

colour, weapons, hair, scales, and feathers, can hardly be conceived as

having been produced or modified by _effort_ or by the direct action of

the environment, they are yet, every one of them, perfectly explained

by the fundamental and necessary processes of variability and survival,

acting slowly and continuously, but with intermittent periods of

extreme activity at long intervals, on all living things.

One of the weakest and most foolish of all the objections to the

Darwinian theory is, that it does not explain _variation_, and is

therefore worthless. We might as well say that Newton's discovery of

the laws of gravitation was worthless because its _cause_ was not and

has not yet been discovered; or that the undulatory theory of light

and heat is worthless, because the origin of the ether, the thing

that _undulates_, is not known. The _beginnings_ of things can never

be known; and, as Darwin well said, it is foolish to waste time in

speculation about them. I think I have shown in my _World of Life_

that infinite variability is a basic law of Nature, and have suggested

its probable purpose. That purpose seems to have been the development

of a life-world culminating in Man—a being capable of studying, and

enjoying, and to some extent comprehending, the vast universe around

him, from the microscopic life in almost every drop of water to the

whirling nebulæ of the glittering star-depths extending to almost

unimaginable distances around him.

Looking at him thus, man is as much above, and as different from, the

beasts that perish as they are above and beyond the inanimate masses of

meteoritic matter which, as we now know, occupy the apparently vacant

spaces of our solar system, and from which comets and stars are in all

probability the aggregations due to the action of the various cosmic

forces which everywhere seem capable of producing variety and order out

of a more uniform but less orderly chaos.

But besides this lofty intellect, man is gifted with what we term a

moral sense: an insistent perception of justice and injustice, of right

and wrong, of order and beauty and truth, which as a whole constitute

his moral and æsthetic nature, the origin and progress of which I have

endeavoured to throw some light upon in the present volume. The long

course of human history leads us to the conclusion that this higher

nature of man arose at some far distant epoch, and though it has

developed in various directions, does not seem yet to have elevated the

whole race much above its earliest condition, at the time when, by the

influx of some portion of the spirit of the Deity, man became "a living

soul."

We will now consider some of the changes which this higher nature of

man has produced in the action of the laws of variation and natural

selection. These are very important, and are so little understood that

almost all popular writers on the subject of the future of mankind are

led into stating as scientific conclusions what are wholly opposed to

the actual teaching of evolution.

CHAPTER XIV

SELECTION AS MODIFIED BY MIND

The theory of natural selection as expounded by Darwin was so

completely successful in explaining the origin of the almost infinitely

varied forms of the organic world, step by step, during the long

succession of the geological ages, that it was naturally supposed to be

equally applicable to mankind. This was thought to be almost certain

when, in his later work, _The Descent of Man_, Darwin proved by a

series of converging facts and convincing arguments that the physical

structure of man was in all its parts and organs so extremely similar

to that of the anthropoid apes as to demonstrate the descent of both

from some common ancestor.

So close is this resemblance that every bone and muscle in the human

body has its counterpart in that of the apes, the only differences

being slight modifications in their shape and position; yet these

differences lead to external forms, attitudes, and modes of life so

divergent that we can hardly recognise the close affinity that really

exists. This affinity is so real and unmistakable that such a great

and conservative zoologist as the late Sir Richard Owen declared that

to discover and define any important differences between them was

the anatomist's difficulty. It was in the dimensions, the shape, and

the proportions of the brain that Owen found a sufficient amount of

distinctive characters to enable him to place Man in a separate order

of mammals—Bimana, or two-handed—while the remainder of the whole

monkey tribe—including the apes, baboons, monkeys, and lemurs—formed

the order Quadrumana, or four-handed animals. This classification has

been rejected by most modern biologists, who consider man to form a

distinct family only—Hominidæ—of the order Primates, which order

includes all four-handed animals as well as man.

But if we recognise the brain as the organ of the mind, and give due

weight to the complete distinctness and enormous superiority of the

mind of man as compared with that of all other mammals, we shall be

inclined to accept Owen's view as the most natural; and this becomes

almost certain when we realise the enormous effect his mind has

produced, in modifying and almost neutralising the action of that great

law of natural selection which has held supreme sway in every other

portion of the organic world.

We have seen in the preceding chapter how every form of organic life

during all the vast extent of geological time has been subject to the

law of natural selection, which has incessantly moulded their bodily

form and structure, external and internal, in strict adaptation to

the successive changes of the world around them; while that world was

itself hardly, if at all, modified by them. A few isolated cases—such

as the formation of islands by the coral-forming zoophytes, or the

damming of a few rivers by the rude though very remarkable labours of

the beaver—can hardly be considered as forming exceptions to this law.

But so soon as man appeared upon the earth, even in the earliest

periods at which we have any proofs of his existence, or in the

lowest state of barbarism in which we are now able to study him, we

find him able to use and act upon the forces of Nature, and to modify

his environment, both inorganic and organic, in ways which formed a

completely new departure in the entire organic world.

Among the very rudest of modern savages the wounded or the sick are

assisted, at least with food and shelter, and often in other ways,

so that they recover under circumstances that to most of the higher

animals would be fatal. Neither does less robust health or vigour, or

even the loss of a limb or of eyesight, necessarily entail death. The

less fit are therefore not eliminated as among all other animals; and

we behold, for the first time in the history of the world, the great

law of natural selection by the survival only of "the fittest" to some

extent neutralised.

But this is only the first and least important of the effects produced

by the superior faculties of man. In the whole animal world, as we have

seen, every species is preserved in harmony with the slowly changing

environment by modifications of its own organs or faculties, thus

gradually leading to the production of new species equally adapted to

the new environment as its ancestor was before the change occurred.

In the case of man, however, such bodily adaptations were unnecessary,

because his greatly superior mind enabled him to meet all such

difficulties in a new and different way. As soon as his specially

human faculties were developed (and we have as yet no knowledge of

him in any earlier condition), he would cease to be influenced by

natural selection in his physical form and structure. Looked at as

a mere animal he would remain almost stationary, the changes in the

surrounding universe ceasing to produce in him that powerful modifying

effect which they exercise over all other members of the entire organic

world. In order to protect himself from the larger and fiercer of the

mammalia he made use of weapons, such as stone-headed clubs, wooden

spears, bows and arrows, and various kinds of traps and snares, all of

which are exceedingly effective when families or larger groups combine

in their use. Against the severity of the seasons he protected himself

with a clothing of skins, and with some form of shelter or well-built

house, in which he could rest securely at night, free from tempestuous

rains or the attacks of wild beasts. By the use of fire he was enabled

to render both roots and flesh more palatable and more digestible, thus

increasing the variety and abundance of his food far beyond that of any

species of the lower animals. Yet further, by the simplest forms of

cultivation, he was able to increase the best of the fruits, the roots,

the tubers, as well as the more nutritious of the seeds, such as those

of rice and maize, of wheat and of barley, thus securing in convenient

proximity to his dwelling-place an abundance of food to supply all his

wants and render him almost always secure against scarcity or famine or

disastrous droughts.

We see, then, that with the advent of Man there had come into

existence a being in whom that subtle force we term _mind_ became of

far more importance than mere bodily structure. Though with a naked

and unprotected body, _this_ gave him clothing against the varied

inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to compete with the deer in

swiftness or with the wild bull in strength, _this_ gave him weapons

with which to capture or overcome both. Though less capable than most

other animals of living on the herbs and the fruits that unaided Nature

supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to govern and direct Nature

to his own benefit, and compelled her to produce food for him almost

where and when he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used

as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist him in

the chase, when fire was first used to cook his food, when the first

seed was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was effected in

Nature—a revolution which in all previous ages of the earth's history

had had no parallel. A being had arisen who was no longer subject to

bodily change with changes of the physical universe—a being who was in

some degree superior to Nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and

regulate her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not

through any change in his body, but by means of his vast superiority in

mind.

* * * * *

The view above expounded of the transference of the action of natural

selection from the bodily structure to the mind of early man was my

first original modification of that theory, having been communicated to

the _Anthropological Review_ in 1864. It received the approval both of

Darwin himself and of Herbert Spencer, and I am not aware that anyone

has shown any flaw in the reasoning by which it is established. It is

certainly of high importance, since if true it renders impossible any

important change in the external form of mankind, while it serves

as an explanation of the complete identity of specific type of the

three great races of man—the Caucasian or white, the Mongolian or

yellow, and the Negroid or black—in every essential of human form and

structure, while in their best examples they approach very nearly to

the same ideal of symmetry and of beauty. Yet so little attention has

been given to this view that most popular and even some scientific

writers take it for granted that no such difference exists between man

and the lower animals. They assume that we are destined to have our

bodies modified in the remote future in some unknown way, and that the

idea that there is anything approaching final perfection in the human

form is a mere figment of the imagination.

Others are so imbued with the universality of natural selection as

a beneficial law of Nature that they object to our interfering with

its action in, as they urge, the elimination of the unfit by disease

and death, even when such diseases are caused by the insanitary

conditions of our modern cities or the misery and destitution due

to our irrational and immoral social system. Such writers entirely

ignore the undoubted fact that affection, sympathy, compassion form

as essential a part of human nature as do the higher intellectual and

moral faculties; that in the very earliest periods of history and among

the very lowest of existing savages they are fully manifested, not

merely between the members of the same family, but throughout the whole

tribe, and also in most cases to every stranger who is not a known or

imagined enemy. The earliest book of travels I remember hearing read

by my father was that of Mungo Park, one of the first explorers of the

Niger. He was once alone and sick there, and some negro women nursed

him, fed him, and saved his life; and while lying in their hut he heard

them singing about him as the poor white man, of whom they said:—

"He has no mother to give him milk,

No wife to grind his corn."

Hospitality is, in fact, one of the most general of all human virtues,

and in some cases is almost a religion. It is an inherent part of

what constitutes "human nature," and it is directly antagonistic to

the rigid law of natural selection which has universally prevailed

throughout the lower animal world. Those who advocate our allowing

natural selection to have free play among ourselves on the ground that

we are interfering with Nature, are totally ignorant of what they are

talking about. It is Nature herself, untaught, unsophisticated _human_

nature, which they are seeking to interfere with. They seek to degrade

the higher nature to the level of the lower, to bring down Heaven-born

humanity, in its essential characteristics only a little lower than the

angels, to the infinitely lower level of the beasts that perish.

* * * * *

The conclusion reached in the earlier portion of this volume, that the

higher intellectual and moral nature of man has been approximately

stationary during the whole period of human history, and that the cause

of the phenomenon has been the absence of any selective agency adequate

to increase it, renders it necessary to give some further explanation

as to the probable or possible origin of this higher nature, and also

of that admirable human body which also appears to have reached a

condition of permanent stability.

CHAPTER XV

THE LAWS OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

In dealing with the great problems of organic development there is

probably no department in which so much error and misconception

prevails as on the nature and limitations of Heredity. These

misconceptions not only pervade most popular writings on the subject

of evolution, but even those of men of science and of specialists in

biology, and they are the more important and dangerous because their

promulgators are able to quote Herbert Spencer, and to a less extent

Darwin, as holding similar views.

The subject is of special importance here because it involves the

question of whether the effects of the environment, including education

and training, are in any degree transmitted from the individuals so

modified to their progeny—whether they are or are not cumulative.

It is, in fact, the much discussed and vitally important problem of

the Heredity of Acquired Characters. The effects of use and disuse,

another form of the same general phenomenon, were assumed by Lamarck to

be inherited, and a large portion of his theory of evolution rested on

this assumption; it seemed so probable, and was apparently supported by

so many facts, that Darwin, like most other naturalists at the time,

accepted it without any special inquiry, and when he worked out his

theory of Pangenesis in order to explain the main facts of heredity,

his suppositions were adapted to include such phenomena. Let us then

first explain what is meant by the "acquired characters" which it was

thought that a true theory of heredity must explain.

As a rule, the great majority of the peculiarities of any species

of animal or plant are constantly reproduced in its offspring. The

short tail of the wren, the much longer tail of the long-tailed tit,

the crest of the crested tit and of innumerable other birds, always

when full-grown exhibit the same characters as in their parents.

These are said to be _innate_ characters. In rare cases, however,

offspring are born which differ materially from their parents, as when

a white blackbird or a six-toed kitten appears, but these are equally

_innate_, and are often strongly inherited. All these are subject

to variation, and can therefore be modified by selection, whether

natural or artificial, and the effects of such selection in the case of

domestic animals is often enormous. Such are the pouters and tumblers

among pigeons, the bull-dog and the greyhound, the numerous breeds of

poultry, all of which are known to have been produced by artificial

selections of favourable variations extending over many centuries; and

the characters of these varieties are all strongly inherited.

Characters which are acquired during the life of the individual owing

to differences in the use of certain organs or of exposure to light,

heat, drought, wind, moisture, etc., are comparatively very slight,

and are liable to be so combined with _innate_ characters and with the

effects of natural or artificial selection, that it is exceedingly

difficult to ascertain, without such careful and long-continued

experiments as have not yet been made, whether they are in any degree

transmissible from parent to offspring, and therefore cumulative.

Almost every individual case of supposed inheritance of such

characters, when carefully examined, has been found to be explicable

in other ways; but there is a very large amount of _general_ evidence,

demonstrating that even if a certain small amount of such inheritance

exists, it can certainly not be a factor of any importance in the

process of organic evolution, all the factors of which must be

universally present because the process itself is universal. I will

therefore here limit myself to a short enumeration of a few of the

very numerous cases in which the continued use of an organ does not

strengthen or improve it, but often the reverse; and of others in which

it cannot be asserted that the action of the environment can have had

any part whatever in the continuous change or specialisation of the

part or organ. The number, size, form, position, and composition of

the teeth of all the mammalia are extremely varied, and throughout

the whole class afford the best characters to distinguish family and

generic groups; they are therefore of great value in determining the

affinities of extinct forms, because the jaws and teeth, especially

the latter, are most frequently preserved. But as the permanent teeth

are always fully formed while buried in the jawbones and covered by

the gums, it is quite certain that the special adaptation of the teeth

of each species to seize, crush, tear, or grind up its particular food

cannot possibly have been produced by the act of feeding, the effect

of which is almost always to grind away the teeth and render them less

serviceable. Such adaptation could not possibly have been produced

by _use_ alone, or any other direct action of the environment. Yet,

as the adaptation is clear, and often very remarkable, some eminent

palæontologists have declared it to be proved that the changes in

them were _produced_ by the changes in the environment, and that

they constitute very strong evidence of the "inheritance of acquired

characters"—a statement unsupported by any direct evidence.

The same objection applies to most of the special organs of sense.

The internal organ of hearing is a highly complex series of bones and

membranes, protected by the outer ear; but it cannot be even imagined

to have been gradually developed by the action of the air waves the

vibrations of which it conveys to the brain.

The eye is a still more striking case, as too much use injures or even

destroys it; while specialities of vision, as long or short sight, are

undoubtedly _innate_, and usually persist throughout life.

So the wonderfully varied bills of birds cannot be conceived as having

been modified by use, and are, in fact, unchangeable when once formed.

Yet, as they vary largely in every species, they are readily modified,

so as to become adapted to new conditions by the "survival of the

fittest."

Equally impossible is it to connect any use or disuse, or environmental

action, in the production, the gradual development, or complete

adaptation to their conditions of life of the outer coverings of almost

all living things—the hair of mammalia, the feathers of birds, the

scales or horny skins or solid shields of reptiles, the solid shells

of molluscs, wonderfully ribbed or spined, whorled, or turreted, and

infinitely varied in surface colour and markings. Even more conclusive

are the facts presented by the vast hosts of the insect world, from

the massive armour of the ever-present beetle tribe, more varied in

form, structure, ornament, and colour than any other comparable group

of living things, to the widely different lepidoptera, equalling, or

perhaps surpassing, the whole class of birds in their marvellous grace

and beauty, yet all utterly beyond any possible direct action of the

environment or of use and disuse in their development, and their close

adaptation to that environment.

Organic nature is indisputably one and indivisible. It has been

developed throughout by means of the fundamental _forces_ of life,

of growth and reproduction, and the equally fundamental _laws_ of

variation, heredity, and enormous increase, resulting in a perpetual

adaptation in form, structure, colour, and habits to the slowly

changing environment. These forces and laws are _universal_ in their

action; they are demonstrably adequate to the production of the whole

of the phenomena we are now discussing. We see, then, that over by

far the greater part of the whole world of life any modification

of external structure, form, or colouring during the life of the

individual is impossible; while in the remainder its action, if it

exists at all, is of very limited range. No adequate _proof_ of the

inheritance of the slight changes thus caused has ever yet been given,

and it is therefore wholly unnecessary and illogical to assume its

existence and to adduce it as having any part in the ever-active and

universal process of evolution.

Throughout the whole series of the animal world, and especially in the

higher groups which approach nearest to ourselves, mental and physical

characters are so inextricably intermixed in their relation to the

laws of evolution and heredity, that either of them studied separately

leads us to the same conclusions. We are not, therefore, surprised to

find that breeders of animals of all kinds act upon the principle that

all the qualities of the various stocks, whether bodily or mental,

are _innate_ and have been due to selection; while training, though

necessary to bring out the good qualities of the individual, has had

no part in the _production_ of those qualities. When a horse or dog of

good pedigree is accidentally injured so that it cannot be regularly

trained, it is still used for breeding purposes without any doubt as to

its conveying to its progeny the highest qualities of its parentage.

In the case of the human race, however, many writers thoughtlessly

speak of the hereditary effects of strength or skill due to any

mechanical work or special art being continued generation after

generation in the same family, as among the castes of India. But of

any progressive improvement there is no evidence whatever. Those

children who had a natural aptitude for the work would, of course, form

the successors of their parents, and there is no proof of anything

hereditary except as regards this _innate_ aptitude.

Many people are alarmed at the statement that the effects of education

and training are _not_ hereditary, and think that if that were really

the case there would be no hope of improvement of the race; but closer

consideration will show them that if the results of our education in

the widest sense, in the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the

world at large, had really been hereditary, even in the slightest

degree, then indeed there would be little hope for humanity; and there

is no clearer proof of this than the fact that we have not _all_ been

made much worse—the wonder being that any fragment of morality, or

humanity, or the love of truth or justice for their own sakes still

exists among us.

* * * * *

If we glance through the past history of mankind we see an almost

unbroken succession of aggression and combat between the various races,

nations, and tribes. We can dimly see that this continual struggle did

lead to a rather severe process of selection, as in the lower animal

world. It can hardly be doubted that as a result of these struggles the

strongest physically, the most ingenious in the use of weapons, and

the best organised for war did survive, and that the weaker and lower

were either exterminated or kept as slaves by the conquerors. This

leads to alternation of success and failure. We see great conquerors

and great material civilisations as a result of their accumulations

of wealth and of slaves. Then, for a time, luxury and the arts

flourished, and with them came rulers who encouraged degradation and

vice at home, supported by more and more remote conquests. Then new

conquerors arose, often lower in civilisation—barbarians, as they were

termed—but higher in the simple domestic virtues and a more natural

life of productive labour. These again, or some portions of them, rose

to luxury and civilisation, to lives of gross sensuality and the most

cruel despotism, till outraged humanity raised up new conquerors to go

over again the old terrible routine.

The periods of culmination of these old civilisations, founded always

on conquest, massacre, and slavery, are marked out for us by the ruins

of great cities, temples, and palaces, often of wonderful grandeur, and

with indications of arts, science, and literature which still excite

our admiration in Egypt and India, Greece and Rome; and thence through

the Middle Ages down to our own time. But the inhumanities and horrors

of these periods are inconceivable. A gloomy picture of them is given

in that powerful book, _The Martyrdom of Man_, by Winwood Reade; and

they are summarised in Burns' fine lines:

"Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn."

Think of the horrors of war in the perpetual wars of those days before

the "Red Cross" service did anything to alleviate them. Think of the

old castles, many of which had besides the dungeons a salaried torturer

and executioner. Think of the systematic tortures of the centuries, of

the witchcraft mania and of the Inquisition. Think of the burnings in

Smithfield and in every great city of Europe. Think of

"Truth for ever on the scaffold,

Wrong for ever on the throne."

Freedom of speech, even of thought, were everywhere crimes: how,

then, did the love of truth survive as an ideal of to-day? To escape

these horrors, the gentle, the good, the learned, and the peaceful

had to seek refuge in monasteries and nunneries, while by means of

the celibacy of the clergy the Church, as Galton tells us, "by a

policy singularly unwise and suicidal, brutalised the breed of our

forefathers."

Here was the actual _education_ of the world as man rose from barbarism

to civilisation, and it was accompanied by a certain amount of

retrograde selection by the cruel punishments, confinement in dungeons,

or torture and death of those who opposed the rulers, and by the

survival of the worst tools of the lords and tyrants. Ought we not to

be thankful that such education and custom, the varied influences of

such an environment, _were not_ hereditary? And is not the fact that

the whole world has _not_ become utterly degraded, and that anything

good remains in our cruelly oppressed human nature, an overwhelming

proof that such influences _are not_ hereditary?

When we remember that many of these degrading laws and customs,

oppressions, and punishments have extended down to our own times; that

the terrible slave-trade and the equally terrible slavery have only

been abolished within the memory of many of us; and that the system

of wage-slavery, the distinction of classes, the gross inequality of

the law, the overwork of our labouring millions, the immoral luxury

and idleness of our upper-class thousands, while far more thousands

die annually of want of the bare necessaries of life; that millions

have their lives shortened by easily preventable causes, while other

millions pass their whole lives in continuous and almost inhuman labour

in order to provide means for the enjoyments and pernicious luxuries of

the rich—we must be amazed at the fact that there is nevertheless so

much real goodness, real humanity, among us as certainly exists, in

spite of all the degrading influences that I have been compelled here

to enumerate.

To myself, there seems only one explanation of the very remarkable and

almost incredible result just stated. It is, that the Divine nature

in us—that portion of our higher nature which raises us above the

brutes, and the influx of which makes us men—cannot be lost, cannot

even be permanently deteriorated by conditions however adverse, by

training however senseless and bad. It ever remains in us, the central

and essential portion of our _human_ nature, ready to respond to every

favourable opportunity that arises, to grasp and hold firm every

fragment of high thought or noble action that has been brought to its

notice, to oppose even to the death every falsehood in teaching, every

tyranny in action. The ethics of Plato and of the great moralists of

the Ciceronian epoch, together with those of Jesus and of His disciples

and followers, kept alive the sacred flame of pure humanity, and their

preservation constitutes perhaps the greatest service the monastic

system rendered to the human race. This service is finely expressed by

an almost unknown poet, J. H. Dell, in the prefatory to his volume,

_The Dawning Grey_. Never has our indebtedness to the classical writers

been more powerfully insisted on than in the following lines:—

"Hear ye not the measured footfalls echoing solemn and sublime,

From the groves of Academus down the avenues of Time;

See'st thou not the giant figures of the Sages of the Past,

Through the darken'd long perspective on the living foreground cast;

Feel'st thou not the thrilling rhythm of the grand old Grecian line,

Pulsing to the march of Progress, cadencing her hymn divine,

All the forces of the present by the subtle sparks controlled,

Of the quickening Grecian fire, of the mighty Lights of old.

"Through the dark and desolation of the centuries between,

Still 'The Porch's' glories glimmer, still 'The Garden's' wreaths

are green.

Still the Zeno, still the Plato, still the Pyrrho points the page,

Still the Philip fears the pebble—still Melitus dreads the Sage,

Still the Dionysius trembles at the stylus of the age.

Still the dauntless ranks of Freedom kindle to Tyrtæus' song;

Still they bear aloft the symbol—bear the glorious torch

along."[118:A]

[118:A] See Note on page 124.

If the Christian Church had done nothing for us but preserve in its

monasteries and abbeys the finest examples of classic literature

that have come down to us, and given us those glories of Gothic

architecture which seem to express in stone the grandeur and sublimity,

the peacefulness and the beauty of a pure religion, it would,

notwithstanding its many defects, its cruelty and oppression, its

opposition to the study of nature and to freedom of thought, have fully

justified its existence as helping us to realise whatever more advanced

and purer civilisation the immediate future may have in store for us.

_Some Light on the Problem of Evil_

Before passing on to another branch of my subject I feel it necessary

to make a few suggestions in reply to the objection that will certainly

and very properly be made, as to why, if our higher human nature

is in its essence Divine, it has suffered such long and terrible

eclipses—why has the lower so often and for so long prevailed over

the higher? This is, of course, one of the many forms of the old

problem of the origin of evil, which is no doubt insoluble by us. But

as it is a fairly well-defined and limited portion of that problem it

may be possible to obtain some idea of a possible solution, and as such

an one has occurred to myself during the composition of the present

volume, I will give it as briefly as possible in the hope that it may

interest some of my readers.

In my recent works, _Man's Place in the Universe_ and _The World of

Life_, the conclusion was forced upon me, that the scheme of the

development of the universe of stars and nebulæ with which we are

acquainted, and especially of our sun and solar system, was such as to

furnish the exact conditions on our earth, and there only, which should

allow of the origin and evolution of the organic world culminating in

man. Yet further, that the conditions should be such as to produce the

maximum of diversity both of inorganic and organic products useful

to man, and such as would aid in the development of the greatest

possible diversity of character and especially of his higher mental

and moral nature. What I have here termed the Divine influx, which

at some definite epoch in his evolution at once raised man above the

rest of the animals, creating as it were a new being with a continuous

spiritual existence in a world or worlds where eternal progress was

possible for him. To prepare him for this progress with ever-increasing

diversity, faculties of enormous range were required, and these needed

development in every direction which earthly conditions rendered

possible. In order that this extreme diversity of character should

be brought about, a great space of time, as measured by successive

generations, was necessary, though utterly insignificant as compared

with the preceding duration of organic life on the earth, and still

more insignificant as compared with the spirit-life to succeed it. It

is for this purpose, perhaps, that languages become so rapidly diverse

and mutually unintelligible after a moderate period of isolation,

binding together small or moderate communities in distinct tribes or

nations, which each develop in their own way under the influence of

special physical surroundings and originate peculiarities of habits,

customs, and modes of thought. Antagonisms soon arise between adjacent

tribes, leading each to protect itself against others by means of

chiefs and some quasi-military combinations. This requires organisation

and foresight, and after a time the most powerful conquers the weaker,

they intermingle, and still greater diversity arises. By this constant

struggle the less advanced suffer most, and the race as a whole takes a

step forward in the march of civilisation.

We see the best example of this mode of progress by antagonism in the

small States of Ancient Greece, where each little kingdom developed

its peculiar form of art, of government, and of civilisation, which

it transferred to all parts of Europe; and after two thousand years

of degradation by Roman and Turkish conquest, its language still

remains but little altered, while its ancient literature and art are

still unsurpassed. In like manner Rome brought law, literature, and

military discipline to an equally high level; and it too sank into

a state of ruin and degradation, while its literature and its law

continued to illuminate the civilised world during its long struggle

towards freedom. Wherever conditions were favourable to progress in

art or science, _time_ was needed for its full growth and development;

while perpetual war necessitated organisation and training against

conquest or destruction. Even the cruelties and massacres by despotic

rulers excited at last the uprising of the oppressed, and so developed

the nobler attributes of patriotism, courage, and love of freedom. In

the very worst of times there was an undercurrent of peaceful labour,

art, and learning, slowly moulding nations towards a higher state of

civilisation.

The point of view now suggested will perhaps be rendered somewhat more

intelligible if we apply it to the nineteenth century, of which I have

written in such condemnatory terms. The preceding eighteenth century

was undoubtedly a somewhat stationary epoch, of a rather commonplace

character alike in literature, in art, in science, and in social life.

Its vices also were low, its government bad, its system of punishments

cruel, and its recognition of slavery degrading. It was a kind of "dark

age" between the literary and national brilliance of the Elizabethan

age and the wonderful scientific and industrial advance of the

Victorian age.

But this latter period was also a period of a great uprising of the

specially human virtues of justice, of pity, of the love of freedom,

and of the importance of education; and though the rapid increase of

wealth through the utilisation of natural forces led to all the evils

due to the unchecked growth of individual riches and power, yet these

very evils in all their intensity and horror were perhaps necessary to

excite in a sufficient number of minds the determination to get rid of

them. Time was also required for the workers to learn their own power,

and, very gradually, to learn how to use it. The rick-burning and

machine-breaking of the early part of the century have been succeeded

by combination and strikes; step by step political power has been

gained by the masses; but only now, in the twentieth century, are they

beginning to learn how to use their strength in an effective manner.

There are, however, indications that the whole march of progress has

been dangerously rapid, and it _might_ have been safer if the great

increases of knowledge and the vast accumulations of wealth had been

spread over two centuries instead of one. In that case our higher

nature might have been able to keep pace with the growing evils of

superfluous wealth and increasing luxury, and it might have been

possible to put a check upon them before they had attained the full

power for evil they now possess.

Nevertheless, the omens for the future are good. The great body of the

more intelligent workers are determined to have JUSTICE. They

insist upon the abolition of monopolies of the forces of nature, and

upon the gradual admission of all to _equal opportunities_ for labour

by free access to their native soil. Thus may be initiated the birth of

a new era of peaceful reform and moral advancement.

NOTE.—As many of my readers may not understand the allusions

in the second verse of Mr. Dell's poem (pp. 117-118), I append

the explanation:

"The Porch," the place where the Stoic philosophers taught—The

Painted Porch in Athens.

"The Garden," scene of Plato's and Socrates' teaching.

Zeno was the founder of the Stoic philosophy.

Pyrrho was the founder of the Sceptic school.

Philip of Macedon lost an eye at the siege of Methone by a

slinger's pebble.

Melitus was one of the disputants with Socrates, and was always

vanquished by him.

Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, was also a Poet and was a

candidate for the prize at the Olympic games, but was conquered

and therefore feared the more skilful "stylus" (pen) of the

victors.

Tyrtæus, a lame schoolmaster of Athens, inspired the

Lacedæmonians by his patriotic war-songs, and thus contributed

largely to their victories.

CHAPTER XVI

MORAL PROGRESS THROUGH A NEW FORM OF SELECTION

Many readers, and some writers of books on organic evolution, seem

quite unaware that Darwin established two modes of selection, both

alike "natural" but acting in different ways and producing somewhat

different results. He termed the second mode "sexual selection," and

in his _Origin of Species_ he briefly describes it as consisting in

the fighting of males for the possession of females, which undoubtedly

occurs in numbers of the higher vertebrates and also in insects.

But he also includes under sexual selection another mode of rivalry

by the display of the special male ornaments of many birds, and the

choice of the more ornamental by the females. To this latter phase he

devotes nearly half his volume on _The Descent of Man, and on Selection

in Relation to Sex_. Selection by the fighting of males has led to the

development of the stag's antlers, the boar's tusks, and the lion's

mane serving as a shield. These combats rarely lead to the death of the

vanquished, but to a larger number of offspring for the victor; and

this leads to the improvement of the race by keeping up its strength,

vigour, and fighting power.

The other form of selection, by the display of ornaments by male

birds and the supposed continuous development of those ornaments by

the appreciative choice of the females, I believe to be imaginary.

I have discussed this subject in many of my books, and my views are

now generally adopted by evolutionists. The fact that the colours of

male insects, especially butterflies, are almost exactly parallel to

those of birds, first led me to this conclusion, because we can hardly

suppose insects to be endowed with any æsthetic sense, even if they

really _see_ colour at all, which, in my last book, I have given strong

reasons for doubting.

But in the human race the conditions are altogether different;

for while, as I have shown in Chapter XIV., the kind of natural

selection which through all the ages had moulded the infinitely varied

animal forms into harmony with their environment, ceased to act

upon man's body and only for a limited time upon his lower mental

faculties, sexual selection tended to act if at all prejudicially,

through polygamy, prostitution, and slavery, though it possesses the

potentiality of acting in the future so as to ensure Intellectual

and Moral Progress, and thus elevate the race to whatever degree of

civilisation and well-being it is capable of reaching in earth-life.

_Eugenics, or Race Improvement through Marriage_

The total cessation of the action of natural selection as a cause of

improvement in our race, either physical or mental, led to the proposal

of the late Sir F. Galton to establish a new science, which he termed

Eugenics. A society has been formed, and much is being written about

checking degeneration and elevating the race to a higher level by its

means. Sir F. Galton's own proposals were limited to giving prizes

or endowments for the marriage of persons of high character, both

physical, mental, and moral, to be determined by some form of inquiry

or examination. This may, perhaps, not do much harm, but it would

certainly do very little good. Its range of action would be extremely

limited, and so far as it induced any couples to marry each other for

the pecuniary reward, it would be absolutely immoral in its nature, and

probably result in no perceptible improvement of the race.

But there is great danger in such a process of artificial selection

by experts, who would certainly soon adopt methods very different

from those of the founder. We have already had proposals made for the

"segregation of the Feeble-Minded," while the "sterilization of the

unfit" and of some classes of criminals is already being discussed.

This might soon be extended to the destruction of deformed infants,

as was actually proposed by the late Grant Allen; while Mr. Hiram M.

Stanley, in a work on _Our Civilisation and the Marriage Problem_,

proposed more far-reaching measures. He says: "The drunkard, the

criminal, the diseased, the morally weak, should never come into

society. Not reform, but prevention should be the cry." And he hints

at the methods he would adopt, in the following passages: "In the

true golden age, which lies not behind but before us, the privilege

of parentage will be esteemed an honour for the comparatively few,

and no child will be born who is not only sound in body and mind, but

also above the average as to natural ability and moral force." And he

concludes: "The most important matter in society, the inherent quality

of the members of which it is composed, should be regulated by trained

specialists."

Of course, our modern eugenists will disclaim any wish to adopt such

measures as are here hinted at, which are in every way dangerous and

detestable. But I protest strenuously against any direct interference

with the freedom of marriage, which, as I shall show, is not only

totally unnecessary, but would be a much greater source of danger

to morals and to the well-being of humanity than the mere temporary

evils it seeks to cure. I trust that all my readers will oppose any

_legislation_ on this subject by a chance body of elected persons who

are totally unfitted to deal with far less complex problems than this

one, and as to which they are sure to bungle disastrously.

It is in the highest degree presumptuous and irrational to attempt to

deal by compulsory enactments with the most vital and most sacred of

all human relations, regardless of the fact that our present phase of

social development is not only extremely imperfect, but, as I have

already shown, vicious and rotten at the core. How can it be possible

to determine by legislation those relations of the sexes which shall be

best alike for individuals and for the race, in a society in which a

large proportion of our women are forced to work long hours daily for

the barest subsistence, with an almost total absence of the rational

pleasures of life, for the want of which thousands are driven into

wholly uncongenial marriages in order to secure some amount of personal

independence or physical well-being?

Let anyone consider, on the one hand, the lives of the wealthy as

portrayed in the society newspapers of the day, with their endless

round of pleasure and luxury, their almost inconceivable wastefulness

and extravagance, indicated by the cost of female dress and the fact of

a thousand pounds or more being expended on the flowers for a single

entertainment. On the other hand, let him contemplate the awful lives

of millions of workers, so miserably paid and with such uncertainty

of work that many thousands of the women and young girls are driven

on the streets as the only means of breaking the monotony of their

unceasing labour and obtaining some taste of the enjoyments of life at

whatever cost; and then ask himself if the Legislature which cannot

remedy _this_ state of things should venture to meddle with the great

problems of marriage and the sanctities of family life. Is it not a

hideous mockery that the successive Governments which for forty years

have seen the people they profess to govern so driven to despair by

the vile conditions of their existence that in an ever larger and

larger proportion they seek death by suicide as their only means of

escape—that Governments which have done nothing to put an end to this

continuous horror of starvation and suicide, should be thought capable

of remedying some of its more terrible _results_, while leaving its

_causes_ absolutely untouched?

It is my firm conviction, for reasons I shall give farther on,

that, when we have cleansed the Augean stable of our present social

organisation, and have made such arrangements that _all_ shall

contribute their share either of physical or mental labour, and that

every one shall obtain the full and equal reward for their work, the

future progress of the race will be rendered certain by the fuller

development of its higher nature acted on by a special form of

selection which will then come into play.

When men and women are, for the first time in the course of

civilisation, alike free to follow their best impulses; when idleness

and vicious or hurtful luxury on the one hand, oppressive labour and

the dread of starvation on the other, are alike unknown; when _all_

receive the best and broadest education that the state of civilisation

and knowledge will admit; when the standard of public opinion is set by

the wisest and the best among us, and that standard is systematically

inculcated on the young; then we shall find that a system of _truly

natural_ selection will come spontaneously into action which will

steadily tend to eliminate the lower, the less developed, or in any way

defective types of men, and will thus continuously raise the physical,

moral, and intellectual standard of the race. The exact mode in which

this selection will operate will now be briefly explained.

_Free Selection in Marriage_

It will be generally admitted that although many women now remain

unmarried from necessity rather than from choice, there are always

considerable numbers who feel no strong impulse to marriage, and accept

husbands to secure subsistence and a home of their own rather than from

personal affection or strong sexual emotion. In a state of society in

which all women were economically independent, were all fully occupied

with public duties and social or intellectual pleasures, and had

nothing to gain by marriage as regards material well-being or social

position, it is highly probable that the numbers of the unmarried

from choice would increase. It would probably come to be considered a

degradation for any woman to marry a man whom she could not love and

esteem, and this reason would tend at least to delay marriage till a

worthy and sympathetic partner was encountered.

In man, on the other hand, the passion of love is more general and

usually stronger; and in such a society as here postulated there

would be no way of gratifying this passion but by marriage. Every

woman, therefore, would be likely to receive offers, and a powerful

selective agency would rest with the female sex. Under the system of

education and public opinion here supposed, there can be little doubt

how this selection would be exercised. The idle or the utterly selfish

would be almost universally rejected; the chronically diseased or the

weak in intellect would also usually remain unmarried, at least till

an advanced period of life; while those who showed any tendency to

insanity or exhibited any congenital deformity would also be rejected

by the younger women, because it would be considered an offence

against society to be the means of perpetuating any such diseases or

imperfections.

We must also take account of a special factor, hitherto almost

unnoticed, which would tend to intensify the selection thus exercised.

It is a fact well known to statisticians that although females are

in excess in almost all civilised populations, yet this is not due

to a law of Nature; for with us, and I believe in all parts of the

Continent, more males than females are born to an amount of about

3½ to 4 per cent. But between the ages of five and thirty-five there

were, in 1910, 4·225 deaths of males from accident or violence and only

1·300 of females, showing an excess of male deaths of 2·925 in one

year; and for many years the numbers of this class of deaths have not

varied much, the excess of preventable deaths of males at those ages

being very nearly 3,000 annually. This excess is no doubt due to boys

and young men being more exposed, both in play and work, to various

kinds of accidents than are women, and this brings about the constant

excess of females in what may be termed normal civilised populations.

In 1901 it was about a million; while fifty years earlier, when the

population was about half, it was only 359,000, or considerably less

than half the present proportion. This is what we should expect from

the constant increase of accidents and of emigration, the effects of

both of which fall most upon males.

It appears, therefore, that the larger number of women in our

population to-day is not a natural phenomenon, but is almost wholly

the result of our own man-made social environment. When the lives

of _all_ our citizens are accounted of equal value to the community,

irrespective of class or of wealth, a much smaller number will

be allowed to suffer from such preventable causes; while, as our

colonies fill up with a normal population, and the enormous areas of

uncultivated or half-cultivated land at home are thrown open to our

own people on the most favourable terms, the great tide of emigration

will be diminished and will then cease to affect the proportion of the

sexes. The result of these various causes, now all tending to increase

the numbers of the female population, will, in a rational and just

system of society, of which we may hope soon to see the commencement,

act in a contrary direction, and will in a few generations bring the

sexes first to an equality, and later on to a majority of males.

There are some, no doubt, who will object that even when women have

a free choice, owing to improved economic conditions, they will not

choose wisely so as to advance the race. But no one has the right to

make such a statement without adducing very strong evidence in support

of it. We have for generations degraded women in every possible way;

but we now know that such degradation is not hereditary, and therefore

not permanent. The great philosopher and seer, Swedenborg, declared

that whereas men loved justice, wisdom and power for their own sakes,

women loved them as seen in the characters of men. It is generally

admitted that there is truth in this observation; but there is surely

still more truth in the converse, that they do not admire those men

who are palpably unjust, stupid, or weak, and still less those who

are distorted, diseased, or grossly vicious, though under present

conditions they are often driven to marry them. It may be taken as

certain, therefore, that when women are economically and socially free

to choose, numbers of the worst men among all classes who now readily

obtain wives _will be almost universally rejected_.

Now, this mode of improvement by elimination of the less desirable

has many advantages over that of securing early marriages of the more

admired; for what we most require is to improve the _average_ of our

population by rejecting its lower types rather than by raising the

advanced types a little higher. Great and good men are always produced

in sufficient numbers and have always been so produced in every phase

of civilisation. We do not need more of these so much as we want a

diminution of the weaker and less advanced types. This weeding-out

process has been the method of _natural selection_, by which the whole

of the glorious vegetable and animal kingdoms have been developed and

advanced. The survival of the fittest is really the extinction of the

unfit; and it is the one brilliant ray of hope for humanity that, just

as we advance in the reform of our present cruel and disastrous social

system, we shall set free a power of selection in marriage that will

steadily and certainly improve the character, as well as the strength

and the beauty, of our race.

_Social Reform and Over-population_

One of the most general and apparently the strongest of the objections

to any thorough schemes of social reform, and especially to those that

will abolish want and the constant dread of starvation is that, in

any society in which this is done early marriages will be much more

numerous; there will be no prudential checks to large families; and in

a few generations, as Malthus argued, populations will increase beyond

the means of subsistence. Then will commence a continual decrease of

well-being, culminating in universal poverty, worse than any that now

exists, because it will be universal. The following quotation from an

eminent American writer shows that this fear has really been felt:

"If it be true that reason must direct the course of human

evolution, and if it be also true that selection of the fittest

is the only method available for that purpose; then, if we

are to have any race-improvement at all, the dreadful law of

_destruction of the weak and helpless_ must, with Spartan

firmness, be carried out voluntarily and deliberately. Against

such a course all that is best in us revolts."[139:A]

[139:A] Professor Joseph Le Conte, in _The Monist_, Vol.

I., p. 334.

A more recent writer, Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, the well-known

Egyptian explorer, has put forward similar views in a tentative manner,

but clearly showing what he thinks our present state of society

requires. Of the compensation to workmen for accident he says:

"The immediate effect upon character is to save the careless,

thoughtless, and incompetent from the results of their faults;

this at once reduces largely the weeding and educational

effects of the bad qualities."

And of old-age pensions his concluding remark is:

"Nature knows of no right to maintenance, but only the

necessity of getting rid of these who need it by mending or

ending them."

Again, as to the huge waste of infant life now going on, which he

admits is preventable and might be saved, he remarks:

"We must agree that it would be of the lower, or lowest type

of careless, thriftless, dirty, and incapable families that

the increase would be obtained. Is it worth while to dilute

our increase of population by 10 per cent. more of the more

inferior kind?"

And he concludes thus:

"This movement is doing away with one of the few remains of

natural weeding out of the unfit that our civilisation has left

us. And it will certainly cause more misery than happiness in

the course of a century."[140:A]

[140:A] _Janus in Modern Life._ By W. M. Flinders

Petrie, D.C.L., F.R.S.

The whole book is full of such statements as the above, for which

neither facts nor arguments are given. It is assumed throughout

that the failures in our modern society are so through their own

fault—they are "wastrels"—and deserve neither pity nor help. He knows

nothing apparently of Dr. Barnardo's work in rescuing these "wastrel"

children from the gutter and the workhouse, treating them well and

kindly, training them in work, and sending many thousands to Canada. A

record of their subsequent life was kept, and it was found that very

few failed to do well, while a very large majority became valuable

citizens in their new home. On the whole, they were in no way inferior

to the average of emigrants who go at their own expense, and who are

admitted to be among the best of our workers.

None of the writers of the class here quoted seem to have made

themselves acquainted with the researches of Herbert Spencer, Sir F.

Galton, and others, as to the natural laws which determine the rate of

increase of population when those laws are allowed to operate freely

under rational and moral social conditions. A short statement of these

laws will therefore be given.

In a remarkable essay, first published in 1852, H. Spencer, with his

usual philosophical insight, examined the facts of reproduction and

population throughout the whole of the animal kingdom, and showed

that the duration of the individual life and the increase of the race

varied inversely, those groups which have the simplest organisation

and the shortest lives producing the greatest number of offspring;

in other terms, individuation and reproduction are antagonistic.

But individuation depends almost entirely on the development and

specialisation of the nervous system, through which alone all advance

in instinct, emotion, and intellect is rendered possible. The actual

rate of increase in man has been determined by the necessities of the

savage state, in which, as in most species of mammals, it is usually

what is just required to maintain a limited average population. But

with a true advance in civilisation the average duration of life

increases, and the possible increase of population under favourable

conditions becomes very great, because fertility is greater than is

needed under the new conditions. At present, however, no general

advance in intellectuality has taken place; but that the facts do

accord with the theory is indicated by the common observation that

highly intellectual parents do not have large families, while the most

rapid increase occurs in those classes which are engaged in healthy

manual labour.

But a law founded on such a broad physiological basis of observation is

sure to continue in action, and we may therefore feel certain that as

the intellectual level of the whole race is raised by general culture

and physical health, the law of diminishing fertility will act, and

will tend in the remote future to bring about an exact balance between

the rate of increase and that of mortality.

A more immediate and effective check to rapid increase of population

will, however, be brought about by the social reforms already

suggested. When poverty is abolished and neither economic nor social

advantages will be gained by early marriage, there can be no doubt it

will be generally deferred to a later age. Still more effective will

be the extension of the period of education or training for the whole

population for several years longer than at present, together with the

growth of public opinion against all marriages between persons who have

not yet begun the serious work of life. It would also be an essential

part of education to inculcate the delay of marriage till every

opportunity has been afforded both of the parties concerned of becoming

thoroughly acquainted with each other before undertaking so serious a

responsibility as marriage usually involves.

The effect of even a few years' delay of marriage on population is

very considerable. Sir F. Galton has shown from the best statistics

available that if we compare women married at twenty with those at

twenty-nine, the comparative fertility is as 8 to 5. But this does not

represent the whole effect on increase of population. When marriage is

delayed, the time between successive generations is correspondingly

increased; and yet another effect in the same direction is produced

by the fact that the greater the average age of marriage the fewer

generations are alive at the same time, and it is the combined effect

of these three factors that determines the actual increase of the

population due to this cause.

Sir F. Galton gives a remarkable table showing this combined result

of these causes. He finds that if one hundred mothers and their

daughters in each successive generation marry at twenty, there will

be an increase of such mothers in each successive generation of 1·15.

If, however, they marry at twenty-nine, each successive generation

of mothers diminishes in the proportion of 0·85. If this goes on for

108 years, the hundred mothers who marry at twenty have increased to

175, and in 216 years to 299; while those who marry at twenty-nine

will have decreased to 61 and 38 respectively. It is therefore shown

that under present social conditions the age of marriage necessary to

preserve a stationary population will be somewhere between twenty and

twenty-nine. The above figures are, however, founded on special cases,

and the actual facts are so complicated by the number of childless

marriages, the rate of infantile mortality and other causes, that they

must be taken only as establishing a _law_ of rather rapid decrease of

fertility with each year's addition to the average age of marriage of

the mother.

* * * * *

I have now, I venture to hope, established two important principles

in relation to human progress. In the first place, I have shown that

modern ideas as to the necessity of dealing _directly_ with some of

our glaring social evils, such as race degeneration and the various

forms of sexual immorality, are fundamentally wrong and are doomed

to failure so long as their fundamental causes—widespread poverty,

destitution, and starvation—are not greatly diminished and ultimately

abolished. I have proved that human nature is _not_ in itself such a

complete failure as our modern eugenists seem to suppose, but that it

is influenced by fundamental laws which under reasonably just and equal

_economic conditions_ will automatically abolish all these evils.

In the second place, I have shown that the dread of over-population

as the result of the abolition of poverty is wholly and utterly

fallacious—a mere bugbear created by ignorance of natural laws and of

presumption in thinking that we can cure social evils while leaving the

man-made causes which produce them unaltered. The three great natural

laws which all our would-be reformers ignore are:—

(1) That a very moderate advance in the average age of marriage—which

would certainly result from a truly rational system of education

combined with economic equality—necessarily diminishes the rate of

increase of the population.

(2) That every approach to educational and economic equality by

effecting a large saving of the lives of males who now die from

preventable causes, combined with the fact that male births _exceed_

those of females, would so diminish the number of the latter that they

would soon become less instead of, as now, more than that of males:

that this would give them an _effective choice_ in marriage which they

do not now possess, together with the power of delay which for many

reasons large numbers of them would exercise.

(3) The law of diminishing fertility with increase of brain-work

through education and training would further tend to the diminution of

fertility.

These three natural causes all _tend_ in one direction—the equality of

births with deaths; while their action would be so readily modified by

public opinion as to obviate all danger of either increase or decrease

beyond what was necessary for the well-being of each community, nation,

or race.

_The Future Status of Woman_

The foregoing statement of the effect of established natural laws, if

allowed free play under rational conditions of civilisation, clearly

indicates that the position of woman in the not distant future will be

far higher and more important than any which has been claimed for or by

her in the past.

While she will be conceded full political and social rights on an

equality with man, she will be placed in a position of responsibility

and power which will render her his superior, since the future moral

progress of the race will so largely depend upon her free choice in

marriage. As time goes on, and she acquires more and more economic

independence, _that_ alone will give her an effective choice which she

has never had before. But this choice will be further strengthened by

the fact that, with ever-increasing approach to equality of opportunity

for every child born in our country, that terrible excess of male

deaths, in boyhood and early manhood especially, due to various

preventable causes, will disappear, and change the present majority of

women to a majority of men. This will lead to a greater rivalry for

wives, and will give to women the power of rejecting all the lower

types of character among their suitors.

It will be their special duty so to mould public opinion, through home

training and social influence, as to render the women of the future

the regenerators of the entire human race. We hope and believe that

they will be fully equal to the high and responsible position which, in

accordance with natural laws, they will be called upon to fulfil.

The certainty that this powerful selective agency will come into

existence just in proportion as we reform our existing social system

by the abolition of poverty and the establishment of full equality

of opportunity in education and economic position, demonstrates that

Nature—or the Universal Mind—has not failed or bungled our world

so completely as to require the weak and ignorant efforts of the

eugenists to set it right, while leaving the great fundamental causes

of all existing social evils absolutely untouched. Let them devote all

their energies to purifying this whitened sepulchre of destitution and

ignorance, and the beneficent laws of human nature will themselves

bring about the physical, intellectual, and moral advancement of our

race.

CHAPTER XVII

HOW TO INITIATE AN ERA OF MORAL PROGRESS

In Chapters VIII to XII of this volume I have given in briefest outline

a summary of the growth during the nineteenth century of the actual

social environment in the midst of which we live.

We see a continuous advance of man's power to utilise the forces of

Nature, to an extent which surpasses everything he had been able to do

during all the preceding centuries of his recorded history.

We also see that the result of this vast economic revolution has been

almost wholly evil.

We see that this hundredfold increase of wealth, amply sufficient to

provide necessaries, comforts, and all beneficial refinements and

luxuries for our whole population, has been distributed with such gross

injustice that the actual condition of those who produce all this

wealth has become worse and worse, no efficient arrangements having

been made that from the overflowing abundance produced _all_ should

receive the mere essentials of a healthy and happy existence.

We have seen huge cities grow up, every one of them with their

overcrowded, insanitary slums, where men, women, and children die

prematurely as surely as though a body of secret poisoners were

constantly at work to destroy them.

We see thousands of girls compelled by starvation to work in such an

empoisoned environment as to produce horribly painful and disfiguring

disease, which is often fatal in early youth, or in what ought to

have been, and what might have been, the period of maximum enjoyment

of their womanhood. And to this very day no efficient steps have been

taken to abolish these conditions.

We see millions still struggling in vain for a sufficiency of the

bare necessaries of life (which in their misery is all they ask),

often culminating in actual starvation, or in suicide to which they

are driven by the dread of starvation. Yet our Governments, selected

from among the most educated, the most talented, the wealthiest of the

country, with absolute power to make what laws and regulations they

please, and an overflowing fund of accumulated wealth to draw upon, do

nothing, although more people die annually of want than are killed in a

great war, and more children than could be slaughtered by many Herods.

And while all this goes on in the depths, where—

"Pale anguish keeps the heavy gate,

And the Warder is Despair"—

a little higher up, among the middle-men distributors of the

necessaries and luxuries of life, bribery, adulteration, and various

forms of petty dishonesty are rampant.

And higher yet, among the great Capitalists, the merchant Princes, the

Captains of industry, we find hard taskmasters who drive down wages

below the level of bare subsistence, and who support a more gigantic

and widespread system of gambling than the world has ever seen.

And, finally, our administration of what we call "Justice" (and of

which we are so proud because our judges cannot be bribed) is utterly

_unjust_, because it is based on a system of money fees at every

step; because it is so cumbrous and full of technicalities as to need

the employment of attorneys and counsel at great cost, and because

all petty offences are punishable by fine _or_ imprisonment, which

makes poverty itself a crime while it allows those with money to go

practically free.

_Taking account of these various groups of undoubted facts, many of

which are so gross, so terrible, that they cannot be overstated, it is

not too much to say that our whole system of society is rotten from

top to bottom, and the Social Environment as a whole, in relation to

our possibilities and our claims, is the worst that the world has ever

seen._

Such are the evil products of the social environment we have ourselves

created in the course of a single century. We have seen it going from

bad to worse, and have applied petty remedies here and there during

the whole period; but the evils have continued to increase. It has now

become clear to the more intelligent of the workers that if we wish

to improve it—if we wish to prevent it from getting even worse than

it is—we must deal with the root-causes of the evil and, so far as

possible, _reverse the conditions which are so demonstrably bad, such

hideous failures_. And, fortunately, this is by no means so difficult

as it may seem to be, because a large body of our thinkers and a

considerable number of our workers see clearly what these root-causes

are, and, less clearly, how to remedy them. They will, however,

give their energetic support to any Government that devotes itself

to the task of remedying them. The following are my own views as to

how the problem must be attacked in order to solve it thoroughly and

permanently.

_The Root-cause and the Remedy_

If we review with care the long train of social evils which have grown

up during the nineteenth century, we shall find that every one of them,

however diverse in their nature and results, is due to the same general

cause, which may be defined or stated in a variety of different ways:

(1) They are due, broadly and generally, to our living under a system

of universal _competition_ for the means of existence, the remedy for

which is equally universal _co-operation_.

(2) It may be also defined as a system of _economic antagonism_, as of

enemies, the remedy being a system of _economic brotherhood_, as of a

great family, or of friends.

(3) Our system is also one of _monopoly_ by a few of all the means

of existence: the land, without access to which no life is possible;

and capital, or the results of stored-up labour, which is now in the

possession of a limited number of capitalists and therefore is also a

monopoly. The remedy is freedom of access to land and capital for all.

(4) Also, it may be defined as _social injustice_, inasmuch as the

_few_ in each generation are allowed to inherit the stored-up wealth of

all preceding generations, while the _many_ inherit nothing. The remedy

is to adopt the principle of equality of opportunity for all, or of

universal _inheritance by the State in trust for the whole Community_.

These four statements of the existing _causes_ of all our social evils

cannot, I believe, be controverted, and the _remedies_ for them may be

condensed into one general proposition: that it is the first duty (in

importance) of a civilised Government to organise the labour of the

whole community for the equal good of all; but it is also their first

duty (in time) to take immediate steps to abolish _death by starvation

and by preventable disease_ due to insanitary dwellings and dangerous

employments, while carefully elaborating the _permanent_ remedy for

want in the midst of wealth.

I myself have pointed out how these two ends may be best achieved,

and hope to elaborate them. In the meantime, I call attention to Mr.

Standish O'Grady's letter "To the Leaders of Labour" in _The New Age_

of November 21st, 1912, in which, after referring to the very natural

dread by the rich of any such radical reorganisation of Society, as

leading to their own financial ruin (which it certainly need not do),

he makes the following suggestive statement, with which I hope all my

readers will agree:

"But what they fail to perceive is, that, in a world like this,

made by infinite goodness and wisdom, Right is always the great

stand-by for men and for Nations, and for the rich as well as

for the poor; and that Wrong, sooner or later, ends in misery

and destruction."

That is sound moral teaching. We have been doing the Wrong for

the past century, and we have reaped, and are reaping, "misery and

destruction." It is time that we changed our methods, which are all (as

I think I have sufficiently pointed out) fundamentally Wrong, radically

Unjust, wholly Immoral.

We have ourselves created an immoral or unmoral Social Environment. To

undo its inevitable results we must reverse our course. We must see

that _all_ our economic legislation, _all_ our social reforms, are in

the very opposite direction to those hitherto adopted, and that they

tend in the direction of one or other of the four fundamental remedies

I have suggested. In this way only can we hope to change our existing

immoral environment into a moral one, and initiate a new era of Moral

Progress.

* * * * *

In Chapters XIII to XVI I have shown that the well-established laws of

Evolution as they really apply to mankind are all favourable to the

advance of true Civilisation and of Morality. Our existing competitive

and antagonistic Social System alone neutralises their beneficent

operation. That System must therefore be radically changed into one of

brotherly co-operation and co-ordination for the equal good of all. To

succeed we must make this principle our guide and our pole star in all

Social legislation.

Index

Acquired characters, definition of, 104

characters, on the heredity of, 103

Adaptation, 106

Adulteration, 55

Alcoholism, deaths from, 67

in women, 68

statistics of, 68

America, Central, architecture of, 34

Animals, natural selection among, 75

_Anthropological Review_, 99

Apes, anthropoid, affinity with man, 93

Aquatic forms of life, increase of, 85

Archimedes, 34

Australian aborigines, character of, 33

and Caucasians, 34

Barnardo, Dr., 141

Beaver, 95

Bimana, 94

Brahé, Tycho, 23

Brain as organ of the mind, 94

Bribery, 56

Browning's, Mrs., _Cry of the Children_, 42

Buddha, 8

Capitalism, 152

Caucasians and Australian aborigines, 34

Causes of economic evils, 154

Chambers's _Vestiges of Creation_, 81

Character, definition of, 4

difficulty of knowing good from bad, 5

mental faculties and, 5

morality based upon, 5

not cumulative, 37

of savage races, 32

permanence of, 8

public opinion and, 36

selective agency to improve, 36

subject to variation, 36

transmission of, 4, 7, 36

variability and, 82

Characters, acquired, definition of, 104

acquired, heredity of, 103

innate, 104, 110

heredity of, 110

Chemical trades, evils of, 50

Child labour, evils of, 41, 43

Church, the work of the, 118

Civil law system, 62

Civilisation during 18th century, 40

evolution and, 157

of ancient Egypt, 15, 35

of ancient India, 8

of ancient Mesopotamia, 15

Civilisations, ancient, 112

Classical writers, our indebtedness to, 115

Coal mines, accidents in, 43

child labour in, 43

female workers in, 43

insecurity in, 43

who the, belong to, 45

Commercial system, immorality of our, 55

Companies, Limited Liability, 56

Competition, 154

Conduct, character and, 5

environment and, 6

Confucius, 8

Cook, Captain, opinion of, on natives of Friendly Isles, 32

Co-operation, 154, 160

Criminal law system, 64

Cruciferæ family, increase of, 84

Curr, Mr., opinion of, on Australian aborigines, 33

Cutlery trade, evils of, 50

_Daily Citizen_ quoted, 51, 52

Darwin and heredity, 103

and natural selection, 87, 93, 125

and transference of selection to mind, 99

and variability, 82

on Tahitians, 32

Darwin's _Descent of Man_, 93, 125

_Origin of Species_, 82

theory of Pangenesis, 104

Darwinism and Lamarckism, 78, 81

and variability, 82

objections to, 85, 90

(_See also_ Evolution, Lamarckism, Natural selection, etc.)

Deadly trades, 50

Dell's, J. H., _Dawning Grey_ quoted, 117

_Descent of Man_, Darwin's, 93, 125

Divine influx into man, 92, 115, 119

Divorce, 74

Dutt, Mr. Romesh, quoted, 9

Dwellings, insanitary, 47

Economic advance, evils of, 150

antagonism, 155

brotherhood, 155

evils, causes of, 154

remedies for, 154

Education, effects of, not hereditary, 111, 114

extension of period of, 143

national system of, needed, 146

of the world, 111

Egypt, astronomy in ancient, 18

civilisation of ancient, 15, 35

intellect in ancient, 16

Eighteenth century, stationary epoch, 40, 122

Elephants, increase of, 85

Environment, laws of heredity and, 103

modified by man, 95

not always responsible for specialisation, 106

remedies, 154

social, and conduct, 6

social, character of, 153

social, during 19th century, 40

social, evils of, causes of, 154

Equality of opportunity, 155

Erman, Prof. Adolf, quoted, 26

Euclid, 34

Eugenics, methods of, 127

science of, established by Sir F. Galton, 127

Eugenists, 149

Evil, origin of, problem of, 118

possible solution of, 119

Evolution, a rational theory, 81

acceptance of, 81

and civilisation, 157

Lamarckism and, 81

Chambers and, 81

Darwin and, 81

exposition of, by Spencer, 81

natural selection and, 77

objections to, 81, 90

variability of species, 8, 82

(_See also_ Darwinism, Lamarckism, Natural selection, etc.)

Factory system, development of, 41

evils of, 41

Fertility, law of diminishing, 144, 147

Fines _v._ imprisonment, 65

Friendly Isles, natives of, character of, 32

Galton, Sir Francis, 37

eugenic theory of, 127

on laws of increase of population, 127

Galvanising trade, evils of, 51

Gambling, immorality of, 59

in trade, 58

inconsistent attitude to, 59

Stock Exchange, 59

Genius, not cumulative, 37

not necessarily hereditary, 37;

examples, 38

Gothic architecture, 34

Greece, 121

architecture of ancient, 34

Heredity and genius, 37

and "recession to mediocrity," 38

beneficence of law of, 115

Darwin and, 103

importance of subject, 103

Lamarck and, 104

laws of, and environment, 103

misconceptions regarding, 103

of innate characters, 110

Herschel, Sir John, 82

Homer, 8

Hominidæ, 94

Human nature, faculties of, 100

Imprisonment _v._ fines, 65

India, architecture of ancient, 34

intelligence and morality in ancient, 9, 11, 15

religious conceptions in ancient, 11

Individuation, 142

Infantile mortality, Prof. Petrie on, 140

statistics of, 47, 72

Injustice, social, 155

Innate characters, 104

heredity of, 110

Insanitary dwellings, 47

Intellect in ancient India, 9, 11, 15

permanence of, 15

Intellectual advance not general, 142

Jesus Christ, 116

Justice, administration of, 62

immorality of, 66, 152

Lamarck and evolution, 81

and heredity, 104

Lamarckism, 78, 89

and Darwinism, 78

insufficiency of, as a theory, 80

Land, access to, 155

Language, 28

diversity of, 120

lowest races possess, 31

Law, civil, system, 62

criminal, system, 64

partiality of the, 65

Layard, Sir H., 16

Le Conte, Prof., quoted, 139

Lead glaze trade, evils of, 50

Lead poisoning of workers, 51

Life-destroying trades, 47

Lyell's _Principles of Geology_ quoted, 78

Maha-Bharata, Indian epic, quoted, 8

Malthus, 139

Mammals, classification of, 94

Man, affinity of, with anthropoid apes, 93

and marriage, 133

dignity of, 91

Divine influx into, 92, 115, 119

external differences between, and apes, 93

modifies his environment, 95

moral sense in, 91

nature of, stationary, 102

position of, 91

predominance of mind in, 98

preparation of, for progress, 120

selection transferred to mind in, 99

three great races of, 100

triumph of, over Nature, 95, 150

Marriage, 143

freedom of, insisted upon, 128

man and, 133

women and, 133

Mental faculties in formation of character, 5

Mesopotamia, civilisation of ancient, 15

Mind, brain the organ of the, 94

predominance of, in man, 98

selection transferred to, in man, 99

Monier-Williams, Sir M., 11

Monopoly, 155

Moral degradation, indications of, 67

progress, definition of, 1

progress, initiating new era of, 150

progress through new form of selection, 125

sense in man, 91

Morality amongst the ancients, 8

based upon character, 5

based upon human nature, 4

evolution and, 157

in ancient India, 9

no definite advance in, 36

product of environment, 3

savages and, 31

standards of, varying, 2

Morals, definition of, 1

Natural selection, among animals, 75

and evolution, 77

and origin of species, 82

explanation of, 75, 87

modification of, by man, 96, 99

modified by mind, 93

new form of, 125

process of, 112

two modes of, 125

Nineteenth century, environment during, 40

movements during, 122

reaction against forced civilisation during, 41

O'Grady, Mr. S., quoted, 156

Oliver's, Sir T., _Diseases of Occupation_, 53

Organic nature, development of, 109

indivisibility of, 109

_Origin of Species_, Darwin's, essential features of, 82

Origin of species, natural selection essential factor in, 82

Overcrowding, statistics of, 48

Owen, Sir Richard, and man's affinity with apes, 94

_Pall Mall Gazette_, reply to, 76

Pangenesis, theory of, 104

Park, Mungo, 101

Petrie, Prof., quoted, 139

Plato, 8, 116

Poor Law, immorality of the, 65

Population, increase of, laws governing, 141

social reform and, 138

Poverty, 130, 143, 151

Polynesian races, character of, 33

Preventable deaths, responsibility for, 43

Primates, 94

Proctor, Mr. R. A., quoted, 18

Progress, moral, definition of, 1

moral, how to initiate era of, 150

moral, through new form of selection, 125

Prostitution, 73

Pyramid of Gizeh as observatory, 23

purpose of, 17

structure of, 19

Quadrumana, 94

Rawlinson, 16

Reade's, _Martyrdom of Man_, 113

"Recession to mediocrity," heredity and, 38

Religious conceptions in ancient India, 11

Remedies for economic evils, 154

Reproduction, 142

Rich, dread of, to social reorganisation, 156

Rome, 121

Savage races, morality of, 31

Selection, artificial, 105, 127

free, in marriage, 133

Selection, natural, action of, transferred to mind in man, 99

amongst animals, 75

and origin of species, 82

explanation of, 75, 87

modification of, by man, 96, 99

modified by mind, 93

process of, 112

two modes of, 125

Selection, new form of, 125

sexual, 125

Selective agency to improve character, 36

Sherard's, Mr. R. H., _White Slaves of England_, 51 (_note_)

Slavery, 2, 115

Slums, 47, 151

Smyth, Piazzi, on Pyramids, 18

Snowden, Philip, 53

Social environment and conduct, 6

character of, 153

during 19th century, 40

evils of, causes and remedies of, 154

reorganisation, the rich and, 156

reform, 143;

and over-population, 138

Socrates, 8

Species, increase of, 82, 84

origin of, natural selection, and, 82

variability of, 82

Speech as proof of intelligence, 28

lowest races possess, 31

origin and development of, 29

Spencer, Herbert, 89, 99, 103

exposition of evolutionary argument by, 81

on laws of increase of population, 141

Stanley, Hiram M., quoted, 128

Struggle for existence, 85, 86

Suicide, statistics of, 70

Survival of the fittest, 85, 87, 139

"Survival value," 39

Swedenborg, 137

Tahitians, character of, 32

Tinning trade, evils of, 51

Unhealthy trades, 50

Universe, development and purpose of, 119

Variability, character and, 36

basic law of nature, 96

explanation of, 82

of species, 82

purpose of, 90

Vedas, quoted, 11

War, 74

Wealth, increase of, 41, 150

Webb, Mr. Sidney, quoted, 65

Women and marriage, 133

excess in numbers of, 134, 147

future status of, 147

in trade, 151

Workmen's compensation, Prof. Petrie on, 139

Writing as proof of intelligence, 28

origin and development of, 29

Zoophytes, 95

Zymotic diseases 47

PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

10.613

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

The following corrections have been made to the original text:

Page 26: Nile as a human being, with desires,[comma missing in

original]

Page 113: to luxury and civilisation[original has

"civilisa/tion" split across a line break without a hyphen]

Page 161: Le Conte[original has "Coute"], Prof., quoted, 139

[139:A] Professor Joseph Le Conte[original has "Coute"], in

_The Monist_

In the Index, entries repeated across page breaks and columns have been

removed.