"With savages," he says, "the weak in body or mind are soon
eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state
of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check
the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the
maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men
exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last
moment.... The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is
mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was
originally acquired as part of the social instincts.... Nor could
we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without
deterioration in the noblest part of our nature[1]." This sympathy,
which natural selection cannot preserve or vindicate even in the
struggle of communities, is nevertheless recognised by Darwin as
having a moral value outside of and above natural selection and the
struggle for existence,--a value of which these have no right to
judge. He thinks that if we followed hard reason--and by 'hard reason'
he obviously means an imitation on our part of the action of natural
selection--we should be led to sweep away all those institutions by
which civilised mankind guards its weaker members. But this, he says,
would be only to deteriorate the "noblest part of our nature." What is
noblest in our nature, then, is not that which natural selection has
favoured or maintained. There is, therefore, implied in his view a
limitation of the ethical significance of the principle of natural
selection. For, when we come to this crucial question of conduct,
it is not allowed to give any criterion of moral validity. More
comprehensive attempts on the same lines as Darwin's have been made
subsequently; and various writers have tried to show how the moral
criterion may be resolved into social efficiency, or how it may be
derived from a problematic future state of the human race on this
earth when the need for struggle has disappeared and all things
go smoothly. The former view may be found in Sir Leslie Stephen's
'Science of Ethics'; the latter is the peculiar property of Mr Herbert
Spencer. Somewhat unwillingly I must for the present leave these
special views without consideration,[2] because I wish to bring out
still more plainly the various attitudes of the evolutionists to
morality, and especially to draw attention to a view very different
from those just mentioned, though not altogether without support in
Darwin, which, as put forward some years ago by the late Professor
Huxley[3], produced no little flutter in scientific dovecots.
[Footnote 1: Descent of Man, pp. 205, 206.]
[Footnote 2: For a discussion of these views I may be allowed to
refer to my' Ethics of Naturalism,' chap. viii. (chap. ix. in the new
edition). The same volume contains a more exhaustive examination than
is possible in this lecture of the whole subject of evolutionist
ethics.]
[Footnote 3: The Romanes Lecture, 1893, "Evolution and Ethics." In
1894 this was republished, with prolegomena, in vol. ix. of 'Collected
Essays,' with the title, "Evolution and Ethics, and other Essays."]
Professor Huxley reviewed what he called the cosmic process as it was
guided by the law of evolution. He showed how at each step of that
process new results were only attained by enormous waste and pain on
the part of those living creatures which were thrust aside as unfit
for their surroundings, and he held consequently that the whole cosmic
process is of an entirely different character from what we must mean
when we use the term 'moral.' According to him morality is opposed
to the method of evolution, and cannot be based upon the theory of
evolution. It is of independent worth; but Professor Huxley, perhaps
wisely, refrained from investigating its justification, while
enforcing "the apparent paradox that ethical nature, while born of
cosmic nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent"
"The practice of that which is ethically best--what we call goodness
or virtue--involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is
opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle
for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands
self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all
competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect,
but shall help, his fellows; its influence is directed, not so much to
the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible
to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence....
Let us understand once for all that the ethical progress of society
depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
away from it, but in combating it."[1]
[Footnote 1: Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83.]
Here, then, is a view very different from the easy optimism of Mr
Herbert Spencer. The cosmic order has nothing to say to the moral
order, except that, somehow or other, it has given it birth; the
moral order has nothing to say to the cosmic order, except that it
is certainly bad. Morality is occupied in opposing the methods of
evolution.
Still another view is possible. It may be held that the morality of
self-restraint and self-sacrifice are opposed--as Huxley says they are
opposed--to the methods of cosmic evolution; and yet the "gladiatorial
theory of existence" may not be repudiated; but morality may be
modified to suit the claims of evolution. This is the position adopted
by the philosopher Nietzsche, whose whole thought is permeated by the
idea of evolution. Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that
morality is opposed to the cosmic process. But by morality he would
mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed
from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because
it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress. On the other hand,
the morality--if we may use the term--which the cosmic process teaches
us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and
self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality--the
morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley--require to be permeated
and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in
order that the moral law may be satisfied. Not obedience, not mutual
help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is
with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the
whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the
further development of mankind.
This view is at the opposite extreme from Huxley's, for it overlooks
the advantages mankind has gained by means of the social instinct and
the social solidarity which it secures. But there is a further
point in Nietzsche's reflexions which is suggested by the theory
of development. Natural selection is not the sole agent in the
development of organic life: it cannot be too often enforced that
natural selection produces nothing, that its operation is purely
negative. It does not properly select at all, it only excludes. What
it does is to cut off the unfit specimens of living beings which
nature supplies. It would have no field of operation were it not
for the variety of nature. While individuals tend to repeat the
characteristics of their parents, they do not repeat them without
change: the principle of heredity is counterbalanced by a principle
of variety equally hard to explain. All organic life exhibits this
tendency to variation; and one variation proves better adapted than
another to the environment. It is this which makes possible the
operation of 'natural selection.' Unfit varieties are exterminated by
natural selection, and room is thus left for varieties which are fit
to perpetuate themselves and to increase in efficiency.
Now, if we apply this conception to human conduct, should we not
encourage all varieties to carry on their experiments in living and
in morality so that we may see whether success will justify them? An
affirmative answer to this question is sometimes vaguely hinted at; by
Nietzsche it is proclaimed from the housetops.
"There is no monopoly of morals, and every morality which exclusively
asserts itself destroys too much good strength, and is too dearly
bought by mankind. The straying ones, who so often are the inventive
and productive ones, shall no longer be sacrificed; it shall not even
be deemed a disgrace to stray from morals either in deeds or thoughts;
numerous new experiments shall be made in matters of life and society;
an enormous incubus of bad conscience shall be removed from the
world--these are the general aims which ought to be recognised and
furthered by all honest and truth-seeking people."[1]
[Footnote 1: Nietzsche, Werke, iv. 161, 162; Dawn of Day, § 164.]
Reflecting for a moment on what precedes, we may observe that, from
the mouths of the evolutionists themselves, we have encountered three
different views regarding the ethical significance of evolution. In
the first place, there is the view of Darwin that natural selection is
a criterion of moral fitness only up to a certain stage, and that the
noblest part of man's morality is independent of this test; in the
second place, there is the view of Huxley that morality is entirely
opposed to the cosmic process as ruled by natural selection; and, in
the third place, there is the view of Nietzsche that the principles
of biological development (variation, that is to say, and natural
selection) should be allowed free play so that, in the future as
in the past, successful variations may be struck out by triumphant
egoism. Neither these views, nor the still more elaborate treatment of
Spencer, do I propose to examine in detail. But I wish to offer some
reflexions upon the fundamental conception underlying them all,
accounting in this way, perhaps, for the differences of opinion
between Darwin and Spencer, Huxley and Nietzsche. The conception of
natural selection and of evolution by natural selection is applied by
men of science and by philosophers in three very different spheres, to
three very different kinds of struggle or competition. There may be
many different kinds of competition: it will be sufficient here to
consider the three following:--
First, there is the competition between individuals for individual
life and success. Now, so far as we are dealing with this competition,
the only qualities which natural selection will favour are of course
the qualities which lead to the continuance and efficiency of the
individual organism. The qualities 'selected' in this process are
therefore only the self-assertive qualities,--the qualities of
strength, of courage, of prudence, and also of temperance.
But in the second place there is also, as I have already indicated and
as was seen by Darwin (though he did not draw this distinction), a
second kind of competition, the competition between groups. Now the
group competition has as its end the continuance and efficiency of
the group, be it horde or tribe or nation, or be it one of those
subsidiary groups which enter into national life. In this competition
between groups it is clear that those qualities will be favoured by
natural selection which contribute to the efficiency of the group; and
the qualities which contribute to the efficiency of the group are not
those only which contribute to the efficiency of the individual, but
also qualities implying self-restraint and even self-sacrifice on the
part of one member of the group for the sake of other members of the
group or of the group as a whole. The habit of obedience, for example,
obedience to the authority of the group or its representative, may be
of fundamental importance in maintaining the existence of the group
as a group, although that habit of obedience has no place at all in
promoting the interests of the individual when he is competing with
other individuals.
Thirdly, there is still another kind of competition which is a little
more difficult to make quite clear, because it is not on the plane of
individual life and it is not to be identified with the life of
the community. It is a competition on the intellectual level, the
competition between ideas, and with this one may also couple (so far
as it does not directly concern the struggle for social existence and
thus belong to the second class) the competition between institutions,
including therein also habits and customs. The various institutions in
our national life, and the various habits of our life, may be said to
be forms which have to maintain themselves often in competition with
other and antagonistic forms of institution. The same holds of our
various ideas or general conceptions, whether about morality, which we
have now specially in view, or about matters more purely intellectual.
For instance, forty or fifty years ago, there was a fierce controversy
amongst biologists between the group of ideas represented by Darwin's
theory and the group of ideas represented by the traditional view of
the fixity of species. There was a long conflict between these two
groups of ideas, and we may now say that the Darwinian group of ideas
has emerged from the conflict victorious.
Now, when the phrase 'natural selection in morals' is used, the
reference is commonly to a conflict of this last kind. The suggestion
is that different ideas and also different standards of action are
manifested at the same time within the same community, that they
compete with one another for existence, and that gradually those which
are better adapted to the life of the community survive, while the
others grow weaker and in the end disappear. In this way the law of
natural selection is made to apply to moral ideas and moral standards,
and also to intellectual standards and to the institutions and customs
in which our ideas are expressed.
These, then, are the three ways in which the competition in man's life
and the selection between the competing factors is carried out. And
sometimes I think one sees a tendency to suggest that this needs
only to be stated, and that the whole question of the application of
evolution to ethics is then settled. You may say that such and such
moral qualities, as for instance the quality of sympathy, do not aid
the individual in competition with other individuals. The reply might
be No, but they aid the group in competition with other groups. Or you
may say, as Darwin said, that even this competition will not account
for the civilised development of sympathy. But even so we are not at
the end of our tether; and we can fall back on the conflict of ideas.
The idea of sympathy or of altruism, for instance, may conflict with
some other idea, such as that of egoism. At first the competition is a
group-competition, in which the group with altruistic members succeeds
at the expense of the egoistic group. By the victory of the former our
society becomes more and more a society whose basis is sympathy and
all that sympathy implies, while conflicting ideas lose the lead. So
in general with the competition of ideas: the idea which fails to
adapt itself to its conditions will disappear, and the idea which is
thus adapted will persist; and this also (it is said) is just natural
selection. Now I venture to ask the question, Is it? I will put the
question whether all these three processes are really forms of the
same process, or, in other words and to put the matter more simply, Is
it simply natural selection that is operative in all these different
forms of competition?
For the sake of clearness I will take first this last-mentioned form
of competition, the process by which one idea drives another out of
the intellectual or moral currency of a community. The competition
between the idea of fixity of species and Darwin's idea of the unity
of life has been already cited as an instance; and it was pointed
out that, gradually and after a controversy of some forty years, the
former idea almost disappeared, and in the minds at any rate of those
who know, the Darwinian theory became victorious. Was it natural
selection that brought about the result? To test the matter let us ask
once more how natural selection operates. Its mode of operation is
always simply negative. And if, in the struggle of life, it selects
the courageous man rather than the coward, the temperate man rather
than the intemperate, the method by which this result is reached is
simple: when it comes to a conflict the courageous man kills the
coward or reduces him to subjection; the intemperate man has less
vitality than the temperate: he too disappears, although perhaps
gradually.
Take again the group-competition so far as it is influenced by
natural selection. The tribe which manifests the qualities of social
solidarity is selected simply in this way, that when it comes into
conflict with a tribe which has not this solidarity the latter
is beaten, and is thus unable to obtain the pastures or the
hunting-ground which it desires, and therefore gradually or swiftly it
is exterminated or left behind in the race for life. Now, I ask, Did
this process take place when Darwinism supplanted the traditional
theory of the fixity of species? Surely it is clear that it is only in
the rarest cases that false or inadequate ideas on such subjects have
any tendency to shorten life or weaken health. Bishop Wilberforce was
killed by a fall from his horse, not by the triumphant dialectic of
Professor Huxley. Sir Richard Owen lived to a patriarchal old age, and
did not disappear from the face of the earth because he still clung to
an idea which the best intellect of his time had relinquished. There
is nothing in the doctrine of the fixity of species--if you hold
it--which will in the least degree tend to diminish vitality. Natural
selection has practically no effect at all in exterminating those who
adhere to this idea. There is no means of livelihood from which it
would exclude them except indeed that it might prevent them from
occupying Chairs of Biology. Apart from that I do not think it will
hinder them in any of the various modes of activity in which the
struggle for life is manifested.
What was it then that led to the victory of the one idea over the
other? The cause was intellectual. With the experts, it was logical
conviction: one set of ideas was found to fit the facts somewhat
better than the other set of ideas. With men in general the
intellectual change came more slowly and in a different way: they
adopted or imitated the ideas of those who knew. It was therefore not
natural selection at all which led to the presence and power of the
one idea rather than the other in the minds of thoughtful men. One
idea was deliberately accepted and the other deliberately rejected.
The former was accepted on grounds of which the most general account
would be, if we may use the term, to call them subjective. But natural
selection is a physical, external, objective process. It is carried
out without the individual's volition: he is not aiming at the end.
It is simply natural law which, with many varieties of living beings
before it, exterminates the unfit individuals. Thus nature in its own
blind way produces a result of the same kind as that which the will of
man would bring about by subjective selection.
The origin of this term 'natural selection' is overlooked when people
talk glibly about 'natural selection' of ideas. Darwin used the term
'natural selection' because he thought he saw an analogy between the
tendency of nature and the selective purposes of intelligent beings.
It was because nature, working without intelligence, produced the same
kind of result as man does by intelligent selection, that he ventured
to use this term 'selection' of the process of nature. Perhaps he was
hardly justified in adopting the term, as nature does not select; she
only passes by. At the same time, artificial selection also includes,
although it is not limited to, this negative or weeding-out process.
When you select a certain plant for growth in your garden you weed out
the neighbouring plants which encroach upon it, so as to give it a
chance to grow and thrive. By removing its competitors, you let air
and light surround the plant, and it spreads its leaves to the sun.
The healthy growth which results is due to the removal of obstacles
by an external power; and it is in this way--by the removal of
obstacles--that natural selection works.
Intelligent or artificial selection is not restricted to this negative
method of working; and its operation, positive as well as negative,
was certainly well known long before Darwin's day. Starting with the
familiar facts of artificial or purposive selection, Darwin showed how
results similar to those aimed at and reached in this way might be
brought about by the operation of certain natural laws, working
without purpose or design. Purposive selection pursues its ends more
directly and in general attains them far more quickly than does
natural selection. A still more striking characteristic is the fact
that it does not entail the waste and pain which mark the course of
natural selection. Witness the records of natural selection in the
vegetable and animal kingdoms, where thousands are called into
fruitless being that one alone may survive and prosper. Wastefulness
is the most striking feature of its method, and its path is strewn
with wreckage. In all these respects the conflict of ideas belongs
to the level of purposive and not of natural selection. It involves
consciousness of the end, which natural selection never does; it is
comparatively rapid in reaching its goal and comparatively direct in
the route it takes; and the victory of an idea does not take effect
through any general extermination of the individuals who cherish ideas
'unfit' for survival.
I do not deny that there may be a certain natural selection in the
case of human beings; but that process is always clumsy and slow and
wasteful, and the purposive intelligent selection which takes its
place is one of the greatest possible gains to living beings:
its presence distinguishes men from animals; its predominance
distinguishes civilised men from savages; the higher the stage
of civilisation, the more marked is the development of selective
intelligence. And in the conflict of ideas, whether moral or
intellectual, the issue is determined by a selection which is
predominantly purposive, and only in the slightest degree natural.
If we return to the conflict of groups we shall see that even there
purposive selection enters. How (we may ask) do those qualities of
obedience, willingness to help another, and the like, arise in a
community and thus enable it to win the victory over a less organised
or more savage enemy? Surely it is not a sufficient answer to say that
these qualities have been somehow developed, and then have contributed
to the victory of the community possessing them. All through civilised
life, and probably throughout a great part of savage life, there is
the keenest enquiry into and perception of the qualities which
will make for success. These qualities are carefully selected and
positively fostered. You drill your armies--that is, you cultivate
the habit of discipline and all that discipline implies--so that the
victory may be gained; in other words, the quality is not produced by
natural selection at all. The issue may resemble the result of natural
selection, for it leads to conflict and defeat of the unfit; but the
conqueror is he who has foreseen the conditions of the struggle:
has deliberately equipped his forces for the fight, and been the
intelligent organiser of victory.
Even in the case of competition between individuals, at least among
civilised men, it is clear that natural selection is very far from
being the only factor. A man trains himself for a profession. It does
not just somehow come about that a number of people accidentally
develop certain varieties of occupation, and that natural selection
makes play with this result, cutting off the unfit and leaving only
those who are fairly well adapted to their positions. Something of
this sort no doubt takes place to a limited extent; but, so far as it
does take place, our methods are denounced as defective and, perhaps,
as old-fashioned. 'Haphazard' is a wasteful principle, and should be
superseded by intelligent initiative and deliberate preparation. And
this indeed is the usual process. One adapts oneself carefully and of
set purpose to the conditions of one's life, instead of simply waiting
for natural selection to cut one off should one happen to be unfit.
Even among animals there are certain processes which cannot be brought
under natural selection. There are the first efforts, slight as they
may be, towards learning by experience. There are also all those facts
which Darwin classes under sexual selection, where there is a positive
choosing, due no doubt not to intelligent purpose but nevertheless to
a subjective impulse. This marks the beginning of the end of the
reign of natural selection, because in it for the purely objective or
external factor there is substituted an internal, subjective factor;
instead of the process of cutting off unsuitable individuals among
chance varieties there appears the process of selecting that variety
which pleases or attracts.