the insufficiency of general laws to account for historical
development. The part played by coincidence, and the part played by
individuals--limited by, and related to, general social
conditions--render it impossible to deduce the course of the past
history of man or to predict the future. But it is just the same with
organic development. Darwin (or any other zoologist) could not deduce
the actual course of evolution from general principles. Given an
organism and its environment, he could not show that it must evolve
into a more complex organism of a definite predetermined type; knowing
what it has evolved into, he could attempt to discover and assign the
determining causes. General principles do not account for a particular
sequence; they embody necessary conditions; but there is a chapter of
accidents too. It is the same in the case of history.
18. Among the evolutional attempts to subsume the course of history under
general syntheses, perhaps the most important is that of Lamprecht, whose
"kulturhistorische" attempt to discover and assign the determining causes.
German history, exhibits the (indirect) influence of the Comtist school. It
is based upon psychology, which, in his views, holds among the sciences of
mind (_Geisteswissenschaften_) the same place (that of a
_Grundwissenschaft_) which mechanics holds among the sciences of nature.
History, by the same comparison, corresponds to biology, and, according to
him, it can only become scientific if it is reduced to general concepts
(_Begriffe_). Historical movements and events are of a psychical character,
and Lamprecht conceives a given phase of civilisation as "a collective
psychical condition (_seelischer Gesamtzustand_)" controlling the period,
"a diapason which penetrates all psychical phenomena and thereby all
historical events of the time."[244] He has worked out a series of such
phases, "ages of changing psychical diapason," in his _Deutsche
Geschichte_, with the aim of showing that all the feelings and actions of
each age can be explained by the diapason; and has attempted to prove that
these diapasons are exhibited in other social developments, and are
consequently not singular but typical. He maintains further that these ages
succeed each other in a definite order; the principle being that the
collective psychical development begins with the homogeneity of all the
individual members of a society and, through heightened psychical activity,
advances in the form of a continually increasing differentiation of the
individuals (this is akin to the Spencerian formula). This process,
evolving psychical freedom from psychical constraint, exhibits a series of
psychical phenomena which define successive periods of civilisation. The
process depends on two simple principles, that no idea can disappear
without leaving behind it an effect or influence, and that all psychical
life, whether in a person or a society, means change, the acquisition of
new mental contents. It follows that the new have to come to terms with the
old, and this leads to a synthesis which determines the character of a new
age. Hence the ages of civilisation are defined as the "highest concepts
for subsuming without exception all psychical phenomena of the development
of human societies, that is, of all historical events."[245] Lamprecht
deduces the idea of a special historical science, which might be called
"historical ethnology," dealing with the ages of civilisation, and bearing
the same relation to (descriptive or narrative) history as ethnology to
ethnography. Such a science obviously corresponds to Comte's social
dynamics, and the comparative method, on which Comte laid so much emphasis,
is the principal instrument of Lamprecht.
19. I have dwelt on the fundamental ideas of Lamprecht, because they
are not yet widely known in England, and because his system is the
ablest product of the sociological school of historians. It carries
the more weight as its author himself is a historical specialist, and
his historical syntheses deserve the most careful consideration. But
there is much in the process of development which on such assumptions
is not explained, especially the initiative of individuals. Historical
development does not proceed in a right line, without the choice of
diverging. Again and again, several roads are open to it, of which it
chooses one--why? On Lamprecht's method, we may be able to assign the
conditions which limit the psychical activity of men at a particular
stage of evolution, but within those limits the individual has so many
options, such a wide room for moving, that the definition of those
conditions, the "psychical diapasons," is only part of the explanation
of the particular development. The heel of Achilles in all historical
speculations of this class has been the role of the individual.
The increasing prominence of economic history has tended to encourage
the view that history can be explained in terms of general concepts or
types. Marx and his school based their theory of human development on
the conditions of production, by which, according to them, all social
movements and historical changes are entirely controlled. The leading
part which economic factors play in Lamprecht's system is significant,
illustrating the fact that economic changes admit most readily this
kind of treatment, because they have been less subject to direction or
interference by individual pioneers.
Perhaps it may be thought that the conception of _social environment_
(essentially psychical), on which Lamprecht's "psychical diapasons"
depend, is the most valuable and fertile conception that the historian
owes to the suggestion of the science of biology--the conception of
all particular historical actions and movements as (1) related to and
conditioned by the social environment, and (2) gradually bringing
about a transformation of that environment. But no given
transformation can be proved to be necessary (predetermined). And
types of development do not represent laws; their meaning and value
lie in the help they may give to the historian, in investigating a
certain period of civilisation, to enable him to discover the
inter-relations among the diverse features which it presents. They
are, as some one has said, an instrument of heuretic method.
20. The man engaged in special historical researches--which have been
pursued unremittingly for a century past, according to scientific
methods of investigating evidence (initiated by Wolf, Niebuhr,
Ranke)--have for the most part worked on the assumptions of genetic
history or at least followed in the footsteps of those who fully
grasped the genetic point of view. But their aim has been to collect
and sift evidence, and determine particular facts; comparatively few
have given serious thought to the lines of research and the
speculations which have been considered in this paper. They have been
reasonably shy of compromising their work by applying theories which
are still much debated and immature. But historiography cannot
permanently evade the questions raised by these theories. One may
venture to say that no historical change or transformation will be
fully understood until it is explained how social environment acted on
the individual components of the society (both immediately and by
heredity), and how the individuals reacted upon their environment. The
problem is psychical, but it is analogous to the main problem of the
biologist.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 238: A society presents suggestive analogies with an
organism, but it certainly is not an organism, and sociologists who
draw inferences from the assumption of its organic nature must fall
into error. A vital organism and a society are radically distinguished
by the fact that the individual components of the former, namely the
cells, are morphologically as well as functionally differentiated,
whereas the individuals which compose a society are morphologically
homogeneous and only functionally differentiated. The resemblances and
the differences are worked out in E. de Majewski's striking book, _La
Science de la Civilisation_. Paris. 1908.]
[Footnote 239: It is to be observed that history is (not only
different in scope but) not co-extensive with anthropology _in time_.
For it deals only with the development of man in societies, whereas
anthropology includes in its definition the proto-anthropic period
when _anthropos_ was still non-social, whether he lived in herds like
the chimpanzee, or alone like the male ourang-outang. (It has been
well shown by Majewski that congregations--herds, flocks, packs,
&c.--of animals are not _societies_; the characteristic of a society
is differentiation of function. Bee hives, ant hills, may be called
quasi-societies; but in their case the classes which perform distinct
functions are morphologically different.)]
[Footnote 240: Recently O. Seeck has applied these principles to the
decline of Graeco-Roman civilisation in his _Untergang der antiken
Welt_, 2 vols., Berlin, 1895, 1901.]
[Footnote 241: Darwinian formulae may be suggestive by way of analogy.
For instance, it is characteristic of social advance that a multitude
of inventions, schemes and plans are framed which are never carried
out, similar to, or designed for the same end as, an invention or plan
which is actually adopted because it has chanced to suit better the
particular conditions of the hour (just as the works accomplished by
an individual statesman, artist or savant are usually only a residue
of the numerous projects conceived by his brain). This process in
which so much abortive production occurs is analogous to elimination
by natural selection.]
[Footnote 242: We can ignore here the metaphysical question of
freewill and determinism. For the character of the individual's brain
depends in any case on ante-natal accidents and coincidences, and so
it may be said that the role of individuals ultimately depends on
chance,--the accidental coincidence of independent sequences.]
[Footnote 243: I have taken this example from G. Tarde's _La logique
sociale_ (p. 403), Paris, 1904, where it is used for quite a different
purpose.]
[Footnote 244: _Die kulturhistorische Methode_, Berlin, 1900, p. 26.]
[Footnote 245: _Ibid._ pp. 28, 29.]
X
DARWINISM AND SOCIOLOGY
BY C. BOUGLE
_Professor of Social Philosophy in the University of Toulouse and
Deputy-Professor at the Sorbonne, Paris_
How has our conception of social phenomena, and of their history, been
affected by Darwin's conception of Nature and the laws of its
transformation? To what extent and in what particular respects have
the discoveries and hypotheses of the author of _The Origin of
Species_ aided the efforts of those who have sought to construct a
science of society?
To such a question it is certainly not easy to give any brief or
precise answer. We find traces of Darwinism almost everywhere.
Sociological systems differing widely from each other have laid claim
to its authority; while, on the other hand, its influence has often
made itself felt only in combination with other influences. The
Darwinian thread is worked into a hundred patterns along with other
threads.
To deal with the problem, we must, it seems, first of all distinguish
the more general conclusions in regard to the evolution of living
beings, which are the outcome of Darwinism, from the particular
explanations it offers of the ways and means by which that evolution
is effected. That is to say, we must, as far as possible, estimate
separately the influence of Darwin as an evolutionist and Darwin as a
selectionist.
The nineteenth century, said Cournot, has witnessed a mighty effort to
"reintegrer l'homme dans la nature." From divers quarters there has
been a methodical reaction against the persistent dualism of the
Cartesian tradition, which was itself the unconscious heir of the
Christian tradition. Even the philosophy of the eighteenth century,
materialistic as were for the most part the tendencies of its leaders,
seemed to revere man as a being apart, concerning whom laws might be
formulated _a priori_. To bring him down from his pedestal there was
needed the marked predominance of positive researches wherein no
account was taken of the "pride of man." There can be no doubt that
Darwin has done much to familiarise us with this attitude. Take for
instance the first part of _The Descent of Man_: it is an accumulation
of typical facts, all tending to diminish the distance between us and
our brothers, the lower animals. One might say that the naturalist had
here taken as his motto, "Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be
abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." Homologous
structures, the survival in man of certain organs of animals, the
rudiments in the animal of certain human faculties, a multitude of
facts of this sort, led Darwin to the conclusion that there is no
ground for supposing that the "king of the universe" is exempt from
universal laws. Thus belief in the _imperium in imperio_ has been, as
it were, whittled away by the progress of the naturalistic spirit,
itself continually strengthened by the conquests of the natural
sciences. The tendency may, indeed, drag the social sciences into
overstrained analogies, such, for instance, as the assimilation of
societies to organisms. But it will, at least, have had the merit of
helping sociology to shake off the pre-conception that the groups
formed by men are artificial, and that history is completely at the
mercy of chance. Some years before the appearance of _The Origin of
Species_, August Comte had pointed out the importance, as regards the
unification of positive knowledge, of the conviction that the social
world, the last refuge of spiritualism, is itself subject to
determinism. It cannot be doubted that the movement of thought which
Darwin's discoveries promoted contributed to the spread of this
conviction, by breaking down the traditional barrier which cut man off
from Nature.
But Nature, according to modern naturalists, is no immutable thing: it
is rather perpetual movement, continual progression. Their discoveries
batter a breach directly into the Aristotelian notion of species; they
refuse to see in the animal world a collection of immutable types,
distinct from all eternity, and corresponding, as Cuvier said, to so
many particular thoughts of the Creator. Darwin especially
congratulated himself upon having been able to deal this doctrine the
_coup de grace_: immutability is, he says, his chief enemy; and he is
concerned to show--therein following up Lyell's work--that everything
in the organic world, as in the inorganic, is explained by insensible
but incessant transformations. "Nature makes no leaps"--"Nature knows
no gaps": these two _dicta_ form, as it were, the two landmarks
between which Darwin's idea of transformation is worked out. That is
to say, the development of Darwinism is calculated to further the
application of the philosophy of Becoming to the study of human
institutions.
The progress of the natural sciences thus brings unexpected
reinforcements to the revolution which the progress of historical
discipline had begun. The first attempt to constitute an actual
science of social phenomena--that, namely, of the economists--had
resulted in laws which were called natural, and which were believed to
be eternal and universal, valid for all times and all places. But this
perpetuality, brother, as Knies said, of the immutability of the old
zoology, did not long hold out against the ever-swelling tide of the
historical movement. Knowledge of the transformations that had taken
place in language, of the early phases of the family, of religion, of
property, had all favoured the revival of the Heraclitean view:
[Greek: panta rei]. As to the categories of political economy, it was
soon to be recognised, as by Lasalle, that they too are only
historical. The philosophy of history, moreover, gave expression
under various forms to the same tendency. Hegel declares that "all
that is real is rational," but at the same time he shows that all that
is real is ephemeral, and that for history there is nothing fixed
beneath the sun. It is this sense of universal evolution that Darwin
came with fresh authority to enlarge. It was in the name of biological
facts themselves that he taught us to see only slow metamorphoses in
the history of institutions, and to be always on the outlook for
survivals side by side with rudimentary forms. Anyone who reads
_Primitive Culture_, by Tylor,--a writer closely connected with
Darwin--will be able to estimate the services which these cardinal
ideas were to render to the social sciences when the age of
comparative research had succeeded to that of _a priori_ construction.
Let us note, moreover, that the philosophy of Becoming in passing through
the Darwinian biology became, as it were, filtered; it got rid of those
traces of finalism, which, under different forms, it had preserved through
all the systems of German Romanticism. Even in Herbert Spencer, it has been
plausibly argued, one can detect something of that sort of mystic
confidence in forces spontaneously directing life, which forms the very
essence of those systems. But Darwin's observations were precisely
calculated to render such an hypothesis futile. At first people may have
failed to see this; and we call to mind the ponderous sarcasms of Flourens
when he objected to the theory of Natural Selection that it attributed to
nature a power of free choice. "Nature endowed with will! That was the
final error of last century; but the nineteenth no longer deals in
personifications."[246] In fact Darwin himself put his readers on their
guard against the metaphors he was obliged to use. The processes by which
he explains the survival of the fittest are far from affording any
indication of the design of some transcendent breeder. Nor, if we look
closely, do they even imply immanent effort in the animal; the sorting out
can be brought about mechanically, simply by the action of the environment.
In this connection Huxley could with good reason maintain that Darwin's
originality consisted in showing how harmonies which hitherto had been
taken to imply the agency of intelligence and will could be explained
without any such intervention. So, when later on, objective sociology
declares that, even when social phenomena are in question, all finalist
preconceptions must be distrusted if a science is to be constituted, it is
to Darwin that its thanks are due; he had long been clearing paths for it
which lay well away from the old familiar road trodden by so many theories
of evolution.
This anti-finalist doctrine, when fully worked out, was, moreover,
calculated to aid in the needful dissociation of two notions: that of
evolution and that of progress. In application to society these had
long been confounded; and, as a consequence, the general idea seemed
to be that only one type of evolution was here possible. Do we not
detect such a view in Comte's sociology, and perhaps even in Herbert
Spencer's? Whoever, indeed, assumes an end for evolution is naturally
inclined to think that only one road leads to that end. But those
whose minds the Darwinian theory has enlightened are aware that the
transformations of living beings depend primarily upon their
conditions, and that it is these conditions which are the agents of
selection from among individual variations. Hence, it immediately
follows that transformations are not necessarily improvements. Here,
Darwin's thought hesitated. Logically his theory proves, as Ray
Lankester pointed out, that the struggle for existence may have as its
outcome degeneration as well as amelioration: evolution may be
regressive as well as progressive. Then, too--and this is especially
to be borne in mind--each species takes its good where it finds it,
seeks its own path and survives as best it can. Apply this notion to
society and you arrive at the theory of multilinear evolution.
Divergencies will no longer surprise you. You will be forewarned not
to apply to all civilisations the same measure of progress, and you
will recognise that types of evolution may differ just as social
species themselves differ. Have we not here one of the conceptions
which mark off sociology proper from the old philosophy of history?
* * * * *
But if we are to estimate the influence of Darwinism upon sociological
conceptions, we must not dwell only upon the way in which Darwin
impressed the general notion of evolution upon the minds of thinkers.
We must go into details. We must consider the influence of the
particular theories by which he explained the mechanism of this
evolution. The name of the author of _The Origin of Species_ has been
especially attached, as everyone knows, to the doctrines of "natural
selection" and of "struggle for existence," completed by the notion of
"individual variation." These doctrines were turned to account by very
different schools of social philosophy. Pessimistic and optimistic,
aristocratic and democratic, individualistic and socialistic systems
were to war with each other for years by casting scraps of Darwinism
at each other's heads.
It was the spectacle of human contrivance that suggested to Darwin his
conception of natural selection. It was in studying the methods of
pigeon breeders that he divined the processes by which nature, in the
absence of design, obtains analogous results in the differentiation of
types. As soon as the importance of artificial selection in the
transformation of species of animals was understood, reflection
naturally turned to the human species, and the question arose, How far
do men observe, in connection with themselves, those laws of which
they make practical application in the case of animals? Here we come
upon one of the ideas which guided the researches of Gallon, Darwin's
cousin. The author of _Inquiries into Human Faculty and its
Development_,[247] has often expressed his surprise that, considering
all the precautions taken, for example, in the breeding of horses,
none whatever are taken in the breeding of the human species. It seems
to be forgotten that the species suffers when the "fittest" are not
able to perpetuate their type. Ritchie, in his _Darwinism and
Politics_[248] reminds us of Darwin's remark that the institution of
the peerage might be defended on the ground that peers, owing to the
prestige they enjoy, are enabled to select as wives "the most
beautiful and charming women out of the lower ranks."[249] But, says
Galton, it is as often as not "heiresses" that they pick out, and
birth statistics seem to show that these are either less robust or
less fecund than others. The truth is that considerations continue to
preside over marriage which are entirely foreign to the improvement of
type, much as this is a condition of general progress. Hence the
importance of completing Odin's and De Candolle's statistics which are
designed to show how characters are incorporated in organisms, how
they are transmitted, how lost, and according to what law eugenic,
elements depart from the mean or return to it.