government. Upon that vast and most puzzling topic I will only permit
myself one remark. In former times the great aim of reformers was the
limitation of the powers of government. They came to regard it as a
kind of bogy or extra-natural force, which acted to oppress the poor in
order to maintain certain personal privileges. Some, like Godwin of the
"Political Justice," held that the millennium implied the abolition of
government and the institution of anarchy. The early utilitarians held
that government might be reformed by placing power in the hands of the
subjects, who would use it only for their own interests, but still
retained the prejudices engendered in their long struggle against
authority, and held that its functions should still be gradually
restricted on pain of developing a worse tyranny than the old. The
government has been handed over to the people as they desired, but with
the natural result that the new authorities not only use it to support
their interests, but retain the conviction of its extra-natural, or
perhaps supernatural, efficacy. It is regarded as an omnipotent body
which can not only say (as it can) that whatever it pleases shall be
legal, but that whatever is made a law in the juridical sense shall at
once become a law of nature. Even their individualist opponents, who
profess to follow Mr. Herbert Spencer, seem often to regard the power
of government, not as one result of evolution, but as something
external which can constrain and limit evolution. It corresponds to a
kind of outside pressure which interferes arbitrarily with the
so-called natural course of development, and should therefore be
abolished. To me, on the contrary, it seems that government is simply
one of the social organs, with powers strictly limited by its relation
to others and by the nature of the sentiment upon which it rests. There
are obvious reasons, in the centralisation of vast industrial
interests, the "integration," as Mr. Spencer calls it, which is the
correlative of differentiation, in the growing solidarity of different
classes and countries, in the consequent growth of natural monopolies,
which give a solid reason for believing that the functions of the
central government may require expansion. To decide by any _à
priori_ principle what should be the limits of this expansion is, to
my mind, hopeless. The problem is one to be worked out by
experiment,--that is, by many generations and by repeated blundering. A
fool, said Erasmus Darwin, is a man who never makes an experiment; an
experiment is a new mode of action which fails in its object
ninety-nine times out of a hundred; therefore, wise men make more
blunders, though they also make more discoveries than fools. Now,
experiments in government and social organisation are as necessary to
improvement as any other kind of experiment, and probably still more
liable to failure. One thing, however, is again obvious. The simple
remedy of throwing everything upon government, of allowing it to settle
the rate of wages, the hours of labour, the prices of commodities, and
so forth, requires for success a moral and intellectual change which it
is impossible to over-estimate. I will not repeat the familiar
arguments which, to my mind, justify this statement. It is enough to
say that there is no ground in the bare proposal for putting all manner
of industrial regulations into the hands of government, for supposing
that it would not drag down every one into pauperism instead of raising
everybody to comfort. I often read essays of which the weakness seems
to be that while they purpose to establish equality, they give no real
reason for holding that it would not be an equality of beggary. If
every one is to be supported, idle or not, the natural conclusion is
universal pauperism. If people are to be forced to work by government,
or their numbers to be somehow restricted by government, you throw a
stress upon the powers of government which, I will not say, it is
impossible that it should bear, but which, to speak in the most
moderate terms, implies a complete reconstruction of the intelligence,
morality, and conceptions of happiness of human beings. Your government
would have to be omniscient and purely benevolent as well as
omnipotent, and I confess that I cannot see in the experience of those
countries where the people have the most direct influence upon the
government, any promise that this state of things will be realised just
yet.
Thus, I return to my conclusion,--to my platitude, if you will.
Professor Fawcett used to say that he could lay down no rules for the
sphere of government influence, except this rule, that no interference
would do good unless it helped people to help themselves. I think that
the doctrine was characteristic of his good sense, and I fully
subscribe to it. I heartily agree that equality in the sense I have
given, is a most desirable ideal; I agree that we should do all that in
us lies to promote it; I only say that our aims should be always in
consistence with the principle that such equality is only possible and
desirable in so far as the lowest classes are lifted to a higher
standard, morally as well as physically. Of course, that implies
approval of every variety of new institutions and laws, of
co-operation, of profit sharing, of boards of conciliation, of
educational and other bodies for carrying light into darkness and
elevating popular standards of life: but always with the express
condition that no such institution is really useful except as it tends
to foster a genuine spirit of independence, and to supply the moral
improvement without which no outward change is worth a button. This is
a truism, you may say. Yet, when I read the proposals to get rid of
poverty by summarily ordering people to be equal, or to extirpate
pauperism by spending a million upon certain institutions for out-door
relief, I cannot help thinking that it is a truism which requires to be
enforced. The old Political Economy, you say, is obsolete; meaning,
perhaps, that you do not mean to be bothered with its assertions; but
the old Economists had their merits. They were among the first who
realised the vast importance of deeper social questions; they were the
first who tried to treat them scientifically; they were not (I hope)
the last who dared to speak unpleasant truths, simply because they
believed them and believed in their importance. Perhaps, indeed, they
rather enjoyed the practice a little too much, and indulged in it a
little too ostentatiously. Yet, I am sure that, on the whole, it was a
very useful practice, and one which is now scarcely as common as it
should be. People are more anxious to pick holes in their statement of
economic laws than to insist upon the essential fact that, after all,
there are laws, not "laws" made by Parliament, but laws of nature,
which do, and will, determine the production and distribution of
wealth, and the recognition of which is as important to human welfare
as the recognition of physiological laws to the bodily health. Holding
this faith, the old Economists were never tired of asserting what is
the fundamental truth of so-called "individualism," that, after all we
may say about the social development, the essential condition of all
social improvement is not that we should have this or that system of
regulations, but that the individual should be manly, self-respecting,
doing his duty as well as getting his pay, and deeply convinced that
nothing will do any permanent good which does not imply the elevation
of the individual in his standards of honesty, independence, and good
conduct. We can only say to Lazarus: "You are probably past praying
for, and all we can do is to save you from starving, by any means which
do not encourage other people to fall into your weaknesses; but we
recognise the right of your class for any and every possible help that
can be given towards making men of them, and putting them on their legs
by teaching them to stand upright".
ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.
In his deeply-interesting Romanes lecture, Professor Huxley has stated
the opinion that the ethical progress of society depends upon our
combating the "cosmic process" which we call the struggle for
existence. Since, as he adds, we inherit the "cosmic nature" which is
the outcome of millions of years of severe training, it follows that
the "ethical nature" may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious
and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. This is not a cheerful
prospect. It is, as he admits, an audacious proposal to pit the
microcosm against the macrocosm. We cannot help fearing that the
microcosm may get the worst of it. Professor Huxley has not fully
expanded his meaning, and says much to which I could cordially
subscribe. But I think that the facts upon which he relies admit or
require an interpretation which avoids the awkward conclusion.
Pain and suffering, as Professor Huxley tells us, are always with us,
and even increase in quantity and intensity as evolution advances. The
fact had been recognised in remote ages long before theories of
evolution had taken their modern form. Pessimism, from the time of the
ancient Hindoo philosophers to the time of their disciple,
Schopenhauer, has been in no want of evidence to support its melancholy
conclusions. It would be idle to waste rhetoric in the attempt to
recapitulate so familiar a position. Though I am not a pessimist, I
cannot doubt that there is more plausibility in the doctrine than I
could wish. Moreover, it may be granted that any attempt to explain or
to justify the existence of evil is undeniably futile. It is not so
much that the problem cannot be answered, as that it cannot even be
asked in any intelligible sense. To "explain" a fact is to assign its
causes--that is, to give the preceding set of facts out of which it
arose. However far we might go backwards, we should get no nearer to
perceiving any reason for the original fact. If we explain the fall of
man by Adam's eating the apple, we are quite unable to say why the
apple should have been created. If we could discover a general theory
of pain, showing, say, that it implied certain physiological
conditions, we shall be no nearer to knowing why those physiological
conditions should have been what they are. The existence of pain, in
short, is one of the primary data of our problem, not one of the
accidents, for which we can hope in any intelligible sense to account.
To give any "justification" is equally impossible. The book of Job
really suggests an impossible, one may almost say a meaningless,
problem. We can give an intelligible meaning to a demand for justice
when we can suppose that a man has certain antecedent rights, which
another man may respect or neglect. But this has no meaning as between
the abstraction "nature" and the concrete facts which are themselves
nature. It is unjust to meet equal claims differently. But it is not
"unjust" in any intelligible sense that one being should be a monkey
and another a man, any more than that part of me should be a hand and
another head. The question would only arise if we supposed that the man
and the monkey had existed before they were created, and had then
possessed claims to equal treatment. The most logical theologians,
indeed, admit that as between creature and creator there can be
properly no question of justice. The pot and the potter cannot complain
of each other. If the writer of Job had been able to show that the
virtuous were rewarded and the vicious punished, he would only have
transferred the problem to another issue. The judge might be justified,
but the creator would be condemned. How can it be just to place a being
where he is certain to sin, and then to damn him for sinning? That is
the problem to which no answer can be given; and which already implies
a confusion of ideas. We apply the conception of justice in a sphere
where it is not applicable, and naturally fail to get any intelligible
answer.
It is impossible to combine the conceptions of God as the creator and
God as the judge; and the logical straits into which the attempt leads
are represented by the endless free-will controversy. I will not now
enter that field of controversy: and I will only indicate what seems to
me to be the position which we must accept in any scientific discussion
of our problem. Hume, as I think, laid down the true principle when he
said that there could be no _à priori_ proof of a matter of fact.
An _à priori_ truth is a truth which cannot be denied without
self-contradiction, but there can never be a logical consideration in
supposing the non-existence of any fact whatever. The ordinary appeal
to the truths of pure mathematics is, therefore, beside the question.
All such truths are statements of the precise equivalence of two
propositions. To say that there are four things is also to say that
there are two pairs of things: to say that there is a plane triangle is
also to say that there is a plane trilateral. One statement involves
the other, because the difference is not in the thing described, but in
our mode of contemplating it. We, therefore, cannot make one assertion
and deny the other without implicit contradiction. From such results,
again, is evolved (in the logical sense of evolution) the whole vast
system of mathematical truths. The complexity of that system gives the
erroneous idea that we can, somehow, attain a knowledge of facts,
independently of experience. We fail to observe that even the most
complex mathematical formula is simply a statement of an exact
equivalence of two assertions; and that, till we know by experience the
truth of one statement, we can never infer the truth, in fact, of the
other. However elaborate may be the evolutions of mathematical truth,
they can never get beyond the germs out of which they are evolved. They
are valid precisely because the most complex statement is always the
exact equivalent of the simpler, out of which it is constructed. They
remain to the end truths of number or truths of geometry. They cannot,
by themselves, tell us that things exist which can be counted or which
can be measured. The whole claim, however elaborate, still requires its
point of suspension. We may put their claims to absolute or necessary
truth as high as we please; but they cannot give us by themselves a
single fact. I can show, for example, that a circle has an infinite
number of properties, all of which are virtually implied in the very
existence of a circle. But that the circle or that space itself exists,
is not a necessary truth, but a datum of experience. It is quite true
that such truths are not, in one sense, empirical; they can be
discovered without any change of experience; for, by their very nature,
they refer to the constant element of experience, and are true on the
supposition of the absolute changelessness of the objects contemplated.
But it is a fallacy to suppose that, because independent of particular
experiences, they are, therefore, independent of experience in general.
Now, if we agree, as Huxley would have agreed, that Hume's doctrine is
true, if we cannot know a single fact except from experience, we are
limited in moral questions, as in all others, to elaborating and
analysing our experience, and can never properly transcend it. A
scientific treatment of an ethical question, at any rate, must take for
granted all the facts of human nature. It can show what morality
actually is; what are, in fact, the motives which make men moral, and
what are the consequences of moral conduct. But it cannot get outside
of the universe and lay down moral principles independent of all
influences. I am well aware that in speaking of ethical questions upon
this ground, I am exposed to many expressions of metaphysical contempt.
I may hope to throw light upon the usual working of morality; but my
theory of the facts cannot make men moral of itself. I cannot hope, for
example, to show that immorality involves a contradiction, for I know
that immorality exists. I cannot even hope to show that it is
necessarily productive of misery to the individual, for I know that
some people take pleasure in vicious conduct. I cannot deduce facts
from morals, for I must consistently regard morals as part of the
observed consequences of human nature under given conditions.
Metaphysicians may, if they can, show me a more excellent method. I
admit that their language sometimes enables them to take what, in words
at least, is a sublimer position than mine. Kant's famous phrase, "Thou
must, therefore thou canst," is impressive. And yet, it seems to me to
involve an obvious piece of logical juggling. It is quite true that
whenever it is my duty to act in a certain way, it must be a
possibility; but that is only because an impossibility cannot be a
duty. It is not my duty to fly, because I have not wings; and
conversely, no doubt, it would follow that _if_ it were my duty I
must possess the organs required. Thus understood, however, the phrase
loses its sublimity, and yet, it is only because we have so to
understand it, that it has any plausibility. Admitting, however, that
people who differ from me can use grander language, and confessing my
readiness to admit error whenever they can point to a single fact
attainable by the pure reason, I must keep to the humbler path. I speak
of the moral instincts as of others, simply from the point of view of
experience: I cannot myself discover a single truth from the abstract
principle of non-contradiction; and am content to take for granted that
the world exists as we know it to exist, without seeking to deduce its
peculiarities by any high _à priori_ road.
Upon this assumption, the question really resolves itself into a
different one. We can neither explain nor justify the existence of
pain; but, of course, we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, pain
predominates over pleasure; and we can ask whether, as a matter of
fact, the "cosmic processes" tend to promote or discourage virtuous
conduct. Does the theory of the "struggle for existence" throw any new
light upon the general problem? I am quite unable to see, for my own
part, that it really makes any difference: evil exists; and the
question whether evil predominates over good, can only, I should say,
be decided by an appeal to experience. One source of evil is the
conflict of interests. Every beast preys upon others; and man,
according to the old saying, is a wolf to man. All that the Darwinian
or any other theory can do is, to enable us to trace the consequences
of this fact in certain directions; but it neither creates the fact nor
makes it more or less an essential part of the process. It "explains"
certain phenomena, in the sense of showing their connection with
previous phenomena, but does not show why the phenomena should present
themselves at all. If we indulge our minds in purely fanciful
constructions, we may regard the actual system as good or bad, just as
we choose to imagine for its alternative a better or a worse system. If
everybody had been put into a world where there was no pain, or where
each man could get all he wanted without interfering with his
neighbours, we may fancy that things would have been pleasanter. If the
struggle, which we all know to exist, had no effect in preventing the
"survival of the fittest," things--so, at least, some of us may
think--would have been worse. But such fancies have nothing to do with
scientific inquiries. We have to take things as they are and make the
best of them.
The common feeling, no doubt, is different. The incessant struggle
between different races suggests a painful view of the universe, as
Hobbes' natural state of war suggested painful theories as to human
nature. War is evidently immoral, we think; and a doctrine which makes
the whole process of evolution a process of war must be radically
immoral too. The struggle, it is said, demands "ruthless
self-assertion" and the hunting down of all competitors; and such
phrases certainly have an unpleasant sound. But in the first place, the
use of the epithets implies an anthropomorphism to which we have no
right so long as we are dealing with the inferior species. We are then
in a region to which such ideas have no direct application, and where
the moral sentiments exist only in germ, if they can properly be said
to exist at all. Is it fair to call a wolf ruthless because he eats a
sheep and fails to consider the transaction from the sheep's point of
view? We must surely admit that if the wolf is without mercy he is also
without malice. We call an animal ferocious because a man who acted in
the same way would be ferocious. But the man is really ferocious
because he is really aware of the pain which he inflicts. The wolf, I
suppose, has no more recognition of the sheep's feelings than a man has
of feelings in the oyster or the potato. For him, they are simply
non-existent; and it is just as inappropriate to think of the wolf as
cruel, as it would be to call the sheep cruel for eating grass. Are we
to say that "nature" is cruel because the arrangement increases the sum
of undeserved suffering? That is a problem which I do not feel able to
examine; but it is, at least, obvious that it cannot be answered
off-hand in the affirmative. To the individual sheep it matters nothing
whether he is eaten by the wolf or dies of disease or starvation. He
has to die any way, and the particular way is unimportant. The wolf is
simply one of the limiting forces upon sheep, and if he were removed
others would come into play. The sheep, left to himself, would still
give a practical illustration of the doctrine of Malthus. If, as
evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf tends to improve the
breed of sheep, to encourage him to think more and to sharpen his wits,
the sheep may be, on the whole, the better for the wolf, in this sense
at least: that the sheep of a wolfless region might lead a more
wretched existence, and be less capable animals and more subject to
disease and starvation than the sheep in a wolf-haunted region. The
wolf may, so far, be a blessing in disguise.
This suggests another obvious remark. When we speak of the struggle for
existence, the popular view seems to construe this into the theory that
the world is a mere cockpit, in which one race carries on an
interminable struggle with the other. If the wolves are turned in with
the sheep, the first result will be that all the sheep will become
mutton, and the last that there will be one big wolf with all the
others inside him. But this is contrary to the essence of the doctrine.
Every race depends, we all hold, upon its environment, and the
environment includes all the other races. If some, therefore, are in
conflict, others are mutually necessary. If the wolf ate all the sheep,
and the sheep ate all the grass, the result would be the extirpation of
all the sheep and all the wolves, as well as all the grass. The
struggle necessarily implies reciprocal dependence in a countless
variety of ways. There is not only a conflict, but a system of tacit
alliances. One species is necessary to the existence of others, though
the multiplication of some implies also the dying out of particular
rivals. The conflict implies no cruelty, as I have said, and the
alliance no goodwill. The wolf neither loves the sheep (except as
mutton) nor hates him; but he depends upon him as absolutely as if he
were aware of the fact. The sheep is one of the wolf's necessaries of
life. When we speak of the struggle for existence we mean, of course,
that there is at any given period a certain equilibrium between all the
existing species; it changes, though it changes so slowly that the
process is imperceptible and difficult to realise even to the
scientific imagination. The survival of any species involves the
disappearance of rivals no more than the preservation of allies. The
struggle, therefore, is so far from internecine that it necessarily
involves co-operation. It cannot even be said that it necessarily
implies suffering. People, indeed, speak as though the extinction of a
race involved suffering in the same way as the slaughter of an
individual. It is plain that this is not a necessary, though it may
sometimes be the actual result. A corporation may be suppressed without
injury to its members. Every individual will die before long, struggle
or no struggle. If the rate of reproduction fails to keep up with the
rate of extinction, the species must diminish. But this might happen
without any increase of suffering. If the boys in a district discovered
how to take birds' eggs, they might soon extirpate a species; but it
does not follow that the birds would individually suffer. Perhaps they
would feel themselves relieved from a disagreeable responsibility. The
process by which a species is improved, the dying out of the least fit,
implies no more suffering than we know to exist independently of any
doctrine as to a struggle. When we use anthropomorphic language, we may
speak of "self-assertion". But "self-assertion," minus the
anthropomorphism, means self-preservation; and that is merely a way of
describing the fact that an animal or plant which is well adapted to
its conditions of life is more likely to live than an animal which is
ill-adapted. I have some difficulty in imagining how any other
arrangement can even be supposed possible. It seems to be almost an
identical proposition that the healthiest and strongest will generally
live longest; and the conception of a "struggle for existence" only
enables us to understand how this results in certain progressive
modifications of the species. If we could ever for a moment have
fancied that there was no pain and disease, and that some beings were
not more liable than others to those evils, I might admit that the new
doctrine has made the world darker. As it is, it seems to me that it
leaves the data just what they were before, and only shows us that they
have certain previously unsuspected bearings upon the history of the
world.