COMPETITION.
_Competition of Brain against Brain._
In the last chapter we had evidence enough that in human societies,
just as in the animal world, a very keen struggle is going on. This
struggle is seen on a colossal scale when whole races enter into
combat with each other, and success attends the one which is superior
in some quality of mind or body, or that is rich in the possession
of some machine of war. We have the spectacle of the Eastern king
using a captive nation for the construction of irrigation works,
or for the building of a temple or a pyramid; or, coming to more
modern times, we see the Mexican civilisation destroyed by the
Spaniards, or the wholesale extermination of savage races by the
British. So, likewise, amongst the individual members of any given
community very much the same struggle may be seen, in which the
poor are the conquered ones, and the rich the vanquishers in the
fight.
_Does the Race show Increased Brain Capacity?_
This competition of individuals in our own community has always been
one in which brain power has been pitted against brain power, rather
than muscle volume against muscle volume, and it is interesting to
investigate whether or no, as a result of this struggle, our race
has increased its innate intellectual capacity during the historic
period, and, furthermore, what changes are likely to take place in
the future.
Before we can venture to proceed with this investigation, it is
necessary at once to separate from each other the question of our
innate intellectual activity, and that of our intellectual property.
We, in this nineteenth century, are the inheritors of a vast fund of
accumulated knowledge--an intellectual property--which is infinitely
greater than that possessed by the Greeks at the time of Socrates
and Plato, yet I do not think that anyone would venture to assert
that an average Englishman of to-day has better brain tissue and
corresponding intellectual activity than that which was possessed
by an average ancient Greek; indeed, some with Galton would say
that the Englishman’s brain power is very inferior. We have always
to bear in mind that, owing to our possession of the faculty of
language spoken and written, our intellectual property, like our
material property in houses, land, etc., has been, and is being,
transmitted to us from generation to generation, and that we at the
present time are recipients of the accumulations amassed by the
restless intellectual activity of our direct and indirect ancestors.
We cannot, therefore, determine whether we are increasing in our
intellectual activity by the amount of knowledge we possess, and
we must seek some other evidence.
Equally valueless would be a comparison between the intellectual
activity of the Greeks or Romans and ourselves, taking as a test
say the number of distinguished writers per million of population;
for the Greek and Roman people are not related to us in direct
line of descent, but are remote cousins. We can, however, obtain
information which is of the greatest value as to the intellectual
power of our direct forefathers at dates which may be counted back
by thousands of years. Although they have left no written records
behind them--for writing, even at the later part of the period
referred to, was a rough implement, and placed in the hands of very
few--yet they have left behind them, buried in their sepulchral
mounds, their skulls, silent witnesses of the power and activity
of the minds that once inhabited them.
_The Neolithic compared with the Modern English Skulls._
The skull is the bony covering to the brain and the great organs of
sense placed in the head; it develops with them, and is adapted with
them as these organs during growth assume their proper racial and
family characteristics. By an exhaustive examination and comparison
of the skulls of different individuals of different races, the
anthropometrist is able with certainty to affirm regarding the
skulls of unknown persons their race and their general position in
the scale of intellectual development. In a race where brain power
is great, the brain pan is large and capacious, to accommodate the
organ within it; it is a large-brain-small-jaw skull. In a race in
which the brain power is limited, we have the small-brain-big-jaw
skull. In races on much the same intellectual level, but who differ
from each other in special physical and mental characters, the
skull is generally a recognisable feature, and one can pick out at
once the long skull of an Aryan from the broader skull of a Finn
or Magyar.
Many of the sepulchral mounds just alluded to have been opened,
notably by General Pitt-Rivers and Canon Greenwell, and the remains
of well-preserved skulls have in several hundreds of instances been
found. These go back to very remote antiquity, in many instances
to the Stone Age, which we may place at least before the Christian
era. When these skulls are examined, they are found to be similar
to many of our own. When we look at them, we feel that there is
no reason to assume that they are of a lower type than our own,
or that the men and women of whom they are the remains would not,
were they possessed of our advantages of education, etc., take an
equal status in society with us. Some of them, especially those
removed from the Vikings’ graves, must have belonged to magnificent
specimens of humanity.
_Abeyance of Brain Development since Neolithic Times._
The evidence, and it is of a most substantial kind, would seem to
point strongly to the practical abeyance of organic intellectual
development from the time mankind first formed simple communities
for purposes of self-defence and mutual aid up to the present
time. It would follow, therefore, that although we have been
accumulating intellectual property, we have not necessarily become
more intellectually active.
_Social Communities do not permit of the Destruction of the Less
Intellectually Capable._
But it may not unnaturally be asked, How is this state of things
compatible with our views regarding selection? for we have seen that
struggle and competition between brain and brain has incessantly
been going on, and it seems to be a natural sequence that the
brains of the community must be improved by selection.
We come here, however, to an outstanding difference between the
results of the competition of one animal and another, and with that
of one member of a community with another. In the animal world, the
sickly, or the feeble, or deficient, have always tended towards
destruction, their more capable fellows having as a rule an interest
in their destruction. A sickly fowl or pigeon has not only to
compete at great disadvantage with its fellows for its food, but
it has to face a pitiless instinct which leads the healthy ones to
destroy it as soon as its weakness is apparent. In the animal world,
competition is to the death; it is competition without compromise,
in which the conqueror alone remains to continue the race.
But man has become a social animal and lives in communities, and the
very existence of a social community implies that the members of it
have already acquired a certain regard for the well-being of their
fellows, for the end and aim of society even in its most primitive
form is advantage to the many. It is true that in a human community
everyone does the best for himself, yet even amongst the so-called
outcasts of society there are social bonds not to be found in the
animal world, which link man to man often with strange tenacity.
We regard our own interests as by far the most important, yet we
have some regard for the interests of others, and the most savage
man is capable of that very human virtue called friendship. Hence
it is that although we may pursue our own ends and aims in life,
we are not always entirely regardless of others. We are content to
become rich and influential while our neighbour remains poor; and
so strong are our instincts of self-love, that it wounds us sorely
for him to overtake or outstrip us in the race for wealth, though,
in spite of this, we shrink from doing him actual injury.
_Human Brain Power results merely in Wealth Accumulation._
The struggle between members of the same community is not therefore
so much a struggle for existence as a struggle for a superfluity of
the good things obtainable. It is a struggle for property, and not
therefore necessarily a struggle in which the most successful will
be the largest race producer. While the young lion is killed by his
stronger rival, and while the rat with an injured limb is at once
attacked, killed and eaten by its fellows, men compete with each
other for power and position, and for the means of gratifying whims
and obtaining pleasure. It may truly be called a race for greed
in which, in the nature of things, all cannot come in first. The
well-to-do tradesman has more meat and wine than he can consume, more
books than he can read, more works of art than he can understand,
and yet he is not satisfied; but there is one thing sweeter to
him than anything else, and that is to pass his neighbours in the
race of life, and in his turn to be equal with those who once ran
before him, and who at one time looked back at him with scorn. The
brute unconsciously struggles to survive through instinct of the
dire necessity of self-preservation, but man’s struggle in too many
cases is a pastime that is sweet to him, and one which he will
pursue through his whole life-time, and will follow eagerly with
the tottering steps of extreme old age, although he thereby dwarfs
what is noblest and best in his humanity.
While society has been unable, until lately, to do much towards the
active preservation of the sickly, who have in consequence tended to
fall a prey to disease and hardship, yet the foolish and mentally
incapable, while they have suffered in the race for wealth, have not
to any great extent been permitted to undergo extreme privation,
and it remains to be seen whether they have contributed their share
of progeny, for if they have done so it is easy to understand how
little advance in organic mental activity can have taken place. And
this is indeed indicated by a comparison between our skulls and
those taken from sepulchral barrows since early neolithic times.
_Further Study of Individual Competition._
Before, however, we attempt to arrive at a conclusion as to whether
or not a man, unsuccessful in the world’s competition, as a rule
contributes more or less progeny than one who has been more fortunate,
let us examine more closely the details of this competition, with
a view to the better comprehension of those conditions under which
it takes place.
Let us take a familiar illustration. In an ordinary foot-race the
best man gets in first, provided he is in his proper form, and
the race is looked upon as a test of merit. In order to encourage
competitors who otherwise would be without a chance of winning, it
is usual to handicap some of these races, giving points of advantage
to all except the very best man who is termed “scratch.” The result
of such a race is no proper test of merit, and the winner is often
the worst of limb and wind in the whole competing team; he wins it
because of the handicap he has received. Now while the wild beast
and very primitive savage are all “scratch” and no “handicap” is
given, on the other hand civilised communities, as soon as they have
become firmly established, introduce the system of handicapping,
which does not necessarily give the advantage to those most needing
it, but which all the same causes the struggle or race to cease to
be so true and efficient a test of pure merit as it was before.
_Those Competing are Handicapped by Property._[26]
This is brought about in many ways, but by none more effectively
than by the amassing and transmission of property. Instead of living
a hand-to-mouth existence, all communities have very naturally
instituted what is known as personal property; they have permitted
individuals to acquire and transmit large quantities of food or
clothing, etc., or that which can be converted into this, namely
money. By lending this property to those who are in need of it, and
by exacting a percentage increase in payment of this loan, wealth
may yield in perpetuity a sufficiency to support without further
expenditure of labour. By the earning, with physical or mental labour,
of wealth, and by the increments produced by the loan of wealth, this
wealth has accumulated in certain families and in certain classes,
and this power is handed down from generation to generation. In
order to obtain wealth in any quantity, great physical skill or
mental training is, as a rule, required, and this is only to be
obtained for a child by the expenditure of wealth on the parent’s
part. The wealthier families in a community have therefore either
sufficient wealth to support their children in idleness, or, at
any rate, they can put them in such positions as will enable them
to produce wealth for themselves. The children of those families
who possess little wealth are from the first at a disadvantage, and
only those with very exceptional powers can possibly succeed in a
struggle against their more fortunate neighbours.
_Property is not always acquired by the Most Capable._
But if riches and power had always remained in the hands of the most
capable, and if these had always married women of capacity, then
riches and power would be where they would be of most advantage;
but this has certainly not been the case. As already remarked, the
awards of land and wealth at the time of the conquest were given
to those of the conquering side who had showed most prowess in war
and intrigue, at the expense of equally capable men amongst the
vanquished. England thus received a nobility who were practically
on an equality with her common people, but who, on account of
previous contact with the wonderfully organising power of the Romish
Church, and with the more civilised communities of the South, had
acquired the art of organised warfare, and thereby the necessary
subordination of the many to the few, lessons that the races living
in England had not had the chance of learning. In more recent times
wealth and consequent power, acquired by manufacture and trade,
have likewise fallen to the share of the incapable as well as to
the capable, to the exclusion of the greater number of individuals
belonging to both classes. Those who lived on the seacoast where
to the south and east the construction of harbourage was possible,
profited by the development of the trade which at one time arose
in those districts; while later on, and after the establishment of
colonies to the west, in the States and Canada, those who lived in the
coast district to the west profited in their turn by western trade.
Individuals holding land of value to the agriculturist alone, and
in its turn yielding great return, have found themselves penniless
on account of the importation, at low prices, of agricultural
produce. Others holding land containing certain mineral wealth have
found themselves greatly increased in riches, and everyone in the
district has profited by the find. It does not follow, therefore,
that because A has acquired wealth and B has not, that A is even a
better acquirer of wealth than B, let alone other qualities in which
B may have an advantage. It might follow, and would follow in most
cases, that A and B would determine their equality or inequality,
were they placed under similar conditions. But as we have seen,
their conditions seldom are similar; indeed, to a great extent,
wealth acquisition is a lottery. While it cannot be granted that
every man who acquires wealth is clever at acquiring it, it must
at the same time be admitted that a fair proportion of those who
succeed are above the average intelligence.
_Property Holders Less Capable than Property Acquirers._
But the chances that the children of such a man will also be clever
in acquiring wealth are again diminished by the chances that his
wife will be deficient in that very quality. We do not know exactly
what part the father, or what part the mother contributes to the
making of the progeny, and this very fact indicates strongly that
they each give much alike; were there any marked differences between
their contributions these would have been observed, for we have
so many chances in everyday life for the study of such problems.
We may conclude, therefore, that an average child depends for its
faculties as much upon the mother as upon the father. Now, even if
we put on one side the probabilities of the choice of a mate having
rather opposing qualities than otherwise--for we are attracted in
marriage to our unlikes rather than to our likes--the chances are
that the wife of the man who has acquired wealth will not have more
than average capacity. According to this view, the children born
of the marriage will, on an average, have less than the father’s
capacity, supposing him to be a capable man.
We see, then, that the chances of finding capable men and
women--innate capacity is, of course, referred to--among families
inheriting wealth and position, are less than the chances of finding
these qualities among those who have themselves acquired wealth,
and also that it is indeed probable that the average capacity of
wealth-holders is only slightly above that of the average of the
whole community. That there is a slight difference we must allow,
for capacity has its own value, and the ranks of the rich are
continually being recruited by capables, while at the same time
the ranks of the poor are being recruited by incapables.
While this is the case the sifting referred to is very incomplete,
and we find in every class every range of intellectual capacity,
from that of the idiot to the man capable of giving a permanent
impulse to thought and action.
_The Poor Child is scratched against the Rich Child._
The riches of the well-to-do give their children--who, as we have
seen, are not necessarily the most capable--an immense pull in
life’s competition with the sons of the poor, with the result that,
certainly in the great majority of cases, the poor man’s child is
beaten. Putting on one side the question of the father’s personal
influence in the way of obtaining advantageous positions for his
children, who generally have an opening in his profession or line
of business, the rich man is able to equip them with an expensive
education which is essential to their getting on in the world.
A vigorous personality always counts for much, but training is
essential, and training has until quite recently only been obtainable
by the well-to-do classes. The English universities and public schools
had until lately become the monopoly of the upper and professional
classes, to the exclusion, even among these classes, of many who
differed in creed from the majority of the community. The doors of
every profession were barred except to those who possessed capital,
and the children of the poor were frequently unable to obtain even
the elements of book knowledge, except in Scotland, where primary
education had the start of England by three hundred years. The
fact that as many as 41 per cent. of persons married in 1839 were
unable to write their own names, illustrates how enormously a large
mass of the community must have been handicapped by their want of
training.
Not only have the richer classes been able to start their children
with capital and a better training than their poorer neighbours,
but the poorer classes have--and this, too, in comparatively recent
times--been actively repressed. We can in this connection recall
the fact that before the sixteenth century, English labourers were
compelled to receive wages fixed in some cases by law, and in other
cases by justices, who were often themselves employers of labour.
Their wages were determined chiefly by the price of provisions,
and in order to prevent migration with a view to the bettering of
their wages, they were confined to the place of their birth by the
imposition of very serious punishment, if they left their native
places to work elsewhere. It is not sought in any way in these pages
to adduce these instances of what we should now call unfair dealing
with a view to bringing discredit upon the holders of wealth. We
have no reason to suppose that our forefathers were consciously
unfair, and there is little doubt that many usages current at the
present day will be viewed by our descendants as gross outrages
upon the principles of justice as understood by them.
Each generation acts according to its own lights, and if our public
conscience is sharpening, and our ideas of right and wrong are
becoming clearer and are ruling our actions more emphatically, we
must remember that this moral advance is a heritage which, like our
intellectual and material possessions, we owe to our ancestors,
and we may humbly endeavour that this, the most worthy of all
possessions, shall not be lessened as it passes through our hands.
The point that is desired to be emphasised is the want, in civilised
communities, of advantages equally distributed to every child born
within the community. Without this condition the united effort of
the community can never reach its maximum, for much individual power
is suppressed, and much incompetency is bolstered up in quite an
artificial manner, and competition fails in great measure to bring
forward the most capable competitors.
_Modern Democratic Attempts to equalise the Struggle._
While this is an undoubted fact, it seems pretty certain that
latterly a change has come about in the direction which gives more
scope for individual attainments irrespective of birth and wealth.
Organised efforts are being made to connect the Board Schools with
the universities, so that the children of the poor may, if capable
enough, climb at once into the professional classes. In the interests
of intellectual effort this is very desirable, for the universities
will then draw their students from a larger area, and men possessing
brain power will be rescued from mere mechanical pursuits. One can
hardly explain, on the assumption of race superiority alone, the
wonderful potentiality of the Scottish Lowlands, the birthplace of
so many who have been distinguished for personal attainments, for
the East Coast Englishman is of the same blood as the Lowlander,
and the division between England and Scotland is by no means an
ethnological one, it is rather a political division of the old
kingdom of Northumberland.
But it may more reasonably be explained by the excellent primary
education throughout Scotland, and the link that has long ago been
formed between the universities and almost every parish in the
country. The best education the country can produce has for many
years been within the reach of every thrifty farmer, who, if he has
a clever son, can pay the relatively small cost of his education.
England has been hitherto a laggard in her educational system, but
education is now at last being brought to the door of the poor as
well as of the rich. Primary education has been recast, and the
universities and colleges in the great centres of population, and
suited to the wants of, and within the means of, the poorer classes,
are now being established, and an altogether different set of
students are being equipped for the intellectual battle of life,
students that are drawn not alone from the ranks of the English
gentry, but also from the lower middle and artisan class.
By the institution, amongst other means, of technical schools and
colleges, the mechanical arts can now be learnt at little or no
expense by the children of the poor, and organised public bounty
is replacing occasional private patronage.
Thus not only have the poor an increasing chance of rising into
the upper ranks of life, but the upper classes are beginning to
regard occupations, at one time beneath their notice, as, after all,
most suited to the less bright and capable of their children, so
that there is a greater passing up and passing down of the ladder
of life than was the case some fifty years ago. The surgeon and
medical practitioner were at one time looked down upon and classed
with the shopkeepers, and trade in all its branches was viewed as a
necessary occupation, but only to be undertaken by the uneducated
and unrefined. But nowadays parents are taking what appears to be
a more commonsense view of the question. Their sons cannot all
of them be landed proprietors, clergymen, lawyers, or soldiers,
and they are, therefore, sent to banks and offices and breweries,
or may be they are exported to grow oranges or to mind sheep in
one of the colonies. Positions in life once looked down upon are
now thought better of, for men and women do not speak ill of the
positions which may be occupied by their children or by their near
relatives.
But while it would appear that we are beginning to give fuller
play to individual power and industry, no one would be prepared
for a moment to assert that these qualities have as yet free
scope for their action. Still the tendency has recently been in
the direction of a breaking up of the more artificially imposed
barriers between class and class, so that wealth and power is more
readily accessible to those who were once debarred from all hope
of it by birth; while the children of the well-to-do can take up
positions which were at one time thought to be quite unworthy of
them. This, then, seems to be the tendency of modern democratic
effort, but it is very questionable whether the result eventually
achievable is one which, if understood, will be very acceptable to
the democracy. Class distinctions of a very artificial kind are,
undoubtedly, being rapidly destroyed, but only by the reconstruction
of others of a most enduring character. The advantages which the
future holds out are, as they always have been, to the few and not
to the many, for the struggle and competition is still there, and
all cannot come in abreast. By a more complete and thorough sifting
from all classes of the capable and intelligent, we are forming,
and shall continue rapidly to form an aristocracy of real worth
and distinction, separated more and more sharply from the masses,
as each generation goes by.
We can hardly doubt that the more capable will always have at their
disposal more to satisfy their wants than the relatively incapable
masses will have, for society will always continue to expend upon the
musical composer or upon the skilful engineer a care which would be
thrown away upon a man capable of only a limited development, since
the resources of a community, nay of the whole earth itself, are
strictly limited, and a due proportion only of these resources must
be utilised as necessity dictates. It is quite possible that the
present standard of comfort of the labouring classes may be in the
future greatly raised, and their horizon widened; still, relatively
to others, they will always be poor. If everyone is able to dress
in silk and to eat lamb and green peas, then this privilege will
cease to be valued, for we set store not on what we possess, but
on what we do not possess. The field and town labourers to-day eat
better food, dress better, and have far greater advantages than had
their fathers, yet relatively to other classes they remain what
their fathers were. They are “poor men,” they pity themselves, and
the more ambitious strive for what they see others in possession
of. At the present time the poor man may, with some show of reason
and hope of succeeding in greater things, be discontented with
his lot, and wish for other pursuits and other advantages, for
which he may feel himself to be, and in many cases is, most aptly
fitted; but if the present tendencies continue, whereby the best
amongst them rise to higher things as the necessary consequence of
their ambition, there will not be found amongst the labourers of
the future any considerable number left who will have sufficient
innate capacity to undertake pursuits requiring much mental effort
and bodily skill. Class will then be separate from class by real
organic differences, and the idea of social equality, ridiculous
enough as it now appears to most of us, will then have become a
demonstrated absurdity, as having contained the impossible idea
that things that are unlike can be at the same time alike.
_Those who Succeed are Not Always the Best._
We cannot leave this question of the struggle between one individual
and another without noticing a point of great interest and importance.
We have seen that society is giving to the capable of all classes
increased facilities to acquire wealth and position, and is tending
to form of this capable section an upper class.
Now, unfortunately, this selection is carried out only on certain
lines, and it does not follow that this upper class will invoke our
entire sympathy and approbation. In biological works we frequently
hear of the “survival of the fittest,” and the expression is used by
biologists in quite a special and technical sense. It does not mean
of necessity that the most active or intelligent always survive;
indeed, this is far from being a rule of universal application.
Often the most fit are inactive and mentally inert, as when the tame
duck with useless wings and the mole with useless eyes is preserved
while others die off. In these cases the wings and eyes are useless,
and, although the animals looked at by themselves would appear to
have become less excellent, yet in view of their surroundings they
have a better chance than would be the case were their endowments
of a higher order. Biologists use then the term “fit,” simply in
the sense of “fit to get on in the world,” and often intrinsically
inferior animals and men are “fit” in this sense of the term.
Now, those who are to form this upper class, or classes, of which
we have been speaking, will be fit in the technical meaning of
the word, for they will have been able best to conform to the
conditions necessary for their advancement laid down by society at
large. Whether or not these fit will form an aristocracy of high
merit will depend upon the kind of conditions with which they have
to comply, in fact it will depend upon the selection that society
makes.
Does it not appear that the present tendency is rather to give an
advantage to the man who is capable, pushing and diplomatic; are we
not selecting men with qualities of value in a struggle, qualities
which savour still rather of talons and claws, while we are careless
of qualities which we have learned already to value as those of
a higher order? In following out a train of reasoning like this,
where there are no means of obtaining definite evidence, one can
only go upon the general impressions of life which it has been in
our power to obtain. Do not these impressions force us to believe
that the man who most invariably gets on best is he who untiringly
follows out his own advantage, who has one end and aim in life,
which he pursues regardless of everything else; and that a course of
life like this necessarily implies selfishness and want of regard
for the well-being of others? We see so many men around us of the
greatest capacity, unselfish and unblemished at the same time, and
yet they do not get on, but are passed by men who, in most ways
their inferiors, possess instinctively the power to follow out in
detail that course which leads quickest to success. How often do we
not hear of the generosity of the poor, and of the way in which they
assist each other in need and sickness? Do we ever ask ourselves if
it could not more truly be said that the _generous are the poor_,
that generosity almost of necessity implies a temperament unsuited
to the neck to neck struggle which society is increasingly imposing
upon those of her citizens who aspire to be rich?
Therefore, although we may be thoroughly in sympathy with the
democratic changes just alluded to, and may view these as necessarily
preludes to a better condition of things, we must not shut our
eyes to their dangers, and must not be deceived into looking upon
them as capable of achieving by themselves very desirable or final
results.
FOOTNOTE
[26] Consult “Darwinism and Politics,” by Professor D. G. Ritchie,
2nd Edit., p. vi., upon the interference of property with natural
selection.