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
transformations? 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",
Auguste 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 determininism. 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: panta
rei. As to the categories of political economy, it was soon to be
recognised, as by Lassalle, 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." (P. Flourens, "Examen du Livre
de M. Darwin sur l'Origine des Especes", page 53, Paris, 1864. See also
Huxley, "Criticisms on the 'Origin of Species'", "Collected Essays",
Vol. II, page 102, London, 1902.) 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 Galton, Darwin's cousin. The
author of "Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development" ("Inquiries
into Human Faculty", pages 1, 2, 3 sq., London, 1883.), 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" ("Darwinism and Politics" pages
9, 22, London, 1889.) 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." ("Life and Letters of
Charles Darwin", II. page 385.) 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.
But thinkers do not always content themselves with undertaking merely
the minute researches which the idea of Selection suggests. They are
eager to defend this or that thesis. In the name of this idea certain
social anthropologists have recast the conception of the process of
civilisation, and have affirmed that Social Selection generally works
against the trend of Natural Selection. Vacher de Lapouge--following
up an observation by Broca on the point--enumerates the various
institutions, or customs, such as the celibacy of priests and military
conscription, which cause elimination or sterilisation of the bearers of
certain superior qualities, intellectual or physical. In a more general
way he attacks the democratic movement, a movement, as P. Bourget says,
which is "anti-physical" and contrary to the natural laws of progress;
though it has been inspired "by the dreams of that most visionary of all
centuries, the eighteenth." (V. de Lapouge, "Les Selections sociales",
page 259, Paris, 1896.) The "Equality" which levels down and mixes
(justly condemned, he holds, by the Comte de Gobineau), prevents the
aristocracy of the blond dolichocephales from holding the position and
playing the part which, in the interests of all, should belong to them.
Otto Ammon, in his "Natural Selection in Man", and in "The Social Order
and its Natural Bases" ("Die naturliche Auslese beim Menschen", Jena,
1893; "Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen".
"Entwurf einer Sozialanthropologie", Jena, 1896.), defended analogous
doctrines in Germany; setting the curve representing frequency of talent
over against that of income, he attempted to show that all democratic
measures which aim at promoting the rise in the social scale of the
talented are useless, if not dangerous; that they only increase the
panmixia, to the great detriment of the species and of society.
Among the aristocratic theories which Darwinism has thus inspired
we must reckon that of Nietzsche. It is well known that in order to
complete his philosophy he added biological studies to his philological;
and more than once in his remarks upon the "Wille zur Macht" he
definitely alludes to Darwin; though it must be confessed that it is
generally in order to proclaim the in sufficiency of the processes by
which Darwin seeks to explain the genesis of species. Nevertheless,
Nietzsche's mind is completely possessed by an ideal of Selection.
He, too, has a horror of panmixia. The naturalists' conception of "the
fittest" is joined by him to that of the "hero" of romance to furnish a
basis for his doctrine of the Superman. Let us hasten to add, moreover,
that at the very moment when support was being sought in the theory of
Selection for the various forms of the aristocratic doctrine, those same
forms were being battered down on another side by means of that very
theory. Attention was drawn to the fact that by virtue of the laws which
Darwin himself had discovered isolation leads to etiolation. There is
a risk that the privilege which withdraws the privileged elements of
Society from competition will cause them to degenerate. In fact, Jacoby
in his "Studies in Selection, in connexion with Heredity in Man",
("Etudes sur la Selection dans ses rapports avec l'heredite chez
l'homme", Paris, page 481, 1881.), concludes that "sterility, mental
debility, premature death and, finally, the extinction of the stock
were not specially and exclusively the fate of sovereign dynasties; all
privileged classes, all families in exclusively elevated positions share
the fate of reigning families, although in a minor degree and in direct
proportion to the loftiness of their social standing. From the mass of
human beings spring individuals, families, races, which tend to raise
themselves above the common level; painfully they climb the rugged
heights, attain the summits of power, of wealth, of intelligence, of
talent, and then, no sooner are they there than they topple down and
disappear in gulfs of mental and physical degeneracy." The demographical
researches of Hansen ("Die drei Bevolkerungsstufen", Munich, 1889.)
(following up and completing Dumont's) tended, indeed, to show that
urban as well as feudal aristocracies, burgher classes as well as noble
castes, were liable to become effete. Hence it might well be concluded
that the democratic movement, operating as it does to break down class
barriers, was promoting instead of impeding human selection.
So we see that, according to the point of view, very different
conclusions have been drawn from the application of the Darwinian idea
of Selection to human society. Darwin's other central idea, closely
bound up with this, that, namely, of the "struggle for existence" also
has been diversely utilised. But discussion has chiefly centered upon
its signification. And while some endeavour to extend its application to
everything, we find others trying to limit its range. The conception of
a "struggle for existence" has in the present day been taken up into
the social sciences from natural science, and adopted. But originally it
descended from social science to natural. Darwin's law is, as he himself
said, only Malthus' law generalised and extended to the animal world: a
growing disproportion between the supply of food and the number of
the living is the fatal order whence arises the necessity of universal
struggle, a struggle which, to the great advantage of the species,
allows only the best equipped individuals to survive. Nature is regarded
by Huxley as an immense arena where all living beings are gladiators.
("Evolution and Ethics", page 200; "Collected Essays", Vol. IX, London,
1894.)
Such a generalisation was well adapted to feed the stream of pessimistic
thought; and it furnished to the apologists of war, in particular, new
arguments, weighted with all the authority which in these days attaches
to scientific deliverances. If people no longer say, as Bonald did, and
Moltke after him, that war is a providential fact, they yet lay stress
on the point that it is a natural fact. To the peace party Dragomirov's
objection is urged that its attempts are contrary to the fundamental
laws of nature, and that no sea wall can hold against breakers that come
with such gathered force.
But in yet another quarter Darwinism was represented as opposed to
philanthropic intervention. The defenders of the orthodox political
economy found in it support for their tenets. Since in the organic world
universal struggle is the condition of progress, it seemed obvious that
free competition must be allowed to reign unchecked in the economic
world. Attempts to curb it were in the highest degree imprudent. The
spirit of Liberalism here seemed in conformity with the trend of nature:
in this respect, at least, contemporary naturalism, offspring of the
discoveries of the nineteenth century, brought reinforcements to the
individualist doctrine, begotten of the speculations of the eighteenth:
but only, it appeared, to turn mankind away for ever from humanitarian
dreams. Would those whom such conclusions repelled be content to oppose
to nature's imperatives only the protests of the heart? There were some
who declared, like Brunetiere, that the laws in question, valid though
they might be for the animal kingdom, were not applicable to the human.
And so a return was made to the classic dualism. This indeed seems to be
the line that Huxley took, when, for instance, he opposed to the cosmic
process an ethical process which was its reverse.
But the number of thinkers whom this antithesis does not satisfy grows
daily. Although the pessimism which claims authorisation from Darwin's
doctrines is repugnant to them, they still are unable to accept the
dualism which leaves a gulf between man and nature. And their endeavour
is to link the two by showing that while Darwin's laws obtain in both
kingdoms, the conditions of their application are not the same: their
forms, and, consequently, their results, vary with the varying mediums
in which the struggle of living beings takes place, with the means
these beings have at disposal, with the ends even which they propose to
themselves.
Here we have the explanation of the fact that among determined opponents
of war partisans of the "struggle for existence" can be found: there are
disciples of Darwin in the peace party. Novicow, for example, admits
the "combat universel" of which Le Dantec ("Les Luttes entre Societies
humaines et leurs phases successives", Paris, 1893,) speaks; but he
remarks that at different stages of evolution, at different stages of
life the same weapons are not necessarily employed. Struggles of brute
force, armed hand to hand conflicts, may have been a necessity in the
early phases of human societies. Nowadays, although competition may
remain inevitable and indispensable, it can assume milder forms.
Economic rivalries, struggles between intellectual influences, suffice
to stimulate progress: the processes which these admit are, in the
actual state of civilisation, the only ones which attain their end
without waste, the only ones logical. From one end to the other of the
ladder of life, struggle is the order of the day; but more and more
as the higher rungs are reached, it takes on characters which are
proportionately more "humane."
Reflections of this kind permit the introduction into the economic order
of limitations to the doctrine of "laisser faire, laisser passer." This
appeals, it is said, to the example of nature where creatures, left to
themselves, struggle without truce and without mercy; but the fact
is forgotten that upon industrial battlefields the conditions are
different. The competitors here are not left simply to their natural
energies: they are variously handicapped. A rich store of artificial
resources exists in which some participate and others do not. The sides
then are unequal; and as a consequence the result of the struggle is
falsified. "In the animal world," said De Laveleye ("Le socialisme
contemporain", page 384 (6th edition), Paris, 1891.), criticising
Spencer, "the fate of each creature is determined by its individual
qualities; whereas in civilised societies a man may obtain the highest
position and the most beautiful wife because he is rich and well-born,
although he may be ugly, idle or improvident; and then it is he who will
perpetuate the species. The wealthy man, ill constituted, incapable,
sickly, enjoys his riches and establishes his stock under the protection
of the laws." Haycraft in England and Jentsch in Germany have strongly
emphasised these "anomalies," which nevertheless are the rule. That is
to say that even from a Darwinian point of view all social reforms
can readily be justified which aim at diminishing, as Wallace said,
inequalities at the start.
But we can go further still. Whence comes the idea that all measures
inspired by the sentiment of solidarity are contrary to Nature's
trend? Observe her carefully, and she will not give lessons only in
individualism. Side by side with the struggle for existence do we not
find in operation what Lanessan calls "association for existence." Long
ago, Espinas had drawn attention to "societies of animals," temporary or
permanent, and to the kind of morality that arose in them. Since then,
naturalists have often insisted upon the importance of various forms
of symbiosis. Kropotkin in "Mutual Aid" has chosen to enumerate many
examples of altruism furnished by animals to mankind. Geddes and Thomson
went so far as to maintain that "Each of the greater steps of progress
is in fact associated with an increased measure of subordination
of individual competition to reproductive or social ends, and of
interspecific competition to co-operative association." (Geddes and
Thomson, "The Evolution of Sex", page 311, London, 1889.) Experience
shows, according to Geddes, that the types which are fittest to surmount
great obstacles are not so much those who engage in the fiercest
competitive struggle for existence, as those who contrive to temper it.
From all these observations there resulted, along with a limitation
of Darwinian pessimism, some encouragement for the aspirations of the
collectivists.
And Darwin himself would, doubtless, have subscribed to these
rectifications. He never insisted, like his rival, Wallace, upon the
necessity of the solitary struggle of creatures in a state of nature,
each for himself and against all. On the contrary, in "The Descent of
Man", he pointed out the serviceableness of the social instincts, and
corroborated Bagehot's statements when the latter, applying laws of
physics to politics, showed the great advantage societies derived from
intercourse and communion. Again, the theory of sexual evolution which
makes the evolution of types depend increasingly upon preferences,
judgments, mental factors, surely offers something to qualify what seems
hard and brutal in the theory of natural selection.
But, as often happens with disciples, the Darwinians had out-Darwined
Darwin. The extravagancies of social Darwinism provoked a useful
reaction; and thus people were led to seek, even in the animal kingdom,
for facts of solidarity which would serve to justify humane effort.
On quite another line, however, an attempt has been made to connect
socialist tendencies with Darwinian principles. Marx and Darwin have
been confronted; and writers have undertaken to show that the work of
the German philosopher fell readily into line with that of the English
naturalist and was a development of it. Such has been the endeavour of
Ferri in Italy and of Woltmann in Germany, not to mention others. The
founders of "scientific socialism" had, moreover, themselves thought of
this reconciliation. They make more than one allusion to Darwin in works
which appeared after 1859. And sometimes they use his theory to define
by contrast their own ideal. They remark that the capitalist system, by
giving free course to individual competition, ends indeed in a bellum
omnium contra omnes; and they make it clear that Darwinism, thus
understood, is as repugnant to them as to Duhring.
But it is at the scientific and not at the moral point of view that they
place themselves when they connect their economic history with
Darwin's work. Thanks to this unifying hypothesis, they claim to have
constructed--as Marx does in his preface to "Das Kapital"--a veritable
natural history of social evolution. Engels speaks in praise of his
friend Marx as having discovered the true mainspring of history hidden
under the veil of idealism and sentimentalism, and as having proclaimed
in the primum vivere the inevitableness of the struggle for existence.
Marx himself, in "Das Kapital", indicated another analogy when he dwelt
upon the importance of a general technology for the explanation of this
psychology:--a history of tools which would be to social organs what
Darwinism is to the organs of animal species. And the very importance
they attach to tools, to apparatus, to machines, abundantly proves that
neither Marx nor Engels were likely to forget the special characters
which mark off the human world from the animal. The former always
remains to a great extent an artificial world. Inventions change the
face of its institutions. New modes of production revolutionise not only
modes of government, but modes even of collective thought. Therefore it
is that the evolution of society is controlled by laws special to it, of
which the spectacle of nature offers no suggestion.
If, however, even in this special sphere, it can still be urged that
the evolution of the material conditions of society is in accord
with Darwin's theory, it is because the influence of the methods of
production is itself to be explained by the incessant strife of the
various classes with each other. So that in the end Marx, like Darwin,
finds the source of all progress in struggle. Both are grandsons of
Heraclitus:--polemos pater panton. It sometimes happens, in these days,
that the doctrine of revolutionary socialism is contrasted as rude and
healthy with what may seem to be the enervating tendency of "solidarist"
philanthropy: the apologists of the doctrine then pride themselves above
all upon their faithfulness to Darwinian principles.
So far we have been mainly concerned to show the use that social
philosophies have made of the Darwinian laws for practical purposes:
in order to orientate society towards their ideals each school tries to
show that the authority of natural science is on its side. But even
in the most objective of theories, those which systematically make
abstraction of all political tendencies in order to study the social
reality in itself, traces of Darwinism are readily to be found.
Let us take for example Durkheim's theory of Division of Labour ("De la
Division du Travail social", Paris, 1893.) The conclusions he
derives from it are that whenever professional specialisation causes
multiplication of distinct branches of activity, we get organic
solidarity--implying differences--substituted for mechanical solidarity,
based upon likenesses. The umbilical cord, as Marx said, which connects
the individual consciousness with the collective consciousness is cut.
The personality becomes more and more emancipated. But on what does this
phenomenon, so big with consequences, itself depend? The author goes to
social morphology for the answer: it is, he says, the growing density
of population which brings with it this increasing differentiation of
activities. But, again, why? Because the greater density, in thrusting
men up against each other, augments the intensity of their competition
for the means of existence; and for the problems which society thus has
to face differentiation of functions presents itself as the gentlest
solution.
Here one sees that the writer borrows directly from Darwin. Competition
is at its maximum between similars, Darwin had declared; different
species, not laying claim to the same food, could more easily coexist.
Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the same oak hundreds
of different insects might be found. Other things being equal, the same
applies to society. He who finds some unadopted speciality possesses a
means of his own for getting a living. It is by this division of their
manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush each other. Here
we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as intermediary in the
explanation of that progress of division of labour which itself explains
so much in the social evolution.
And we might take another example, at the other end of the series of
sociological systems. G. Tarde is a sociologist with the most pronounced
anti-naturalistic views. He has attempted to show that all application
of the laws of natural science to society is misleading. In his
"Opposition Universelle" he has directly combatted all forms of
sociological Darwinism. According to him the idea that the evolution of
society can be traced on the same plan as the evolution of species is
chimerical. Social evolution is at the mercy of all kinds of inventions,
which by virtue of the laws of imitation modify, through individual to
individual, through neighbourhood to neighbourhood, the general state
of those beliefs and desires which are the only "quantities" whose
variation matters to the sociologist. But, it may be rejoined, that
however psychical the forces may be, they are none the less subject
to Darwinian laws. They compete with each other; they struggle for the
mastery of minds. Between types of ideas, as between organic forms,
selection operates. And though it may be that these types are ushered
into the arena by unexpected discoveries, we yet recognise in the
psychological accidents, which Tarde places at the base of everything,
near relatives of those small accidental variations upon which Darwin
builds. Thus, accepting Tarde's own representations, it is
quite possible to express in Darwinian terms, with the necessary
transpositions, one of the most idealistic sociologies that have ever
been constructed.
These few examples suffice. They enable us to estimate the extent of the
field of influence of Darwinism. It affects sociology not only through
the agency of its advocates but through that of its opponents. The
questionings to which it has given rise have proved no less fruitful
than the solutions it has suggested. In short, few doctrines, in the
history of social philosophy, will have produced on their passage a
finer outcrop of ideas.
XXIV. THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. By P.N. Waggett,
M.A., S.S.J.E.