Statistics show that, since the introduction of civilization, the
population of the earth in general has increased. No one can fail
to observe that under its influence the means of subsistence have
increased even more rapidly than the population. Far from suffering for
lack of food, the most densely peopled countries are those in which it
is, not only absolutely but even relatively most abundant. A thousand
men live to-day in plenty upon an area of ground that would scarcely
afford a scanty and precarious subsistence to a single savage. There
is no denying the fact that happiness is increased by civilization.
To talk of the free and noble savage is folly. The true savage is
neither free nor noble. He is a slave to his own wants, his own
passions. Imperfectly protected as he is from the weather, he suffers
at night from the cold and by day from the heat of the sun. Ignorant of
agriculture, living by the chase, and improvident in success, hunger
ever stares him in the face, and often drives him to the dreadful
alternative of cannibalism or death. The life of all beasts in their
wild state is certainly an exceedingly anxious one. So it is with the
savage. He is always suspicious, always in danger, always on the watch.
He can depend on no one, and no one can depend upon him, for he expects
nothing from his neighbor, and does unto others as he believes that
they would do unto him. His life is one prolonged scene of selfishness
and fear. Even in his religion, if he has any, he creates for himself
a new source of terror, and peoples the world with invisible enemies.
More wretched is the position of the female savage than that of her
master, for she not only shares his sufferings, but has also to bear
his ill-humor and ill-usage, being little better than his dog, little
dearer than his horse. Few of them, it is believed, are so fortunate
as to die a natural death, being despatched ere they become old and
emaciated, that so much good food shall not be lost. Indeed, so
little importance is attached to women, either before or after death,
that it may be doubted whether the man does not esteem his dog, when
alive, quite as much as he does his woman, and think of both quite as
often and as lovingly after he has made a meal of them. Not content,
moreover, with the pleasures incident to their mode of life, savages
appear to take a melancholy delight in self-inflicted sufferings. They
not only tattoo their bodies, but practise the most extraordinary
methods of disfigurement and self-torture, some amputating the little
finger, while others drill immense holes in the under-lip, or pierce
the cartilage of the nose. These and many other curious practices, none
the less painful because they are voluntary, are in vogue among savage
people. Turning now to the bright side of the question, we cannot but
conclude that the pleasures of civilized man are greater than those of
the savage. While man will never be able to improve the organization
of the eye or the ear, yet, on the other hand, the invention of the
telescope and the microscope is equivalent in its results to an immense
improvement of the eyes, thus opening up to us new worlds, fresh
sources of interest and happiness, while the training of the ear will
enable us to invent new musical instruments and compose new melodies.
The savage, like a child, sees and hears only that which is brought
directly before him, but the civilized man questions nature, and by
the various processes of chemistry, electricity and magnetism, and a
thousand ingenious contrivances, forces nature to reveal herself,
thereby discovering hidden uses and unsuspected beauties, quite as
marvellously as though he were endowed with some entirely new organ of
sense. Through the discovery of printing, we are brought into communion
with the greatest minds, and thus the thoughts of a Shakespeare or a
Tennyson, or the discoveries of a Newton or a Darwin, become the common
property of mankind. Already the results of this all-important, though
simple, process have vastly improved our mental faculties, and day by
day, as books become cheaper, schools are established and education
more general, a greater and greater effect will be produced.
Nor are all these new sources of happiness accompanied by any new
liability to suffering. On the contrary, while our pleasures are
increased, our pains are lessened. In a thousand ways we can avoid or
diminish evils which to our ancestors were great and unavoidable. No
one can estimate the misery which, for instance, the simple discovery
of chloroform has spared the human race. The capacity for pain, so
far as it can serve as a warning, remains all the same, but the
necessity for endurance has been greatly diminished. With increased
knowledge of the laws of health, and attention thereto, disease will
become less and less frequent, and those tendencies to disease which
we have inherited from our ancestors will gradually die out, and, if
fresh seeds are not sown, the race will one day enjoy the inestimable
advantages of a more vigorous and healthy existence. Thus, then, with
the increasing influence of science we may confidently look forward to
a great improvement in the condition of man. But it may be alleged that
our present sufferings and sorrows arise chiefly from sin, and that
any moral improvement must come from religion and not from science.
This separation of the two mighty agents of improvement, the great
misfortune of humanity, has done more than anything else to retard
the progress of civilization. But even if we admit for the nonce that
science will not render us more virtuous, it must certainly make us
more innocent, for in fact the most of our criminal population are
mere savages, persons who can rarely read and write, and whose crimes
are but injudicious and desperate attempts to live a savage life in
the midst, and at the expense, of a civilized community. Men do wrong
either from ignorance or in the hope, unexpressed perhaps even to
themselves, that they may enjoy the pleasure and yet avoid the penalty
of sin. All that they have to do they think, when they have committed
sin, is to repent. The religious teaching of the day has much to do
with this misapprehension. Repentance is too frequently regarded as a
substitute for punishment. Sin it is thought is followed either by the
one or the other. So far, therefore, as this world is concerned, this
is not the case; repentance may enable a man to avoid sin in future,
but has no effect on the consequences of the past. The laws of nature
are not only just and salutary, but they are also inexorable. While
all men admit that “the wages of sin is death,” yet they seem to think
that this is a general rule to which there may be many exceptions,
that some sins may possibly tend to happiness. That suffering is the
inevitable consequence of sin, as surely as an effect follows a cause,
is the stern yet salutary teaching of science. And certainly if this
lesson were thoroughly impressed upon our minds, that punishment and
not happiness is the consequence of sin, then temptation, which is
the very root of crime, would be cut away, and mankind must therefore
necessarily become more innocent. May we not go still further and
say that science will also render us more virtuous? He who studies
philosophy can only obtain a just idea of the great things for which
Providence has fitted his understanding. Such a study not only makes
our lives more agreeable, but it also makes them better, and every
motive of interest and duty should constrain a rational being to direct
his mind towards pursuits which all experience has shown to be the sure
path of virtue and happiness.
Man is in reality but on the threshold of civilization. Far from
showing any indication of having reached the end, the tendency to
improvement seems laterally to have proceeded with augmented impetus
and accelerated rapidity. There is no reason to suppose that it must
now cease. Man has not attained the limits of intellectual development,
nor exhausted the infinite capabilities of nature. There are many
things not yet dreamt of in our philosophy which science must reveal,
many discoveries yet to be made which will confer upon the human race
advantages which as yet, perhaps, we are not in a condition to grasp
and appreciate. We seem, when we compare our present knowledge with
the great ocean of truth that lies all undiscovered before us, like
little children playing on the sea-shore, and picking up a smoother
pebble and prettier shell than any they had met with before. Thus, it
is obvious, that our most sanguine hopes for the future are justified
by the entire experience of the past. It is surely unreasonable to
presume that a process which has been going on for so many thousand
years should have now suddenly ceased; and he must indeed be blind
who thinks that our civilization is unsusceptible of improvement, or
that we ourselves are in the highest state possible for man to attain.
Theory, as well as experience, forces the same conclusion upon us. That
principle of Natural Selection, which in animals affects the body and
seems to have little influence on the mind, in man affects the mind and
has little influence on the body. In the former it leads mainly to the
preservation of life, and in the latter to the improvement of the mind,
and consequently to the increase of happiness. It ensures, in the words
of Spencer, “a constant progress towards a higher skill, intelligence,
and self-regulation--a better coördination of actions--a more complete
life.” Nearly all the evils under which we suffer, it will be conceded,
may be attributed either to ignorance or sin. That ignorance will be
diminished by the progress of science is, of course, self-evident;
and that the same will be the case with sin, seems little less so.
Thus, then, do both science and theory point to the same conclusion.
That which poets hardly dared to hope for, the future happiness of our
race, science boldly predicts. Even in our own time we trust to see
some wonderful improvement. But the unselfish mind, however, will find
its highest gratification in the belief that, whatever may be the case
with ourselves, our descendants will understand many things which are
mysterious to us now, will better appreciate the beautiful world in
which we live, avoid much of the suffering to which we are subject,
enjoy many blessings of which we are not yet worthy, and escape many of
those temptations which we deplore but cannot wholly resist.
We have thus seen that all life has been progressive. There has been
through the ages a steadily growing upward tendency to higher life.
But the changes have mainly been in the line of physical form and
structure. And such, too, had been the case with man, until his social,
intellectual and moral faculties had begun to assert themselves, when
his body ceased in a great measure to be acted upon by physical laws,
and development began to manifest itself in a higher type of mental
organization. From the low, simple, childlike mind of palæolithic man
has come that wonderful intellect which now characterizes the Germanic
races, and which is destined to make itself felt in its contact
with all the earth. Those peoples that are able to embrace the new
civilization brought to their doors, so to speak, will survive, while
the others, unable to adapt themselves thereto, like the Tasmanian,
will succumb in the struggle with a superior being and go to the
wall. Animals and plants will be brought into new relations and new
conditions, and such as can meet the new requirements will, as certain
species have done before, endure. They will, in other words, have
partaken of an enlightened civilization. Thus things will go on until
all life, vegetal and animal, will be brought under the controlling
and elevating influence of man, and then will be inaugurated on earth
that condition when the lion and the kid shall lie down together, and
a little child shall be found in their midst. Nothing harmful will
anywhere exist. Heaven will then have been brought down to earth, and
peace and harmony will universally prevail. Then will have come the
complete triumph of mind over body. All growth and development of the
reformed and regenerated earth-man will be in the direction of mind,
and his accomplishments will he share with the inferior subjects of his
peaceful and happy domain. Progression, however, will not cease, but
will go on steadily advancing as the years increase. And if there is a
life beyond the earth-life, then the intellect or mind, or soul if you
please, shall, in some form or other, exist therein, and reach up into
higher and yet higher growth and development.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
Among organic beings in a state of nature there is some individual
variability. This is an admission about which there can be no dispute.
But the mere existence of individual variability and of a few
well-marked varieties, though necessary as the foundation for the work,
assists us but little in understanding how species originate in nature.
Those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organization to another
part, and to the conditions of life, and of one organic being to
another being, which we know to exist, seem as mysteries. We see them
in the humblest parasite that clings to the hairs of a quadruped or the
feathers of a bird, in the structure of the beetle that dives through
the water, and in the plumed seed that is wafted by the gentlest
breeze. In short, we see beautiful adaptations everywhere and in every
part of the organic world. And yet, how few have paused while admiring
these beautiful and wonderful co-adaptations to ask themselves the
question: How have these been perfected?
If the existence of any well-marked varieties be admitted, how is it
that these varieties, which may be denominated incipient species,
become ultimately converted into good and distinct species, which
in the generality of cases obviously differ from each in a greater
degree than do the varieties of the same species? How do these groups
of species, which constitute what are authoritatively called genera,
and which differ from each other more than do the species of the same
genus, arise? All these results, as will presently be seen, follow from
the Struggle for Existence. Owing to this struggle, all variations,
no matter how slight they may be, or from what cause soever they may
proceed, will, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals
of a species in their infinitely complex relations to other organic
beings and their physical conditions of life, unavoidably conduce to
the preservation of such individuals, and generally be inherited by
the offspring. The offspring, too, will thus have a better chance
of surviving, for, of the many individuals of a species that are
periodically born, but a very small number can survive. That principle,
by which each slight variation, if useful to the individual, is
preserved, has been termed Natural Selection by Darwin, in order to
distinguish it from the selection which is exercised by man over the
plants and animals which he has brought under subjection for his own
wants. But the expression--Survival of the Fittest--so frequently used
by Spencer, is more accurate, and sometimes equally convenient. Man can
certainly produce great results by this power, and can adapt, through
the accumulation of slight but useful variations given to him by the
hand of nature, organic beings to his own uses. But Natural Selection,
as is well known, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as
infinitely superior to man’s feeble efforts as the works of nature are
to those of art.
All organic beings are exposed to severe competition. Nothing is
easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle
for life, or more difficult than constantly to bear this conclusion,
which has been reached through the investigations and researches of De
Candolle, Lyell, Herbert, Darwin and others, in mind. Unless, however,
it be thoroughly ingrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature,
with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction and
variation, will be but dimly perceived or quite misunderstood. We
behold the face of nature radiant with gladness, and food everywhere
in excessive abundance, but we do not see that the birds which are
happily singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are
thus constantly destroying life, or we fail to remember how largely
these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by
birds and beasts of prey. Yes, we do not always bear in mind that,
though food may now be superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of
each recurring year. The term, Struggle for Existence, must be used in
a large and metaphorical sense. It must be construed to include the
dependence of one being on another, and also not only the life of the
individual but also its success in leaving offspring. Two carnivores,
in a time of scarcity of food, may be truly said to struggle with each
other for maintenance of life. But a plant on the edge of a desert
is said to struggle for life against the drought, though, properly
speaking, it is dependent for its existence upon the moisture. A plant,
however, that annually produces many thousand seeds of which on an
average only one comes to maturity, may in a much truer sense be said
to struggle with the plants of the same and other kinds which already
invest the ground. While the mistletoe is dependent on the apple and
some other trees, yet it cannot be said, unless in a far-fetched sense,
to struggle with these trees, for, if too many of these parasites are
found upon the same tree, it will certainly languish and die. Several
seedling mistletoes, however, growing close together upon the same
branch, may more truly be said to struggle with each other.
From the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase, there
must inevitably follow a Struggle for Existence. Every being which,
during its natural lifetime, produces several eggs or seeds, must
necessarily suffer destruction during some part of that period, and
during some season or occasional year, otherwise, on the principle
of Geometrical Increase, its numbers would become so inordinately
excessive that no country would be able to support its product.
Therefore, as more individuals are produced than can possibly
survive, there must be in every case a Struggle for Existence, either
one individual struggling with another of the same kind, or with
individuals of distinct kinds or species, or with the conditions of
the environment. This is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold
force to the entire vegetable and animal kingdoms. Although some
species may be now increasing at a very high rate in numbers, yet
all cannot do so, for the earth would not be able to contain them.
Slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and should he go
on at this rate for a few thousand years, there would literally not
be standing room for his progeny. It has been calculated that, if an
annual plant produced only two seeds, and their seedlings next year
produced two, and the same rate of increase was kept up for twenty
years, there would be a million of plants as the result. Even the
elephant, which is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals,
would after a period of from seven hundred and forty to seven hundred
and fifty years leave nearly nineteen million elephants as descendants
from the first pair.
Much better evidence than mere theoretical calculations are not wanting
on this subject. Instances are recorded of the astonishingly rapid
increase of various animals in a state of nature, when conditions have
been favorable to them, during two or three succeeding seasons. More
striking, however, is the evidence from domestic animals that have run
wild in several parts of the world. Were not the statements of the
rate of increase of cattle and horses in South America, and latterly
in Australia, where millions now abound, well authenticated, they
would have been incredible. Cases could be mentioned of introduced
plants that have become quite common throughout entire islands in a
period of less than twelve years. Several of these plants, the cardoon
and a rare thistle, which were introduced from Europe, clothe square
leagues of the surface of the wide plains of the La Plata almost to the
exclusion of all other plants; and there are plants which now range in
India, from Cape Comorin to the Himalaya, which have been imported from
America since its discovery. In all such cases, and endless instances
could be adduced, no intelligent person supposes that their fertility
has been increased in any sensible degree by change of habitat, the
obvious explanation being that the conditions of environment have been
very favorable, and that there has consequently been less destruction
of old and young, and that nearly all the latter have been enabled
to breed. The extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion of
naturalized productions in new homes, a result which never fails
to evoke surprise, is only to be explained on the principle of the
Geometrical Ratio of Increase. As in nature almost every plant produces
seed, and there are very few animals that do not annually pair,
therefore we can confidently assert that all plants and animals are
tending to increase in a geometrical ratio; that all would most rapidly
stock every station in which they could in any way exist, and that the
tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of
life. Among our larger domestic animals we see no great destruction
falling on them. We forget that thousands are annually slaughtered
for food, and that in a natural state an equal number would have to
be disposed of in some way or other. Between organisms which annually
produce seeds or eggs by the thousands, and those which produce
extremely few, the only difference is that the slow breeders would
require a few more years to people, under favorable conditions, a whole
district, let it be ever so large. But a couple of eggs are laid by the
condor, while the ostrich lays a score. Yet in the same country the
condor may be the more abundant of the two. The Fulmer petrel lays but
a single egg, yet it is believed to be the most numerous bird in the
world. A large number of eggs is of some importance to those species
which depend upon a rapidly-fluctuating quantity of food, for it
permits them to increase rapidly in number; but the real importance of
a large number of eggs or seeds is to make up for the great destruction
that goes on at some period of life, and this period in the vast
majority of cases is an early one. If an animal can in any way protect
its own eggs or young, a small number may be produced, and the average
stock be kept up; but if many eggs or young are destroyed, then many
must be produced or the species will become extinct. Therefore, the
average number of any animal or plant depends, though only indirectly,
upon the number of its eggs or seeds. We should never forget, in taking
a survey of nature, that every single organic being around us may be
said to be striving to the utmost to augment its members; that each
lives by a struggle at some period of its existence, and that heavy
destruction falls either on the young or old during each generation or
at recurrent intervals. Let any check be lightened, or the destruction
be mitigated ever so little, and the number of the species will almost
instantaneously increase to any extent.