We have seen that under the law of evolution type tends to adapt itself to environment. It must so adapt itself or perish. There is no escape from this iron law. If the climate change from warm to cold, animals must put on blubber or fur; if the climate change from cold to hot, they must throw off blubber or fur. Those who adapt themselves to the change survive; those who do not adapt themselves die.
So also, if in a given community the individual can secure the necessaries of life only on the condition of outdoing his neighbor, it is those who most successfully outdo their neighbors who prevail; those who are outdone sink deeper and deeper into poverty and ultimately join the irreclaimable fifth.
The effect, then, of the competitive system on type is to stimulate the qualities that go to make upacquisitiveness; selfishness and all the necessary results of selfishness—avarice, greed, envy, injustice, hardness of heart.
It would be by no means fair to maintain that no man can be successful in business who is not cursed with all these vices. On the contrary, some of our greatest philanthropists have been successful business men. But philanthropy sometimes results from the blessed principle of reaction, under which vice, when it gets bad enough, creates a revulsion against evil. Reaction, however, is the eddy in the stream; and it is the stream and not the eddy that in the end counts.
The main, the essential, the inevitable result of private property is to promote selfishness, for the competitive system creates an artificial environment to which the human type must tend to conform. This artificial environment not only promotes selfishness at large, but tends to degrade every institution which man has invented in his effort to advance. Among these institutions, the two which have sprung from the noblest instincts in man, and ought most to tend to his improvement, are Marriage and the Church. Yet both are demoralized by the competitive system.
In the state of nature, animals tend to improve through sexual selection. By sexual selection is meant the fight between males for the female, the result of which is that the strongest males are the ones that perpetuate the type.
In the artificial environment produced by private property, a very different process is at work. Marriage tends to be determined by wealth rather than fitness; and the wealthy tend to have few children or none; whereas it is found that in the unwealthy classes, the poorest have the most children. Well-to-do peopleprotect themselves and their families from poverty by prudence, whereas, those who despair of escaping from poverty have no reason for refusing themselves what is often almost their only satisfaction; and the result is that while the houses of the rich tend to be desolate through childlessness, those of the poor are crowded with the offspring of despair.
The religious conception of Marriage that it is a sacrament has become practically obsolete; particularly in this so among the rich, whose daughters are annually offered for sale in the market of Mayfair as shamelessly as not long ago were Circassian girls in that of Istamboul.
The effect of private property on the Church is no less deplorable. It costs money to maintain a church; and the more splendidly a church is maintained the more money it costs. The priest has to live; bishops indeed have to live in a certain state. The Church, then, must have money. In some countries the Church secures money from the government, and is driven thereby into the questionable field of politics; in others, every individual church is thrown upon its own resources, and has either to make its services attractive by ritual, or to depend for its supplies upon one or two of the wealthy members of its congregation. It is not surprising, then, that under this subjection to wealth, Christians have abandoned the teaching of Christ, and forgotten that in early days they sold all and gave to the poor, contributed their earnings to a common stock, and resisted not evil but overcame evil with good.
Yet the Church has rendered, and is still rendering, a priceless service to man. Falter though she may, she has preserved for us the Gospel of Christ.
The blame rests not with the Church, but with the artificial environment which man has himself created,and to which he alone can put an end—the environment that appeals to the selfishness of man, and having made man selfish, insolently asserts that in no other environment can he be otherwise.
Man will be what his environment makes him.
If the environment stimulates selfishness, man will be selfish. If it stimulates unselfishness, he will be unselfish.
But man can by art so alter his environment that it will elicit the noble in man, instead of the base.
Let us now sum up the difference between human and natural evolution, and arrive at some conclusion regarding the part man has played, and may still play, in his own advancement.
Before the advent of man animal life prospered or degenerated according as the natural environment was favorable to progress or degeneration. The process of evolution was necessarily unconscious and undeliberate.
With the advent of man a new force appeared upon the face of the world, the power to modify the environment so as to make it serve human needs, and accord with human intention.
Before the advent of man, selection was exercised by Nature or the natural environment; since the advent of man it is man who has selected and not Nature; animals dangerous and useless to man have almost disappeared except in museums; and only those that are useful to him are allowed to survive.
Climate is no longer paramount; man by the use of tools, clothing, architecture, and other arts, contrives to-day to live in climates which were once fatal to him.
By increase of knowledge man has acquired a control of the forces of Nature, which makes him now a master where he was once a slave.
By increase of self-restraint—and self-restraint involves the subjection of natural instincts—man has developed qualities which permit of social existence unknown in any other race.
Without having lost the self-reliance that characterizes the solitary carnivora, he has, by resisting Nature—by such artificial institutions as that of marriage, and the education which results from family relations—developed all the social virtues. Ferocity has been tempered; lust has been reduced to subjection; in the place of the one we now see courage; in the place of the other chastity; craft is growing into wisdom; fear into reverence. He has substituted for the standard of Nature the standard of Morality, and the substitution of the standard of Morality for the standard of Nature has permitted men and women to live in the same community safe from the ferocity that drives the larger carnivora to solitude, and from the massacre and mutilation which characterize such natural communities as those of bees.
When from this point of view we compare man with the lower animals, so immense is his progress that we are tempted to believe perfection within the reach of his attainment.
Two things, however, suffice to keep alive evil in man:
While at almost every point he has so moulded his own environment as to eliminate the vices that characterize the rest of the animal kingdom, in two respects the predatory system still prevails:
The international conflict keeps nations in perpetual competition with one another, and this periodically forces them to war; and the intranational conflict keepsindividuals in perpetual conflict with one another, and stimulates all the vices which most interfere with human happiness.
The international conflict seems doomed to continue so long as man remains separated by racial antipathies and commercial interests. Efforts are being made to diminish occasions for war to the utmost possible, by bringing all races to recognize and aim at the same social ideal. But there would still remain ample occasion for war so long as men are kept in competition by conflicting commercial interests. The task first in importance and time, therefore, seems to be to eliminate as much as is advisable the commercial and industrial conflict, which has been already pointed out to be the great intranational obstacle to human perfection and happiness.
Now the intranational conflict has been seen to result from our industrial system. This, as at present organized, is an artificial creation of man; indispensable though it may have been to the gradual evolution of the race, it has always acted, and must always act to keep alive in man the very quality—selfishness—the elimination of which is most essential to the happiness of a community, and the absence of which particularly characterizes natural communities such as those ants and bees.
While, then, man has resisted and in great part subdued Nature in the physical world by science, and in a world which he has himself created—the moral world—by self-restraint, he has added to this artificial environment two institutions which tend to counterbalance the advantages already secured. These are national governments that create international conflict, and an industrial system that creates intranational conflict; and we are confronted with the problem whether these two hothouses of crime, hatred, selfishness and vice, can be dispensed with.
Science affords us the encouraging hope that they can. It points out that man has already suppressed many of the most merciless effects of the natural environment; that by virtue of the power through which he can in great part create and certainly modify his own environment, he may still further push on the work of civilization if he will but recognize that the real enemy to human happiness is hatred and the real friend to it solidarity; and if he will return to the Gospel of Christ, which economic conditions have so far compelled him to disregard.
Before closing the study of evolution it is proper to point out that we are now in a position to dispose of the contention that, because natural evolution proceeds upon the principle of the survival of the fittest, therefore human evolution must proceed upon the same lines. This is the argument that millionaires and individualists set up against those who believe in the possibility of diminishing human misery by reducing the occasions for human conflict.
It is totally false.
Man has demonstrated his ability to resist Nature and to progress along lines that are diametrically opposed to those of natural evolution. The whole fabric of human civilization is an answer to the millionaire's argument. The natural principle of the survival of the fittest is no longer at work. Man has put an end to it. The lion and the tiger no longer reign in the jungle nor the white ant in the Pampas. Man, alone, determines which animals shall live and which shall disappear. The weak in our own race no longer perish; mercy comes to their rescue. The strong are no longer the only ones to perpetuate the type; marriage protects the weak husband in his marital rights as well as the strong. Climate no longer determines survival; man has made himself master ofclimate, and indeed works most effectually to-day in latitudes which at an earlier stage were peopled only by savages.
At every point where man touches Nature he has reversed the natural process.
The unfit no longer perish, the fit no longer alone survive. Man is no longer the necessary result of the natural environment:he makes his own environment; and if he be wise enough he can so modify it as to modify himself with it. When, if ever, he so modifies it as to eliminate those elements in it which stimulate vice, then he will have realized the word of the Gospel, "Ye are Gods."
It is currently urged and has become a sort of maxim that human nature cannot be changed by law. Not only is this quoted by the bourgeois in his argument against the Socialist, but even Henry George has fallen into this error. Indeed, it is this error that prevented Henry George from adopting Socialism and left him the distinguished founder of an inadequate philosophy. For the most superficial knowledge of history will suffice to demonstrate its untruth. Human nature has already been profoundly changed by law; by the institution of marriage, by education, by property. This has already been sufficiently discussed to make it unnecessary further to comment on it.[205]It does not, however, seem sufficient to point out the profound modification of human nature by law in the past in order to persuade the bourgeois that humanity can still further be modified by law in the future; for a thousand instances can be quoted of effortsto change human nature by law that have failed, and it is argued very illogically that because in many instances they have failed, they must always fail. Then, too, there remains in the minds of all influenced by Herbert Spencer, the profound error that society is an organism and must be allowed to grow; whereas on the contrary, a very little study demonstrates that society differs from an organism in essential points.[206]
No society can exist without some law of association. The law may be a natural one, as in the case of myxomycetes; or it may be an artificial one, as in the case of the United States constitution; or it may be both, as indeed is the case in every human society.
This law of association is called "government." Strictly speaking, in a political sense government means only that law of association which is promulgated and enforced by the supreme power of the state; but human society is controlled by a double system of laws—one written, whether in judicial decisions or in express statute, and the other not written, because it resides in the mass of the citizens under conditions which baffle description. This last is imperfectly rendered in the English word "custom," is more definitely expressed in the French wordmoeurs, and is admirably conveyed by Horace in the words
Quid leges sine moribusVanae proficiunt?
Quid leges sine moribusVanae proficiunt?
The essential characteristic of custom is that, however controlling it may be in fact, it does not enjoy the sanction of legislative enactment or executive decree; indeed, it often arises out of opposition to law; as where in the Western states game laws remain unenforced, becausepublic opinion supports the ranchman's defence of necessity; and sometimes again where, though a law be in itself proper, a community declines to avail itself of the law, as in the custom that discredited divorce in the early Roman Republic.
Now, the importance of this moral or sometimes immoral sense that makes custom independently of law, must not be underestimated—for it is in many respects superior to law for evil or for good; and it differs from law in the essential fact that it grows almost imperceptibly, whereas law, in the strict sense of the word, is the result of judicial decision or legislative enactment—both acts of deliberation—or so purporting to be. The question naturally arises then whether, in so far as society develops along the line of custom, it does not follow the process of growth rather than that of construction.
It is impossible to deny that custom and public opinion are in a continual state of change; the varying fortunes of political parties sufficiently testify to this; but how far these variations are in civilized communities due to unconscious growth and how far to conscious effort it is not easy to determine. Suffice it to point out that, while opposing forces such as egotism and philanthropy, do continually tend to mould opinion under conditions that baffle inquiry, there are conscious forces at work which are quite as powerful and could be made more so. Chief amongst these is education; and in the word "education" are included not our schools and universities alone, but all the educating influences of the day—the press, the stage, music, literature, and art. That all these are engaged in moulding public opinion—some in bringing popular government into contempt, some in relaxing public morals, some in holding up low ideals, some in indulging luxurious tastes, while they could bedoing just the opposite of all these things—there is no doubt.
The existence of these things is mentioned here because failure to mention them would have left the discussion incomplete. Enough has been said to indicate that there are great forces at work in society which to-day escape the control of government, and that it is not easy to say how far they operate after the haphazard fashion of Nature and how far subject to the deliberate purpose of man. Whatever be the conclusion, it is certain that so far as they are left to Nature's guidance they will result in Nature's handiwork; whereas so far as they are controlled by human wisdom they will bear the fruits of that wisdom.
In conclusion, therefore, associations of individuals are characterized in primitive forms of life by unconsciousness; but as the individuals develop, these associations seem to become deliberate rather than unconscious, until in man they not only seem deliberate but are so.
The history of human society shows that when it has been allowed to grow unconsciously the development has been in the same direction as under the predatory system of Nature; that is to say, institutions have been moulded to benefit individuals presenting the combination of strength and craft best fitted to survive in the artificial environment which the strong and crafty created to that end. When conditions produced by this system of growth under the spur of egotism were replaced by one of construction under the guidance of wisdom, there was progress.
Society is controlled by two forces: one which it consciously set up for itself, called "government"; one which is unconsciously operating through the silent struggle of natural and non-natural motives in the individual livesof every one of us. The latter to a great extent escapes the control of government; but in so far as society does consciously create its own institutions, it ought to be engaged in the process of construction and in the conscious effort towards self-improvement. To this extent society is not an organism, andà fortiorigovernment is not an organism either.
Society, then, is not an organism.
It differs from an organism in the following essential particulars:
The units of an organism have no individual existence; they are parts essential to the whole and exist for the sake of the whole.
The units of a society have an individual existence; and, in the case of human society, do not exist for the sake of the society, but society for the sake of the individual.
Not only have the units of a society each an individual existence, but they have each an individual will, an independent consciousness, and, all except Materialists will add, an individual soul. The units of an organism are conspicuously without any of these essential attributes.
But society, though not itself an organism, is an association of organisms. And although human society seems to resemble a machine more than an organism, the legislator cannot for a moment afford to forget that the parts of his machine are not inanimate inorganic matter, but organic living beings, endowed with the faculties of consciousness and will—and above all alive to pleasure and sensitive to pain. Nor can he afford to forget that the efficacy of all laws depends ultimately upon the consent of those upon whom they are to operate; and that therefore no law can be effectual that is not supportedby public opinion. Now, public opinion is the result of all the forces acting in the social field, unconscious as well as conscious; so that while the aim of the legislator should be to replace unconscious growth so far as is possible by conscious construction, he commits a fatal error if he fails to recognize that men and women are to-day actuated as to nine-tenths of their thoughts and deeds by habit, and many—perhaps the majority of them—incapable of conscious deliberate self-restraint at all. Legislation therefore that seeks suddenly to exact of the public a greater capacity for self-restraint than it is capable of, cannot but prove ineffectual; and ineffectual legislation is bad, because it tends to bring legislation into contempt. Prohibition furnishes a good illustration of this principle: in those States in which Prohibition is supported by public opinion it operates advantageously; where it is not so supported it operates only as an instrument of blackmail. Obviously Prohibition has diminished crime and improved social conditions in some States, whereas every attempt to force it or anything approaching to it upon the city of New York has resulted in the corruption of the police engaged in enforcing it, or in prompt punishment for the political party responsible for its enactment. The helplessness of mere laws to eradicate defects of temperament is one of the facts which tend to support the theory oflaissez faire; but the argument that because under certain conditions legislation is inadequate, therefore legislation is always inadequate, is too obviously illogical to need refutation. It could hardly have received a moment's consideration had it not been bolstered by pseudo-scientific conclusions drawn from an alleged identity between society and organisms. But even if society were an organism, this argument would still be incorrect; just as incorrect as though it werecontended that because under certain conditions medicine is inadequate, medicines must always be avoided. Were society as subtle and difficult to treat as the human bodies of which it is composed, it would still be the duty of the legislator to study the one, just as the physician studies the other, with a view to determining the limits as well as the extent of his resources.
But society is not an organism; on the contrary, the more human and civilized it is, the less it conforms to unconscious growth and the more it yields to intelligent purpose. That it is composed of organisms, however, sets a limit to the wisdom of interference which it is of paramount importance that we should carefully define.
These limits seem roughly to be marked out by two essential factors: one is the purpose of legislation—or justice, the other is the obstacles to legislation—or national character. Government in aiming at justice has to recognize defects of character. The justice which can be attained in one community could not be attempted in another; that which could be attained in one community in one stage of its development, it would have been folly to attempt at an earlier one. The approach to perfection in social conditions depends essentially upon the approach to perfection attained by the individuals of which the society is composed.
How nearly a government can attain perfection depends, then, upon the individual character of those subject to it; and how nearly the individual character can attain perfection depends to a great extent upon the government to which it is subjected. These two factors cannot be treated apart; one is a function of the other. Just as a physician has in treating a patient to consider the hygienic conditions which surround him, and the peculiarities of constitution which may make a suddenchange of these conditions injurious, so a legislator in framing laws for a community and thus changing the conditions of its environment, has to consider the temperament of the community and its fitness to undergo the proposed change. This is one of the limits that Nature puts to legislation, and it is upon a just apprehension of it that the wisdom of legislation depends.
Although the extent to which legislation can modify nature depends largely upon the individuals who compose the community, there are, nevertheless, certain rules that can be laid down applicable by and large, to the whole community.
When a trainer desires to subdue a wild beast, the first thing he does is to diminish his rations. So long as the carnivorous passions of the lion are kept whetted all attempt to control him fails. Or to use a more homely illustration, when we want to break a high-spirited colt, his supply of oats is lowered. To give such an animal an unlimited amount of oats and then to seek to control him with a powerful harness would be a mistake. If the harness left him free to move at all, he would kick the harness to pieces. Every trainer knows that if a horse is refractory, the first thing to be done to give him habits of docility is to reduce his rations of grain and to feed him on a less stimulating diet.
This simple and universally admitted principle is, however, singularly neglected in our social and political institutions. These proceed upon the opposite plan; that is to say, they whet the appetite of man to the utmost by offering the largest rewards to the most crafty, the most greedy, the most dishonest, and the most merciless of men, and then legislatures, for the most part elected by these very men, are expected to control their craft, greed, dishonesty, and mercilessness.
Thus while the competitive system, by making money the main object of human existence, drives men to gambling and crime, we maintain an elaborate system of police courts, penitentiaries, and prisons for suppressing these things, although the experience of all recorded history demonstrates that these methods are totally ineffectual. By overworking our wage-earners, we give them an insatiable thirst for drink; we entrust the sale of liquor to private individuals; we give these last the keenest motive for forcing the sale of liquor on a community alas, too eager to buy it, and then we attempt by the license system to control drunkenness. We leave our currency, which is the lifeblood of our industrial system, in the hands of men entitled under our law to consider this currency a mere method of increasing their private wealth; we offer to these men monopolies of transportation, of water, of gas, from which they can make gigantic fortunes and through which they can control our politics, and then we expect the very legislatures they control, the very legislators they elect, and the very officers they appoint, to control them. Obviously, if we begin by putting our legislature into the hands of the men whose interest it is to use that legislature to exploit us, we ought not to be surprised if the laws enacted by these legislatures fail to "change human nature."
If, however, these appetites were never awakened, or if they were only sufficiently tolerated to produce healthy activity; if the "brotherhood of man" ceased to be a formula and became a fact; if men were educated from the cradle to believe that coöperation resulted in more economy, liberty, and happiness than competition; if coöperative habits were created so that men instinctively coöperated with one another instead of fighting with one another, can it be doubted that the laws enacted toproduce this change in our human conditions would have a profound effect upon human nature?
The natural environment has produced the lion, the tiger, and the ape. The artificial or human environment has produced man. But man is still a competitive animal. The next step that we have to take is still further so to modify our artificial environment as to make him a coöperative animal; to suppress the excessive competition that to-day promotes hatred, leaving enough to spur activity; to introduce enough coöperation to create habits of mutual helpfulness, yet not so much as to suppress individual initiative.
This effort does not involve any sudden revolution in our development; it is only an intelligent continuation of the process already begun. We have diminished the ferocity of the carnivora in men; we have still further to diminish it without impairing courage. If we keep in mind that the object of political effort should be to diminish unhappiness and increase happiness, we shall conclude that this can best be done by continuing to develop along this line; by eliminating the eagerness created by the competitive system that makes success indispensable, not only to luxury and comfort, but to health and life; and that by modifying our institutions in the direction indicated in the foregoing pages, we shall not only secure a larger measure of happiness, but we shall so modify type as to change habits and change ideals.
In a word, Science teaches us that we are and must be creatures of our own environment. History teaches us that we have moulded and can mould our own environment. By this inestimable power, man can determine the development of the human type. By maintaining existing conditions, we shall continue to producethe type of grasping millionaires that the community at large in its heart abhors. Whereas, by modifying the environment by the substitution of coöperation for competition in the measure above described, we shall create a type that humanity has set up in all its poetry, music, and art, as the type to be desired, respected, and loved.
In conclusion let us briefly summarize the scientific argument for Socialism free from the explanations with which in a first presentation of this subject it was necessary to encumber the text.
Evolution prior to the advent of man was an unconscious and therefore indeliberate adaptation of function to environment through the survival of the fittest and the corresponding destruction of the less fit. Herbert Spencer and his school have been misled by this fact into a glorification of the competitive system which seemed to them the most conspicuous factor in the improvement of type. This school altogether fails to take account of two facts of the utmost importance:
Development under purely natural conditions—prior to the advent of man—by no means proceeded alone along competitive lines. It also proceeded along coöperative lines, so that while the lion, the tiger, and the ape are the prevailing types in certain regions, in others the prevailing type is the white ant.
The other equally important fact is that whereas evolution under purely natural conditions—before the advent of man—was unconscious, indeliberate, and merciless, since the advent of man it has become conscious, deliberate, and merciful, to such an extent that in almostevery essential particular, development has reversed the process that preceded the advent of man. Before the advent of man, animals were not only the victims of the forces of nature, but also their necessary result. Only those animals survived that were able to adapt themselves to changes of environment. The rest perished. And they adapted themselves to changes of environment mainly by developing new organs to that end. For example, the camel develops pads under its feet to protect them from the burning sands, and a reservoir in its alimentary canal to furnish water during its wanderings in the desert; the hairless hide of the tropical elephant becomes covered with thick curly wool when found in the Arctic zone.
When, however, man appears upon the face of the earth, all this order changes. The survival of animals in the world is no longer determined by changes of climate or changes of environment; the survival of the fittest is no longer determined by Nature. It is determined by Art—by Man. The animals beneficial to man survive; the animals detrimental to man perish. Again, man is no longer the victim of the forces of Nature; he has become in great part master of them. The flame that raged uncontrollably over the forest and plain, man now puts under his kettle to make his tea; the torrent that devastated the valleys, man now dikes and distributes in irrigating ditches, transforming deserts into green fields. The fitful flash of the lightning in the heavens man conducts along a little wire and converts into the steady glow of the incandescent lamp. Nor does man any longer adapt function to environment. The Esquimau of the Arctic regions has not developed a thick curly fur; he has clothed himself in the furs of other animals; the Arab of the desert has not developed pads under hisfeet or a reservoir in his alimentary canal; he rides and loads water on the back of the camel already so provided. Man is no longer the necessary result of natural environment; he makes his own environment. Wherever he goes, he makes a climate of his own. In the tropics, he builds houses to protect himself from the heat, and creates an artificial cold by punkahs, electric fans, and the manufacture of ice. In winter, he creates another climate by building houses to protect himself from the cold, heating them with a furnace and lighting them with gas and electricity. Most important of all, by the control of man over environment, he can determine not only his own destiny, but also the destiny of generations to come. He can by preserving the competitive conditions that exist, go on developing the base type that is now the necessary result of these conditions—the type that seeks happiness regardless of the happiness of others, such as our oil kings and railroad kings, steel kings and other so-called captains of industry. By substituting coöperation for competition, he can, on the contrary, develop a noble type that seeks happiness through the happiness of others, such as the settlement worker and the Little Sister of the Poor, with, however, this amazing difference: that whereas to-day those who rejoice in social service for its own sake are for the most part humble and obscure, and those who use social service for their own advancement are wealthy and illustrious, in a coöperative commonwealth the genius that now goes into competitive business will be drawn into the service of the coöperative commonwealth. The present alliance between ability and craft will be broken up and a new partnership encouraged between ability, wisdom, and unselfishness.
The fact that all life must adapt itself to environment has been felt from the earliest dawn of civilization. Platostated it in the Republic. If justice is to be attained, according to Plato it can only be attained under a just form of government. The whole history of man since the days of Plato has demonstrated that every change in the condition of man can be traced as the direct result of change of environment—economic, political, ethical, and religious. The demonstration that this not only is so but must be so was left to science. And the contribution of science to Socialism is the demonstration of the fact that man can create his own environment—can take those elements in competition which are good and eliminate those which are bad—can take those elements in coöperation which are good and eliminate those which are bad; and by thus constructing his environment through wisdom and art, determine whether the type perpetuated by this environment is to be noble or base.
[198]"Principles of Sociology," p. 414.
[198]"Principles of Sociology," p. 414.
[199]"Government or Human Evolution," Vol. II, p. 181.
[199]"Government or Human Evolution," Vol. II, p. 181.
[200]"Essays on Evolution and Ethics," "Essays on Science and Morals," and "Struggle for Existence in Human Society."
[200]"Essays on Evolution and Ethics," "Essays on Science and Morals," and "Struggle for Existence in Human Society."
[201]"Government or Human Evolution," Vol. I, p. 239.
[201]"Government or Human Evolution," Vol. I, p. 239.
[202]The word "altruism" is used instead of the more familiar word "unselfishness" to avoid the criticism of those who contend that there is no such thing as unselfishness. It is true that we are all selfish in the sense that we are all seeking happiness for ourselves; but selfishness can be defined as the search for happiness regardless of the happiness of others, and altruism as the search for happiness through the happiness of others.
[202]The word "altruism" is used instead of the more familiar word "unselfishness" to avoid the criticism of those who contend that there is no such thing as unselfishness. It is true that we are all selfish in the sense that we are all seeking happiness for ourselves; but selfishness can be defined as the search for happiness regardless of the happiness of others, and altruism as the search for happiness through the happiness of others.
[203]Lyell, Sir Charles, "Principles of Geology," 1872, Vol. I, Chapter X, p. 201.
[203]Lyell, Sir Charles, "Principles of Geology," 1872, Vol. I, Chapter X, p. 201.
[204]This conclusion is arrived at by Charles Booth in a statistical work which commands the approval of all authorities of whatever shade of political opinion.
[204]This conclusion is arrived at by Charles Booth in a statistical work which commands the approval of all authorities of whatever shade of political opinion.
[205]Book III, Chapter V.
[205]Book III, Chapter V.
[206]"Introduction to the Study of Sociology." Herbert Spencer, Chapter III.
[206]"Introduction to the Study of Sociology." Herbert Spencer, Chapter III.
The ethical aspect of Socialism is a practical continuation of the argument of the last chapter, and brings us to the crowning glory of Socialism: that it alone can and does reconcile the conflict between science, economics, and religion.
Science produces convictions founded on fact. Religion imposes convictions founded on faith. If Religion confines itself to matters of faith—to the supernatural—it need not come into conflict with Science. But when it trespasses on the realms of Science—when it begins to deal with matters of fact—it creates a conflict with Science in which Science must in the end be victorious. Thus when the Church ventured to make it a matter of faith that the sun revolves around the earth, it might secure the recantation of Galileo, but it had in the end to yield before the demonstrations of astronomy.
This element of conflict between the church and the state is disappearing and is bound entirely to disappear. The church is more and more confining itself to supernatural matters which are properly within the domain of faith. So long as it does this, it need not clash with Science.
There is, however, another occasion of conflict between Science and Religion more modern than the former and more real: The doctrine of evolution in attacking the theory of special creation needed at one time to attack the existence of God; and as interpreted by Herbert Spencer and his school, gave rise to the doctrine that "because, on the whole, animals and plants have advanced in perfection of organization by means of the struggle for existence and the consequent 'survival of the fittest,' therefore men in society, men as ethical beings, must look to the same process to help them towards perfection."[207]
This notion, which Huxley describes as the fallacy that at that time pervaded the so-called "ethics of evolution," raised an issue not only with the church, but with the fundamental principles of religion. For if, in fact, the blind process of evolution proceeding through the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the unfit, was the only process to which man could look for his development, then there is no need of a God, and what is far more important, there is no need for either human responsibility or human effort. Now the church, however much its sects may differ in other matters, has always been united in teaching not only the existence of a God, but the responsibility of man to God, and a duty of man to make the effort necessary to comply with his commandments. It is to the pages of Huxley that we must turn to see this Spencerian fallacy refuted.
Huxley pointed out that a gardener in growing things beautiful and useful to man proceeded in violation of the principles of evolution. The characteristic feature of what he calls the "cosmic process," that is to say, evolutionpriorto the advent of man, "is the intense andunceasing competition of the struggle for existence." The characteristic of evolution since the advent of man is "the elimination of that struggleby the removal of the conditions which give rise to it."[208]
The immense importance of these considerations is that they demonstrate no less important a fact than that Man is to-day the selecting agent and not Nature; and Man, by replacing evolution by Art converts things which in the domain of Nature are not edible, such as kale, into things which under Art become edible, such as cabbage.
But let us now take up the story as told by Huxley:
"Let us now imagine that someadministrative authority, as far superior in power and intelligence to men, as men are to their cattle, is set over the colony, charged to deal with its human elementsin such a manner as to assure the victory of the settlement over the antagonistic influences of the state of nature in which it is set down. He would proceed in the same fashion as that in which the gardener dealt with his garden. In the first place, he would, as far as possible, put astop to the influence of external competitionby thoroughly extirpating and excluding the native rivals, whether men, beasts, or plants. And our administrator would select his human agents, with a view to his ideal of a successful colony, just as the gardener selects his plants with a view to his ideal of useful or beautiful products.
"In the second place, in order that no struggle for the means of existence between these human agents should weaken the efficiency of the corporate whole in the battle with the state of nature, he would make arrangements by which each would be provided with those means; and would be relieved from the fear of being deprived of them by his stronger or more cunning fellows.Laws, sanctioned by the combined force of the colony, would restrain the self-assertion of each man within the limits required for the maintenance of peace. In other words, the cosmic struggle for existence, as between man and man, would be rigorously suppressed; andselection, by its means, would be as completely excluded as it is from the garden.
"At the same time, the obstacles to the full development of the capacities of the colonists by other conditions of the state of nature than those already mentioned, would be removed by the creation of artificial conditions of existence of a more favorable character. Protection against extremes of heat and cold would be afforded by houses and clothing; drainage and irrigation works would antagonize the effects of excessive rain and excessive drought; roads, bridges, canals, carriages, and ships would overcome the natural obstacles to locomotion and transport; mechanical engines would supplement the natural strength of men and of their draught animals; hygienic precautions would check, or remove the natural causes of disease. With every step of this progress in civilization, the colonists would become more and more independent of the state of nature; more and more, their lives would be conditioned by a state of art. In order to attain his ends, the administrator would have to avail himself of the courage, industry, and coöperative intelligence of the settlers; and it is plain that the interest of the community would be best served by increasing the proportion of persons who possess such qualities, and diminishing that of persons devoid of them. In other words, byselection directed towards an ideal.
"Thus the administrator might look to the establishment of an earthly paradise, a true garden of Eden, in which all things should work together towards the well-being ofthe gardeners; within which the cosmic process, the coarse struggle for existence of the state of nature, should he abolished; in which that state should be replaced by a state of art; where every plant and every lower animal should be adapted to human wants, and would perish if human supervision and protection were withdrawn; where men themselves should have been selected with a view to their efficiency as organs for the performance of the functions of a perfected society. And this ideal polity would have been brought about, not by gradually adjusting the men to the conditions around them, but by creating artificial conditions for them; not by allowing the free play of the struggle for existence, but by excluding that struggle; and by substituting selection directed towards the administrator's ideal for the selection it exercises."[209]
And this is not confined to physical things, but is extended to moral. "Social progress," he says, "means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best."[210]And this leads to the final conclusion:
"As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically best—what we call goodness or virtue—involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help hisfellows; its influence is directed,not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it; and shall take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has been permitted to live."[211]
Further on, he repeats:
"Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it."[212]
And later on:
"I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided by sound principles of investigation, and organized in a common effort, may modify the conditions of existence, for a period longer than that now covered by history.And much may be done to change the nature of man himself.The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men."[213]
And in a note Huxley emphasizes the extent to which human nature has been already modified by pointing to the fact that sexual instinct has been suppressed between near relations.[214]
Huxley's demonstrations that the happiness of man can only be attained by the limitation of competition, by deliberate institutions to that effect, and by conscious efforts to create an environment that will tend to develop the ethical qualities of men, put an end to the lastserious occasion for conflict between Science and Religion; for it results in the same theories of human responsibility, and the same appeals to human effort, that it has been the rôle of the church to preach from the beginning.
I have quoted from "Evolution and Ethics" because to my mind this essay and its prolegomena make Huxley the founder of Scientific and Ethical Socialism. It is true that he himself repudiates this. To him Socialism is impossible because of what he describes as "the mighty instinct of reproduction."[215]He points out that we cannot apply to superfluous or defective human beings the system of extirpation which gardeners apply to superfluous and defective vegetables and weeds.
I have already answered the objection to Socialism on the ground of overproduction.[216]But Huxley never had presented to him the modern idea of Socialism herein described. He speaks of the "elimination of competition." It never occurred to him that the evils of competition could be eliminated without eliminating competition. Candor, however, compels me to admit that I do not think any presentation of the most modern form of Socialism would at all have converted Professor Huxley. There were two subjects upon which he could not speak without getting into a temper: Gladstone and Socialism.
When I met him, I was not myself a Socialist. Indeed, I did not become a Socialist until after Huxley died. My impressions, therefore, of him were not affected by a prejudice in favor of Socialism. On the contrary, I still regarded Socialism as impractical; I still believed it to be absurd. It was only after months of labor in attempting to utilize the "considerable fragments of aconstructive creed"[217]which Professor Ritchie found in Professor Huxley's pages, that I was driven to a study of the Socialism to which I was utterly opposed, and found in it the only solution to the contradictions which blurred even the lucid pages of Huxley's works. And the contradictions in Huxley are not difficult to find. Nothing could be more pessimistic than what seems to be the climax of his argument in "Evolution and Ethics":
"The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, some time, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be commenced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and the intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great year."[218]
And yet, on the very next page, he closes this essay with a note of the serenest optimism:
"So far, we all may strive in one faith towards one hope."[219]And the keynote of his attitude towards this subject is to be found in a passage in which he "thinks it unjust to require a crossing-sweeper in Piccadilly to tell you the road to Highgate; he has earned his copper if he had done all he professes to do and cleaned up your immediate path"; and a little later where he "shudderingly objects to the responsibility of attempting to set right a world out of joint."
Now Socialists have the audacity to maintain that it is not beyond the intelligence of the crossing-sweeper of Piccadilly to know and tell the road to Highgate, and that the time has come when no one has a rightto "shudderingly object to the responsibility of attempting to set right a world out of joint."
Huxley builded better than he knew; and in spite of his detestation of Socialism it was he who built its strongest and most enduring foundation; for unanswerable as may be the economic argument in favor of Socialism, it might take centuries to prevail if there were not an equally strong scientific and ethical argument for it.
The moment that Huxley recognizes that it is by the "elimination of competition," or shall we say the "limitation of competition," by substituting human selection for natural selection, and directing selection towards an ideal that man is to progress and develop, he has recognized the scientific basis of Socialism; and when he points out that Science teaches self-restraint, human responsibility, human effort, not so much the "survival of the fittest" as fitting as many as possible to survive, he has reconciled Science and Religion.
It is probable that one of the reasons why Huxley took a pessimistic view of the future was that he despaired of finding a solution to the economic struggle. I cannot forget the melancholy with which he said one day: "I am informed that England keeps its control of the market of cotton goods by a difference in cost of production of a farthing per yard. How long can this last?" But Huxley only gave a part of the scientific argument for Socialism. For the other part we have to turn from the pages of Huxley to those of Karl Marx.
One of the most important services Karl Marx rendered humanity was the demonstration of the predominating influence of economics in the development of man, in the determining of our custom, character, and conduct.
The economic conception of history is described by F. Engels as follows:
"The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production, and next to production the exchange of its products, is the basis of every social system; that in every society arising in history the allotment of products, and with it the division of society into classes or ranks, depends upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how when produced it is exchanged. Accordingly the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are not to be looked for in the heads of men, in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes of the methods of production and exchange; they are to be looked for not in the philosophy, but in the economy of the epoch in question."[220]
Before elaborating this conception of history, it may be well to point out one or two elements of confusion in the terms in which it is stated. It is described as the "materialist conception of history," and for this reason many people imagine that the admission of this theory means the exclusion of the ideal. This is a profound error due to a misunderstanding of the use of the word "materialist." This word does not necessarily imply that the only proper conception of history is a materialistic one in the sense that it excludes the operation of ideals; but only that material conditions have played a predominating rôle in determining ideas.
The admission, however, must be made that this explanation is by no means admitted by all Socialist writers. Indeed the very language used by Engels is inconsistent with it. He says "they are not to be looked for in the philosophy, but in the economy of the epoch in question." If, however, Mr. Engels were alive to-dayand were challenged as to whether in fact he meant by this phrase to exclude philosophy altogether, I think he would answer in the negative. What he meant to say, I think, was that the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be looked for in the economy of the epoch rather than in its philosophy. And this, I think, with some limitation is true, for the philosophy of every period is to a large extent determined by its economic conditions.
To this general statement there are, however, notable exceptions. Some men either by the adequacy of their means or the smallness of their needs, are lifted entirely above economic conditions, so that they can reason abstractly without regard to economic conditions. This probably is true of almost every philosopher that has made his mark. It is impossible to read the words of Christ, of Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Carlyle, Emerson, and Tolstoi without being impressed by the fact that they soared far above all economic considerations.
On the other hand, economic conditions had a controlling influence on the whole philosophy of Ruskin. His first contact with life was while travelling with his father, who sold sherry to wealthy county families, and approached their mansions by way of the butler's pantry. This impregnated Ruskin with a cult for aristocracy. It made it impossible for him to consider popular government without impatience.
Economic conditions too had put their mark so ineffaceably on the mind of Huxley that although in his criticism of Herbert Spencer he destroyed the principal philosophic bulwark of capitalism, he could not talk on Socialism without irritation.
Thus although men as great as Ruskin and Huxleywere unable to rise above the slavery of the economic conditions in which their minds had been formed, others are so constituted as to be able to discuss ethics without any regard to economic conditions whatever. There is, however, no doubt as to the dominating influence of economic conditions in determining the average mental attitude.
Man had two dominating appetites—for food and for perpetuation; and of these, because that for perpetuation is fitful whereas that for food is continuous, the latter is the more determining of the two. There is hardly an act in a man's life which is not determined by the needs of food in the first place and the search for food in the second. This is admitted by all sociologists.
A right understanding of economics is therefore of the utmost importance to the conscious development of man. Unfortunately economists themselves have been until very lately just as narrow in their disregard of science and religion as science and religion have been narrow in their disregard of economics. Let us consider as briefly as the subject permits the inconsistencies which result from this narrowness in regard to religion and economics.