Evolution in Modern Thought Part 20

But the number of thinkers whom this ant.i.thesis 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[255]

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 compet.i.tion may remain inevitable and indispensable, it can a.s.sume 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 pa.s.ser." 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 compet.i.tors here are not left simply to their natural energies: they are variously handicapped. A rich store of artificial resources exists in which some partic.i.p.ate 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,[256] 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 const.i.tuted, 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 diminis.h.i.+ng, 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 "a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociated with an increased measure of subordination of individual compet.i.tion to reproductive or social ends, and of interspecific compet.i.tion to co-operative, a.s.sociation."[257] 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 compet.i.tive 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 s.e.xual 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 extravagances 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 compet.i.tion, 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 a.n.a.logy 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 cla.s.ses with each other. So that in the end Marx, like Darwin, finds the source of all progress is in struggle. Both are grandsons of Herac.l.i.tus:--p??e?? pat?? p??t??. 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.[258]

The conclusions he derives from it are that whenever professional specialisation causes multiplication of distinct branches of activity, we get organic solidarity--implying differences--subst.i.tuted 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 emanc.i.p.ated. 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 compet.i.tion 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.

Compet.i.tion 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 specialty 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 "quant.i.ties" 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 questions 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 pa.s.sage a finer crop of ideas.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 246: P. Flourens, _Examen du Livre de M. Darwin sur l'Origine des Especes_, p. 53, Paris, 1864. See also Huxley, "Criticisms on the _Origin of Species," Collected Essays_, Vol. II, p.

102, London, 1902.]

[Footnote 247: _Inquiries into Human Faculty_, pp. 1, 2, 3 sq., London, 1883.]

[Footnote 248: _Darwinism and Politics_, pp. 9, 22, London, 1889.]

[Footnote 249: _Life and Letters of Charles Darwin_, II. p. 385.]

[Footnote 250: V. de Lapouge, _Les Selections sociales_, p. 259, Paris, 1896.]

[Footnote 251: _Die natarliche Auslese beim Menschen_, Jena, 1893; _Du Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre naturlichen Grundlagen. Entwurf einer Sozialanthropologie_, Jena, 1896.]

[Footnote 252: _Etudes sur la Selection dans ses rapports avec l'heredite chez l'homme_, Paris, p. 481, 1881.]

[Footnote 253: _Die drei Bevolkerungsstufen_, Munich, 1889.]

[Footnote 254: _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 200; _Collected Essays_, Vol. IX, London, 1894.]

[Footnote 255: _Les Luttes entre Societes humaines et leurs phases successives_, Paris, 1893.]

[Footnote 256: _Le socialisme contemporain_, p. 384 (6th edit.), Paris, 1891.]

[Footnote 257: Geddes and Thomson, _The Evolution of s.e.x_, p. 311, London, 1889.]

[Footnote 258: _De la Division du Travail social_, Paris. 1893.]