Part 29 (1/2)

Briefly it is this:

All living things prior to the advent of Man tended to adapt themselves to their environment by the process known as the survival of the fit. Only those animals fit to survive, survived; all the rest perished. When there was a change of environment, as, for example, of climate, only those individuals survived that were capable of adapting themselves to this change.

The process by which animals adapt themselves to changes of environment is as follows:

There is in every new generation of animals an infinite variety; some differ enough from the rest to be called ”sports.” These differences are transmitted to future generations by heredity. Men have used these differences to create types of animals suited to their purpose. Thus by putting stallions built for speed to mares similarly built, Man has produced the race-horse. On the contrary, by putting stallions built for drawing loads to mares similarly built, Man has produced the cart-horse.

Before the advent of man this selection of types was made by the environment or by Nature, as the environment used to be called. Hence the expression, natural selection, is used to describe the process by which Nature or environment selects certain types for survival at the expense of the rest; the process by which animals that live in the desert gradually adapt themselves to endure great heat; and those that live near the Poles gradually adapt themselves to endure great cold.

The environment or Nature uses in this process of selection a very cruel but effectual device: A great many more living things are born into the world than the world can support. In the lower forms of life Nature is wastefully fertile; thousands of herrings' eggs are laid for one herring that grows to maturity. This amazing fertility of Nature results in a struggle for life which condemns the enormous majority of living things born into the world to an early death, but has the singular advantage of allowing only the types most fitted to the environment to survive. And this process of natural selection acting in an environment favorable to development from a lower to a higher type has gradually caused the lowest forms of life, which consist of a mere sac of so-called protoplasm, to develop organs especially adapted to accomplish specific things: a mouth to take in food; a stomach to digest it; bowels to a.s.similate it; a system of circulation--arms and legs; a nervous system; a brain; ears; a nose; eyes; until at last, in the order of creation as demonstrated in the great Book of the Rocks, and as confirmed by zoology and other sciences, Man has evolved out of the original protoplasmic sac.

Who created the first protoplasmic sac; why this cruel system was invented by which life was ordered to pa.s.s through millions of sacrificed and suffering bodies before it could emerge into the least imperfect form; why Man to-day must suffer still in the progress which he is destined to make from his present to a still higher form--these are queries which it is not given us yet to answer. But that this process has taken place at the cost of great agony and during millions of years, is a fact which no man who has studied the face of Nature can deny.

If we want to learn the art of happiness--for in spite of the process just described there is nevertheless an art of happiness--we must understand the processes of Nature. It is only by understanding the processes of Nature that we can ever hope to modify them.

And it is here that we come to the first great lesson we have to learn from a study of Evolution:

Man has already modified the processes of Nature in the past, and he can doubtless still further modify them in the time to come.

But before we undertake to study how far Man has modified, and may still modify, the cruel process of natural selection, there is another process observable in Nature to which we must direct our most earnest attention.

It is a common error to suppose that because Man has developed from a lower form of life through a process of struggle for survival that favors a few types at the expense of millions of other forms condemned by this struggle to suffering and death, therefore it is only by this same struggle that Man can hope to attain a higher form of development. This is the error that approves the compet.i.tive system and the resulting cla.s.sification of men into a few rich and many poor.

It is because the question as to the merits and demerits of the compet.i.tive system rests upon the principles of evolution, that it is indispensable for all who want to understand the compet.i.tive system also to understand the principles of evolution. For those who deny the force of compet.i.tion altogether are as wrong as the millionaires who base their argument in favor of the compet.i.tive system upon the law of evolution.

We cannot neglect the argument drawn from the struggle for life involved in natural selection. Until we have shown that there is something better than this struggle that can be put in its place, we have left to the millionaires the vantage-ground, from which they can quiet the conscience of the world. Thousands of our fellow-creatures who are separated from us by the accident of wealth would come to our side were they not sincerely convinced that poverty, pauperism, and crime are necessary evils, belonging to the cosmic principles of evolution through which Man has attained his existing dominion, and through which he may hope, though not without infinite patience and agony, ultimately to reach a still higher station.

This error must be removed, and it can only be removed by sober argument. Temper will not do it; nor indignation; nor vituperation; nor hate. The plain facts, if properly marshalled, are sufficient to prove the error of the notion that compet.i.tion is a necessary evil, and that society cannot exist without unlimited compet.i.tion, and the poverty, pauperism, and crime that result therefrom. The first of these facts is that by the side of the compet.i.tive system just described, there is in Nature also a cooperative system almost as highly developed as the compet.i.tive system and destined eventually almost to take its place.

(_b_) _The Cooperative System_

We have seen that the struggle for life has had for effect to permit only those forms of life to survive that adapted themselves to the environment, and that when the environment was favorable to development, this tendency of the fit to survive at the expense of the less fit caused an evolution from lower to higher forms of life. The effect of this tendency in the higher forms of life has been to create two opposite types--the carnivores, who became more skilful in tracking game, and more powerful in destroying it; and the herbivores, the natural prey of the carnivores, who became more swift in escaping their pursuers. Now the herbivores, conscious of their weakness, early developed the instinct to herd for the purpose of common defence. The fierce carnivore, on the contrary, is prevented by his natural ferocity from herding. He tends to become solitary. Lions and tigers are solitary animals; whereas sheep, goats, horses, and cattle herd. This tendency to herd tends to develop in proportion as an animal is weak; so that it is in insects that we find the herding instinct most perfectly developed, and certain colonies of ants and bees present a picture of cooperation to which the attention of millionaires cannot be too strenuously directed.

Let it be said at the outset that these colonies are not offered as models for us to imitate. On the contrary there are many features in these colonies which we ought diligently to avoid. But just as there are features in the compet.i.tive system that are good and some that are atrociously bad, so there are features in the colony system that are bad and some that are altogether good. It will later on appear that _the essential privilege of Man is to be able to choose the good of both and eschew the bad_.

A beehive is a city of bees built by the entire community for its common use. This community consists for the most part of barren females who do all the hard work, and are therefore commonly called the workers; they build the comb, and add to it as the community enlarges; they attend on the queen bee--the only fertile female allowed to survive; they feed her, and act the part of midwife to her when she lays her eggs; they see to the hatching of the eggs, and by crowding about them provide them with the necessary temperature; when the eggs are hatched, the workers feed the young ones differently so as to produce a few fertile females to play the role of queen should the throne become vacant, a large number of males to be utilized when the nuptial hour arrives, and a larger number still of barren females to continue the work of the community; the workers collect honey from the flowers in the summer and store it away for common use during the cold season; they determine which of the fertile females is to be impregnated and become their queen; she is liberated on her wedding-day, and in a summer flight, pursued by the males, conceives.

Then she returns to the comb, and is let loose upon the other fertile females in the comb, and watched as she stings her possible rivals to death one by one. Few males return from the nuptial flight; one only of them weds, and he perishes in the act; the others perish without wedding, or if they have strength to return to the comb, are despatched by the workers watching at the entrance to perform the execution.

It is impossible to conceive a more complete system of cooperation or communism than this, or one which so little conforms to our notions of justice or welfare. Indeed, it is probable that from a human point of view the tiger in the jungle attains a greater measure of happiness than any member of a bee community; for the workers seem to labor without reward; of the males only one weds, and he perishes in the act; and the queen herself is kept a close prisoner during her entire existence, save only during the brief ecstasy of the nuptial flight.

The lesson to be learned from insect communities seems then to be, not that cooperation in a natural environment results in the maximum of happiness, but merely that cooperation is as much a part of Nature's plan as compet.i.tion, and that therefore the cooperative system is as available to man as the compet.i.tive. The problem before man is how to take the best of both systems, and eliminate the bad.

But there is a further lesson to be drawn from the singular customs that prevail in the hive and in the ants' nest:

In both, the entire energies of all seem concentrated upon two problems--the support of the community, and its perpetuation; and as these two problems are identically the same as those by which men are confronted, the systems adopted to solve them cannot but be of absorbing interest to Man.

Nature or environment follows two diverging lines in animal development. Along one line she seeks the perfection of the individual; along the other the perfection of the community. But the ideal of perfection presented by Nature is not Justice or Morality; it is _perpetuation_, for perpetuation is the prize offered to the most fit types in the struggle for survival. And there are obviously two ways in which types can succeed in this struggle--one by individual excellence, and another by s.e.xual jealousy. And this s.e.xual jealousy must be eliminated from a community if its members are to live in permanent harmony together. The scheme adopted by Nature in the beehive to eliminate s.e.xual jealousy is radical and cruel, but effectual.

Obviously, the community system proceeds with reckless disregard of the individual; the destruction of all the fertile females save the single queen and of all the male s.e.x; the singular fact that the sting cannot be used save at the cost of the life of the individual using it; the enforced chast.i.ty of the workers--all prove that Nature's plan for securing the welfare of the community is to sacrifice thereto the happiness and the lives of the individuals that const.i.tute it.