Part 27 (2/2)

Much that has been said of the development of egoism from altruism still holds true of the individual, even if the idea of a progress in altruism through heredity be surrendered. The consideration of the question of heredity is, however, necessary to any complete or wide-reaching theory of moral progress. Hitherto, the actuality of the inheritance of altruistic tendency has been a.s.sumed on the strength of previous considerations with regard to heredity in general, according to which we could not conceive all the multifarious differences which appear in all the species and varieties of animal nature to have been present in simplest primal organisms, or all the differences of the different species and varieties which have arisen through s.e.xual propagation from common ancestors to have been present as inherent potentialities in the germ-plasm, as such, of their common ancestors, and so cannot consider the lesser variations which go to make up the larger ones as due merely to the germ-plasm. It remains for us to examine the facts more particularly with respect to this special form of tendency. Stephen says: ”An unreasoning animal can only adapt itself to new circ.u.mstances, except within a very narrow range, by acquiring a new organization; or, in other words, by becoming a different animal. Its habits and instincts may therefore remain fixed through countless generations. But man, by acc.u.mulating experiences, can virtually alter both his faculties and his surroundings without altering his organization. When this acc.u.mulation extends beyond the individual, it implies a social development, and explains the enormous changes wrought within historical times, and which define the difference between the savage and the civilized man.”[150]

”Briefly, society exists as it exists in virtue of this organization, which is as real as the organization of any material instrument, though it depends upon habits and instincts instead of arrangements of tangible and visible objects.”[151] ”Children, no doubt, start with infinitely varying apt.i.tudes for moral culture, as they start with stomachs of varying strength of digestion; but, in every case, the action of the social medium is an essential factor of the result.”[152] Now, in the first place, objection may be made to the term ”unreasoning animal,” in that, whatever we may think with regard to inorganic matter and plant-life or even with regard to the lower forms of animal-life, the whole theory of evolution is opposed to the supposition that reason suddenly arises in man; and in that we have, moreover, in the case of many of the higher species, very conclusive evidence of the presence of some degree of reason. Mr. Stephen does not elsewhere make any positive a.s.sertion of the entire absence of reason in animals; yet to his remark that ”It may be that germs of this capacity [_i.e._ the capacity to learn by experience and impart this knowledge to others] are to be found in the lower animals” he adds, ”but we shall make no sensible error if we regard it, as it has always been regarded, as the exclusive prerogative of humanity.”[153] That is, we make no sensible error if we regard the progress of other animal species than our own to be wholly ”organic,” that of our own species, on the other hand, to be wholly an acc.u.mulation of common knowledge. The division between man and the rest of the animal kingdom is thus made a very distinct and absolute line. It may be noticed, second, that the third quotation of the three cited consecutively above contains a very different statement from that of the first quotation. And it may be said, third, that the second quotation, while seeming to bear out the first, is in reality a contradiction of it, since it makes social organization dependent upon ”habits” and ”instincts.”

Exactly what is it that is meant by the alteration of organization which is p.r.o.nounced unnecessary to the ”virtual” alteration of human faculties? From the modern spiritualistic, the materialistic, the positivistic, or any modern standpoint at all, it is difficult to perceive how mental alteration can be supposed without the a.s.sumption of an exactly corresponding physiological change. In view of the exceedingly minute structure of the nervous system, which is chiefly affected by such change, we may suppose this change to be so fine as to be imperceptible to sense-perception, but, since it must, in any case, be exactly coordinate with the psychical change, I fail to see how we can scientifically regard the one and at the same time ignore the other and p.r.o.nounce it of no significance. And if we suppose any fixation of psychical alteration, we cannot avoid likewise supposing an exactly coordinate fixation of physiological alteration. Of course the question remains as to the extent to which fixation takes place in either case, and this question we have yet to consider. The weakness of Mr. Stephen's position lies in his a.s.sumption of fixation on the one side and his denial of it on the other.

How far are the moral qualities acquired in one generation inherited by the next? Inasmuch as all development is by inappreciable increments, all change of organization gradual, or, in psychical terms, inasmuch as character varies only slowly from the grooves of established habit, there is a general truth in the statement that all habit prominent enough to be noticed as such can generally be traced farther back than the next generation only. Nevertheless, here are a few cases for the Weismannites:--

”Gall speaks of a Russian family in which the father and grandfather had died prematurely, the victims of taste for strong drink. The grandson, at the age of five, manifested the same liking in the highest degree.”

”Trelat, in his work 'Folie Lucide,' states that a lady of regular life and economical habits was subject to fits of uncontrollable dipsomania.

Loathing her state, she called herself a miserable drunkard, and mixed the most disgusting substances with her wine, but all in vain; the pa.s.sion was stronger than her will. The mother and the uncle of this lady had also been subject to dipsomania.”

”Charles X----, son of an eccentric and intemperate father, manifested instincts of great cruelty from infancy. He was sent at an early age to various schools, but was expelled from them all. Being forced to enlist in the army, he sold his uniform for drink and only escaped a sentence of death on the testimony of physicians, who declared that he was the victim of an irresistible appet.i.te. He was placed under restraint, and died of general paralysis.”

”A man belonging to the educated cla.s.s, and charged with important functions, succeeded for a long time in concealing his alcoholic habits from the eyes of the public; his family were the only sufferers by it.

He had five children, only one of whom lived to maturity. Instincts of cruelty were manifested in this child, and from an early age its sole delight was to torture animals in every conceivable way. He was sent to school, but could not learn. In the proportions of the head he presented the character of microcephalism, and in the field of intellectual acquisition he could only reach a certain low stage, beyond which further progress was impossible. At the age of nineteen he had to be sent to an asylum for the insane.”

”A man of an excellent family of laboring people was early addicted to drink, and died of chronic alcoholism, leaving seven children. The first two of these died, at an early age, of convulsions. The third became insane at twenty-two, and died an idiot. The fourth, after various attempts at suicide, fell into the lowest grade of idiocy. The fifth, of pa.s.sionate and misanthropic temper, broke off all relations with his family. His sister suffers from nervous disorder, which chiefly takes the form of hysteria, with intermittent attacks of insanity. The seventh, a very intelligent workman, but of nervous temperament, freely gives expression to the gloomiest forebodings as to his intellectual future.”

”Dr. Morel gives the history of a family living in the Vosges, in which the great-grandfather was a drunkard, and died from the effects of intoxication; and the grandfather, subject to the same pa.s.sion, died a maniac. He had a son far more sober than himself, but subject to hypochondria and of homicidal tendencies; the son of this latter was stupid, idiotic. Here we see, in the first generation, alcoholic excess; in the second, hereditary dipsomania; in the third, hypochondria; and in the fourth, idiocy and probable extinction of the race.”[154]

It is the general testimony of authorities that mental disease may thus appear in one generation as general tendency to excess, in another as homicidal mania, in another as microcephalism, etc. Here we have examples of the hereditary character of what we recognize as nervous disease, which yet has its moral as well as its intellectual side. There are few who do not recognize the power of the parent, through injury to his own health, to affect the health of his children; and yet that which we call disease is not more physical than that which we call moral characteristic. However, the physical side of that which we call normal moral characteristic is more withdrawn from observation; that which is recognized as mental disease forms, in this respect, a link between what we term ill-health and mental characteristic. The physical features of what we term ill-health attract our attention especially because of the weakness and incapacity or the distinct physical pain involved; the physical side of insanity comes also more or less distinctly to our notice, but the physical accompaniments of normal characteristic attract less attention. And yet all these three conditions have each a psychical and each a physiological side. It is therefore difficult to understand how the possibility of the inheritance of ill-health from want or excess can be acknowledged and yet the possibility of the inheritance of psychical characteristic acquired by the parent be doubted; the latter has its organic side as much as the former. And no better ill.u.s.tration of this fact can be found than in just such cases as those above cited, where that which appears in the first place as mere excess, that is, moral characteristic as we ordinarily term it, takes finally the form of microcephalism, idiocy, or insanity.

Man's early existence as an individual is distinguished by the length of duration of a condition of helplessness, at the beginning of which, beyond the fundamental so-called organic action, only a few simple activities manifest themselves. The human being is born with almost everything to acquire, and the earlier years, during which habits are slowly acc.u.mulating, appear peculiarly adaptive or formative. The human child is peculiarly susceptible, as regards mental and moral acquirements, to the nature of his surroundings. But this fact does not necessarily mean any more than what Stephen a.s.serts in the last of the three quotations above cited, namely, that the social medium is an essential factor of the result; it does not necessarily exclude the inheritance of moral or immoral tendency acquired under civilization or even by near ancestors. Even in cases of the inheritance of the most extreme pa.s.sion for alcohol, we cannot suppose that the taste would ever have manifested itself, had alcohol never come within the reach of the inheriting individual. The young kitten that has never tasted meat will s.n.a.t.c.h at a piece as soon as it scents it; but we cannot suppose that the evidently inherited taste for flesh would ever appear, did flesh never come within the range of its sense-perception. Since a suitable environment must always be conceived as essential to the development even of the most inveterate inherited qualities, and since man's mental and especially his moral superiority has been developed in connection with social conditions, it is conceivable that, these conditions failing, his mental and moral development may show a lack coordinate with the degree of such failure. And here is an answer to those who, in contesting the theory of any moral inheritance, state their views in the final form that if any inheritance at all can be claimed, it can only be as a certain degree of readiness in responding to the conditions of civilization; _no_ inheritance can ever be anything more than this; the existence, to a sufficient degree, of complementary conditions in the environment is always necessary to the development of tendency. It is, therefore, conceivable that the child of civilized parents of a higher type of morality, if carried off, in infancy, by savages, might fail to exhibit the high character of its parents, just as it is conceivable and more than probable that it would fail to exhibit their higher intellectual gifts. It is also conceivable that the child of moral parentage may inherit the capacity of high moral development and yet fall into crime, if circ.u.mstances afford him no education save that of a.s.sociation with hardened criminals. We might only with reason expect to find, in the case of the supposed child abducted by savages, a certain mental acuteness applied to savage affairs and some greater degree of humane feeling, dominated, however, by savage conceptions; as also greater ease in the acquirement of civilized ideas and customs in case of a return to higher surroundings before maturity; and we might only expect to find, in the case of the child brought up among criminals, a greater degree of that primitive honor and faithfulness which may exist among criminals. Modern reformatories have testified to the possibility of the redemption of a large number of criminals from their evil life, but they have shown, nevertheless, that there is a l.u.s.t of cupidity, a love of meanness, and an animality from which rescue is almost if not quite impossible. The reaction of men whose past opportunities have been about equal, upon effort for their reform, exhibits also very different degrees of readiness. The testimony of reformatories for the young is especially of worth on this point; and I once heard Mrs. Mary A.

Livermore, whose interest in reformatories and prisons is well known, describe the faces of many of the children to be found in a certain inst.i.tution of this sort, as bearing fearful witness to the fact that they had been ”mortgaged to the devil before they were born.” I remember a number of cases cited by the matron of a certain orphan asylum showing that children taken from their home at too early an age to have learned the sins of their parents by imitation may yet repeat those sins. Out of three children of the same parents, the one of whom was a drunkard and prost.i.tute, the other a thief, one developed, at a very early age, a tendency to dishonesty, another an extreme morbid eroticism, and the third child appeared to have escaped the evil inheritance; but he was still very young when I last heard of him. The two children did not exhibit these evil traits at their entrance to the home, but developed them later.

And here it may be noticed that the fact of the unformed character of the infant does not prove that the tendencies which make their appearance in later life are wholly the result of the environment. It has been remarked by biologists and pathologists that inherited characteristics tend to appear at an age corresponding to that at which they appeared in the progenitor. The caterpillar does not undergo metamorphosis with a less regularity because it is not, in the beginning, a b.u.t.terfly, and the beard does not the less appear in the adult human male because he was not born bearded. Diseases of the brain often develop, for several generations, at nearly the same age, and there seems to be no reason why we should not suppose the like to be true in the case of many normal characteristics. Ribot cites from Voltaire the following case: ”'I have with my own eyes,' he writes, 'seen a suicide that is worthy of the attention of physicians. A thoughtful professional man, of mature age, of regular habits, having no strong pa.s.sions, and beyond the reach of want, committed suicide on the 17th of October, 1769, leaving behind him, addressed to the council of his native city, an apology for his voluntary death, which it was not thought advisable to publish, lest men should be encouraged to quit a life whereof so much evil is spoken. So far there is nothing extraordinary, since instances of this kind are everywhere to be found; but here is the astonis.h.i.+ng feature of the case: his father and his brother had committed suicide at the same age as himself. What hidden disposition of mind, what sympathy, what concurrence of physical laws, caused this father and his two sons to perish by their own hand and by the same form of death, just when they had acquired the same year of their age?'”[155] Ribot continues:--

”Since Voltaire's day, the history of mental disease has registered a great number of similar facts. They abound in Gall, Esquirol, Moreau of Tours, and in all the writers on insanity. Esquirol knew a family in which the grandmother, mother, daughter, and grandson, committed suicide. 'A father of taciturn disposition,' says Falret, 'had five sons. The eldest, at the age of forty, threw himself out of a third-story window; the second strangled himself at the age of thirty-five; the third threw himself out of a window; the fourth shot himself; a cousin of theirs drowned himself for a trifling cause. In the Oroten family, the oldest in Teneriffe, two sisters were affected with suicidal mania, and their brother, grandfather, and two uncles, put an end to their own lives.'... The point which excited Voltaire's surprise, viz. the heredity of suicide at a definite age, has been often noticed: 'M. L----, a monomaniac,' says Moreau of Tours, 'put an end to his life at the age of thirty. His son had hardly attained the same age when he was attacked with the same monomania, and made two attempts at suicide.

Another man, in the prime of life, fell into a melancholy state and drowned himself; his son, of good const.i.tution, wealthy, and the father of two gifted children, drowned himself at the same age. A wine-taster who had made a mistake as to the quality of a wine threw himself into the water in a fit of desperation. He was rescued, but afterwards accomplished his purpose. The physician who had attended him ascertained that this man's father and one of his brothers had committed suicide at the same age and in the same way.'...

”A woman named Olhaven fell ill of a serious disorder, which obliged her to wean her daughter, six weeks old. This complaint of the mother began by an irresistible desire to kill her child. This purpose was discovered in season to prevent it. She was next seized with a violent fever which utterly blotted the fact from her memory, and she afterwards proved a most devoted mother to her daughter. This daughter, become a mother in her turn, took two children to nurse. For some days she had suffered from fatigue and from 'movements in the stomach,' when one evening as she was in her room with the infants, one of them on her lap, she was suddenly seized by a strong desire to cut its throat. Alarmed by the horrible temptation, she ran from the spot with the knife in her hand, and sought in singing, dancing, and sleep, a refuge from the thoughts that haunted her. Hardly had she fallen asleep when she started up, her mind filled with the same idea, which now was irresistible. She was, however, controlled, and in a measure calmed. The homicidal delirium recurred, and finally gave way, only after many remedies had been employed.”

These are only a few out of the many instances that might be given of recurrence, at the same age or under the stimulation of similar conditions, of so-called pathological states. Science has. .h.i.therto given more study to such cases than to the inheritance of healthful conditions, though the line between healthful mental conditions and mental disease is very difficult to draw, and the a.s.sumption that all suicides are more insane than many of the people who are regarded as sane is unwarranted; of course if one starts with the premise that suicide is always a symptom of insanity, then the conclusion follows naturally that all suicides are insane; but this is a mere argument in a circle. As far as the inheritance of healthy or normal mental characteristics is concerned, we do know at least, from general observation, that a child often exhibits, as it develops, more and more rather than less and less the characteristics of some progenitor; and this, moreover, in many cases where the possibility of imitation is excluded. Observations might possibly be made here in a line with former reflections on man's adaptability and Haeckel's theory of the prenatal existence of the individual as repeating the history of his species. In the case of postnatal as well as in that of prenatal existence, the action of the environment can no more be left out of account than can that of heredity; and the influence of favorable or of unfavorable conditions at corresponding periods of development may explain the exaggerated growth or, on the other hand, the dwarfed character or non-appearance of tendencies a.s.sociated in their development with these periods. But at present such observations can be little more than speculation. We may at least say, however, that Mr. Leslie Stephen's statement of the case, namely, that children ”start with infinitely varying capacities” but that the environment of civilization is that which finally makes them what they become morally and mentally, should rather be reversed; for it is rather true that children are born into the world on about the same level mentally and morally (for we observe but little difference in the faculties of new-born babes), but that they by no means react, in development, upon the same or a similar environment in a similar manner. The case of the Athenian baby, whose probable equality with the modern infant is used by Mr. Stephen as an argument that the human race has made no progress as far as innate qualities are concerned, would therefore scarcely be a case in point, even if it were capable of proof,--as it is not. But it cannot be called a case in point in any sense, the English baby with which Mr. Stephen compares the Athenian infant not being of Athenian descent. Any comparison of this sort, to be of worth in the discussion of the element of heredity in human progress, must be between the baby of the primitive savage Briton and the modern British infant. The Athenians arrived at a high degree of social development; but the very fact that neither their civilization nor even that of Rome was acquired by the less civilized races who were their conquerors is rather testimony in favor of the theory of the hereditary, organic character of the habits and capacities acquired in the course of civilization. Nor have the Athenians transmitted their type unmixed; there is no pure Athenian or Greek race at the present day with which we could compare the ancient Greeks, even if we desired to affirm so great an independence of circ.u.mstances as would a.s.sure to such a race the unimpaired faculties of their ancestors in spite of all the changes in their environment which history records.

Not only the environment was changed and mixed; the stock, also, of that race which once regarded all strangers as barbarians became equally impure. And a.s.suredly the comparison of the ”average child of to-day”

with an Archimedes or a Themistocles is anything but a fair one.[156]

Taken with the qualification of the predicate which Mr. Stephen cautiously introduces in a.s.serting that the innate qualities of the average modern child are not ”radically” superior to those of the greatest ancients, it leads us to suspect that Mr. Stephen is not, himself, very thoroughly convinced of what he attempts to prove. We may agree with Mr. Stephen that ”If Homer or Plato had been born amongst the Hottentots, they could no more have composed the 'Iliad' or the 'Dialogues' than Beethoven could have composed his music, however fine his ear or delicate his organization, in the days when the only musical instrument was the tom-tom”[157]; for certainly no one can reach the same heights under an unfavorable environment that he might have attained under a favorable one; and that Homer could have expressed, in the ruder poetry which he might still have composed among Hottentots, the sentiments of the ”Iliad,” or Beethoven have produced his sonatas with the a.s.sistance of the tom-tom (provided that remained the only instrument after the appearance of an individual of such musical capacity as a Beethoven), cannot be conceived. But it is also inconceivable that a Beethoven, a Homer, or a Plato, could be born among the Hottentots, if ”to be born among them” means to be born of their stock.

In order to make any direct comparison between the capacities of the descendants of civilized parents and those of uncivilized progenitors, we ought to be able to compare average results obtained in savage infants removed, in earliest infancy, to the advantages of civilization, with the average mental and moral acquirements of individuals born under those influences. We need to compare averages, I say, and not one or two individual cases alone; for, in order to a.s.sert the organic and hereditary character of human progress up to and under civilization, we are by no means compelled to prove a like advance in all parts of a nation or people, or even advance at all in every part. It is conceivable, and wholly in accordance with the general course of evolution, that types should remain stationary while other types are advancing, that lower types should continue to exist side by side with higher ones that have developed out of them, and even that, in some lines of descent, retrogression should take place while the species or a society as a whole is progressing. But our data for comparison of averages are not, by any means, as satisfactory as could be wished; for nowhere are the direct descendants of uncivilized races given equal advantages with those of the descendants of peoples already civilized.

Galton's comparison of the negro with the white man is, for this reason, too extreme in its conclusions as to the hereditary character of intellect. Yet some general facts may be noted. And perhaps no better field for comparison is afforded us than the United States, where the white population is not the mere offshoot and tributary of a nation the great majority of whose better representatives inhabit a distant land, but an independent and successful nation, and where the negro race, while yet untutored, was suddenly endowed with a liberty nominally as great as that of the white man, together with a part in the government and a right to state education. This liberty may be, indeed is, in many parts of the South, a mere pretence, though even there toleration is gradually being acquired; but in the North the negro is treated on very nearly the same footing with the white man, the indignities offered him having their origin, for the most part, with former slave-holders, not with the born and bred Northerner. Negro children have free access to the northern schools, where they may often be seen sitting side by side with white children; and the best of American universities are open to negro students. If, then, the average of opinion, even in the North, maintains a certain amount of condescension towards the African, this condescension is no greater in degree than that maintained by the aristocracy of Europe towards the so-called lower (not the lowest) cla.s.ses, and in spite of whi

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