Part 28 (1/2)

We have already noticed some inconsistencies in Stephen's theory of human progress as merely that of an acc.u.mulation of knowledge. But he practically contradicts, elsewhere in his work, this view of advancement. On page 201 of the ”Science of Ethics,” he says distinctly: ”As men become more intellectual, sympathetic, and so forth, they gain fresh sensibilities, which are not simple judgments of consequences. .h.i.therto improved, but as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities.” Even if this statement were meant to apply to the individual alone, a great difficulty must lie in the way of any theory that sensibilities so inherent, sensibilities ”as direct, imperative, and substantial as any of the primitive sensibilities,” will not affect the character of descendants through inheritance, in the same manner as these primitive sensibilities are acknowledged to affect it.

But elsewhere Stephen remarks: ”An instinct grows and decays not on account of its effects on the individual, but on account of its effects upon the race. The animal which, on the whole, is better adapted for continuing its species, will have an advantage in the struggle, even though it may not be so well adapted for pursuing its own happiness.” He is careful to use the word ”happiness” here, but the division under which the sentence appears is headed, ”Social and Individual Utility,”

and he distinctly states, on the preceding page, that the social instincts may be a disadvantage to the individual in the struggle for existence. He writes, in this connection: ”The process by which the correlation of pernicious and painful states is worked out is one which, by its very nature, must take a number of generations. Races survive in virtue of the completeness of this correlation.”[160] This is Darwinism applied to humanity; and, surely, since the human race has existed in the social state for very many generations, we must suppose, according to the theory thus stated, continuous organic advance, even if we did not consider the pa.s.sage in connection with the a.s.sertion of the gain, with increasing intelligence and sympathy, of sensibilities as direct, imperative, and substantial as any primitive ones. Again Mr. Stephen writes: ”It is true, generally, that each man has certain capacities for moral as for every other kind of development, and capacities which vary from the top to the bottom of the scale. No process of education or discipline _whatever_ would convert a Judas Iscariot into a Paul or John.”[161] Then education, the environment of civilization, is not the only factor in the production of character. Nor is it, according to Mr.

Stephen's own words, the only important factor. If capacities vary from the top to the bottom of the scale, then surely this variation cannot be an unimportant element of development. As a matter of fact, Mr. Stephen himself lays especial stress upon inherited characteristic as the basis of character. He says, for example: ”The character is determined for each individual by its original const.i.tution, though the character is modified as the reason acts.... But, after all, we start with a certain balance of feeling, with certain fixed relations between our various instincts; and, however these may change afterwards, our character is so far determined from the start. Again, it is plain that this varies greatly with different peoples and gives rise to different types.”[162]

Surely the formation of types at least cannot be a matter of the individual alone. Furthermore, Mr. Stephen distinctly a.s.serts a growth of intelligence in the savage--which we cannot suppose to stop short with the beginning of civilization--while he especially emphasizes the fact that the emotions develop concomitantly with the intellect. He says also: ”We a.s.sume an organic change to occur--no matter how--in certain individuals of a species, and that change to be inherited by their descendants; and thus two competing varieties to arise, one of which may be supplanted by the other, or each of which may supplant the other in a certain part of the common domain. Some such process is clearly occurring in the case of human variations. Everywhere we see a compet.i.tion between different races, and the more savage vanis.h.i.+ng under the approach of the more civilized. Certain races seem to possess enormous expansive powers, whilst others remain limited within fixed regions or are slowly pa.s.sing out of existence. So far as human development supposes an organic change in the individual [?], we may suppose that this process is actually going on and that, for example, the white man may be slowly pus.h.i.+ng savage races out of existence. I do not ask whether this is the fact, because for my purpose it is irrelevant. We are considering the changes which take place without such organic development, not as denying the existence of organic developments, but simply because they are so slow and their influence so gradual that they do not come within our sphere. They belong, as astronomers say, to the secular, not to the periodic changes. Confining ourselves, therefore, to the changes which are, in my phrase, products of the 'social factor,' and which a.s.sume the constancy of the individual organism,”[163] etc. The pa.s.sage is of importance as acknowledging the reality of organic progress; but it is full of the self-contradictions which we have already noticed. It starts with the Darwinian a.s.sumption that organic change occurring in _individuals_ is directly inheritable by their descendants; this a.s.sumption, having done its office, however, is discarded, and we are told that any organic change cannot be that of individuals but must be that of societies, or at least that it must be of such sort that we have not only no need to consider it with regard to the individual life, but even no need to consider it in the study of the whole development of a society under civilization, or rather that we have no need to study it at all as soon as we have the ”social medium”

to fall back upon for an explanation of progress; and finally, in direct contradiction to the a.s.sumption first made, a constancy of the individual organism is a.s.serted. This a.s.sertion is also in direct contradiction to the a.s.sertion before noticed that character is determined by original const.i.tution and that original capacity differs ”infinitely”[164] in different individuals. We are indebted to Mr.

Stephen for a very minute a.n.a.lysis of the influence of even smallest details of circ.u.mstance upon character; surely, while we are thus emphasizing the delicacy of nervous organization that answers, with the sensibility of a gold-leaf electroscope, to the slightest variations in the environment, we cannot logically leave out of account the results of such variation in inheritance because these, too, are minute. And surely we cannot conceive that an organism so sensitive to the influence of environment is yet so inflexible and unalterable as far as the transmission of its changes to offspring is concerned. On any sound physiological theory, we cannot avoid supposing that all these minute changes in character which Stephen refers to the action of the social environment are accompanied by exact physiological equivalents. Then either these changes of organization are not inheritable,--in which case the organism does not propagate itself but something different from itself, and we have no alternative but to resort to some such theory as that of Weismann,--or else these changes are inheritable (subject, of course, to all the variations which individual circ.u.mstances of development must induce), in which case their inheritance must be of quite as much importance as their origin to any theory of social progress. As we have said, Weismann has gradually come to admit _some_ influence of the environment on the germ-plasm. We can indeed conceive of the representation of all previous development of the species in the individual, and of the determination of the degree of importance a.s.sumed, in the organism, by any particular acquirement or tendency by the coincidence of circ.u.mstance, but we can scarcely conceive logically of a propagation of organization that does not represent all the influences which have made that organization what it is. Even from Stephen's standpoint, it is difficult to understand how the organization of society, which he admits to be no organization on the plane of the higher animal, but of a much lower type, can be of so much importance in the advance of mankind, its variations the condition of progress, and yet the much more interdependent organization of the animal body be supposed to remain constant and take no part in this progress. It is difficult to comprehend how so much stress can be laid on the mere external influence of the units of society on each other, and, at the same time, the far more intimate and direct influence of parents on their offspring can be deemed of so little importance as to warrant our disregarding it altogether. It is especially difficult to understand how it is that heredity can be disregarded, not merely in its influence on the individual or even on the generation, but in all its manifold, intricate, and prolonged workings since man first extended family life to tribal organization; and this, too, in spite of the acknowledgment that progress through heredity is real if slow. It is strange that there should always be a tendency to draw a distinct line between social man and all the rest of the animal kingdom, as if, when society began, all former laws ceased from operation. Thus it is sometimes said that natural selection no longer acts on the individual because it acts on societies as wholes also; as well say that it cannot act on inner organization because it acts on the organism as a whole. As a matter of fact, it affects society through individuals, and the individual through, or rather in, his organization. If it is true, as Stephen a.s.serts, that change of social tissue is primary and fundamental to all external social change, it is not the less true that change of individual organization is fundamental to all change of external action.

No theory of development which goes beyond the individual life and considers the progress of society as a whole can scientifically disregard the element of heredity in this progress.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] I am indebted for these facts to Dr. Auguste Forel.

[142] ”Ants, Wasps, and Bees,” Chap. V.

[143] ”Zur psychologischen Wurdigung der darwin'schen Theorie.”

[144] Pp. 141, 142, translation by Henry M. Trollope.

[145] Eng. ed. Internat. Scientific Ser., p. 276; quoted from ”The Zoologist.”

[146] ”Mental Evolution in Animals,” p. 345; cited from an article in ”Nature,” 1883.

[147] ”Animal Intelligence,” p. 472.

[148] ”Mind,” Vol. VIII.

[149] Lubbock: ”The Origin of Civilisation,” pp. 9, 10.

[150] ”The Science of Ethics,” pp. 103, 104.

[151] Ibid. p. 109.

[152] ”The Science of Ethics,” p. 419.

[153] Ibid. p. 103.

[154] Ribot: ”Heredity.” Here we have examples which show that disease, as well as healthful organization and function, are subject to variation; and it may occur to us to wonder that no one has thought of referring these variations to some supernatural interference or special inner spontaneity; that theories which a.s.sume some transcendental agency or some spontaneously acting vital principle as the cause of normal, healthful variation have yet either left the variations of disease out of consideration or else simply referred them to influence of the environment. The reason for this, as far as transcendental interference is concerned, is evident; any theory of teleology in such cases must point to malevolent not benevolent design.

[155] ”Heredity,” pp. 124, 125. Quoted from the ”Dictionnaire Philosophique,” article ”Caton.”

[156] ”The Science of Ethics,” pp. 102, 103.

[157] ”The Science of Ethics,” p. 107.

[158] See previous observations on this subject, p. 408.

[159] ”Heredity,” Engl. trans., p. 84.