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DARWINISM AND POLITIOS
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JARWINISM AND KOLITICS
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D.G.RITCHIE.
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​
THE
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
OF
PROFESSOR GEORGE S. MORRIS,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY,
;
1870-1889.
Presented to the University of Michigan.
B
1623
2
3/6
DARWINISM AND POLITICS
DARWINISM AND POLITICS
31929
BY
DAVID G. RITCHIE, M.A.
FELLOW AND TUTOR OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFOrd.
((
Opinions are stronger than armies."
LORD PALMERSTON.
"Evolution is not a force, but a process; not a cause, but a law."
JOHN MORLEY On Compromise p. 210.

ARDVA QVÆ - PVLCRA
LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1889
Recla
sred 16.
ΤΟ
THE MEMORY OF
F.L.R.
CONTENTS.
PAGES
"The Struggle for Existence" in Malthus and Darwin:
How the idea is applied to Politics: Is the
Struggle "beneficent ?”
The Evolution Theory as applied to Human Society by
Darwin, Strauss, Mr. H. Spencer, Sir H. Maine,
Mr. E. Clodd.
Ambiguity of the phrase "Survival of the Fittest:'
Complexity of Social Evolution.
Does the Doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?
Does the Evolution Theory justify Laissez faire?
Struggle between ideas for survival: Conscious-
ness as a factor in Evolution: Testimony of
Prof. Huxley and Strauss: Ambiguity of "Na-
ture" Conscious "Variations."
Why fix ideas in institutions? Custom-its use and
abuse Institutions and "the social factor'
generally are neglected in the popular accepta-
tion of the Doctrine of Heredity: Mr. Galton's
views considered: Darwin's own opinion. .
>>
1-6
7-14
15-20
21-25
25-46
47-68
Are the Biological Formulæ adequate to express Social
Evolution?.
69-72
Applications :
(1) The Labour Question,
72-77
(2) The Position of Women,
77-92
(3) The Population Question.
92-100
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
C
HARLES DARWIN himself has told
us¹ that it was Malthus's Essay on
Population which suggested to him the theory
of Natural Selection. The constant tendency
of population to outrun the means of subsistence
and the consequent struggle for existence were
ideas that only needed to be extended from
human beings to the whole realm of organic
nature in order to explain why certain inherited
variations become fixed as the characteristics of
definite types or species. Thus an economic
to the great
treatise suggested the answer to the
biological problem; and it is therefore fitting
1 Life and Letters of Charles Darwin I. p. 83. Cp. Letter to
Haeckel, quoted by Grant Allen Darwin, p. 67.
A
2
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
that the biological formulæ should, in their
turn, be applied to the explanation of social
conditions. It is felt, rightly enough, that the
problems of human society cannot be fairly
studied, if we do not make use of all the light to
be found in the scientific investigation of
nature; and the conception of the struggle for
existence comes back to the explanation of
human society with all the added force of its
triumph in the solution of the greatest question
with which natural science has hitherto success-
fully dealt.
Our sociologists look back with
contempt on older phrases, such as
"Social
Contract or "Natural Rights," and think that
they have gained, not only a more accurate view
of what is, but a rule available in practical ethics
and politics. Evolution has become not merely
a theory but a creed, not merely a conception
by which to understand the universe, but a
guide to direct us how to order our lives.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
3
The phrase "struggle for existence," as it
came from the pages of Malthus, had a dreary
enough sound; but, when this struggle for
existence is shown to lead to the "survival of
the fittest,” and when it is seen to be the ex-
planation of all the marvellous adaptations and
of all the beauty of the living things in the
world, it seems to gain a force and even a
sanctity which makes it a very formidable
opponent to have to reckon with in any political
or ethical controversy. It is easy to see how
the evolutionary watch-word can be applied.
In Malthus the idea of struggle for existence
was a very uncomfortable one; but, when it
comes back to economics after passing through
biology, it makes a very comfortable doctrine
indeed for all those who are quite satisfied with
things as they are. The support of scientific
opinion can be plausibly claimed for the defence
of the inequalities in the social organism: these
1
4
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
inequalities, it can be urged, are only part of
what exist inevitably throughout the physical
world. The creed of Liberty, Equality, Fra-
ternity can be discarded as a metaphysical
fiction of the unscientific eighteenth century.
The aspirations of socialism can be put aside as
the foolish denial of the everlasting economic
competition which is sanctioned by nature as
only one phase of the general struggle for
existence.
Let us suppose for a moment that our biolo-
gical politicians are correct in their view of
social evolution: they ought, at least, to cease
talking to us of the beneficent working of the
survival of the fittest," or "the beneficent
private war, which makes one man strive to
climb on the shoulders of another." This talk
of "beneficence" is itself but a survival, not ot
1 H. Spencer The Man versus the State p. 69; Maine
Popular Government, p. 50.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
Ś
the fittest, but of the "theological" belief in a
God who wills the happiness of his creatures-
the attenuated creed of the English Deists-or
of the "metaphysical " belief in a Nature which,
if only left to itself, leads to better results than
can be secured by any interference of man.
That was the type of thinking in
the days of
our evolu-
See P. 4
our-
of benefi-
Rousseau and Adam Smith: and
tionary enthusiasts, when they talk
cence, are, after all, only repeating the creed of
the despised eighteenth century, or else they
are only disguising under a hypocritical phrase
the triumphant crowing of the successful fight-
ing-cock, aloft on his own dung-heap, while his
vanquished opponent slinks away battered and
bleeding. From natural selection there have
resulted wonderful adaptations, but how much
of suffering by the way, how much of horrid
cruelty in these adaptations themselves? The
great Darwin himself speaks in a very different
!
6
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
tone from that of his jubilant disciples. Things
do not look so clear to him. He marvels at
this wonderful universe, and especially at the
nature of man, but "I cannot see," he says,
(6
as plainly as others do, and as I should wish
to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all
sides of us. There seems to me too much
misery in the world."
"If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia or a Catiline ?
asks Pope with the contented optimism of his
easy-going age. And if the fratricidal morality
of the bee-hive and the fiendish cunning of the
Sphex are to be admired, is there not a similar
justification for military despotism and tyranni-
cal cruelty, or for the ingenious device of the
sweating system?
2
"We dined, as a rule, on each other.
What matter? the toughest survived."2
1 From a letter to Dr. Asa Gray in Life and Letters, II. 312.
May Kendall, Dreams to Sell, "Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus."
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
7
This is a sufficient morality in the mesozoic
epoch for the ichthyosaurus, to whom the senti-
ment is ascribed by the poet; and it is a con-
venient morality for some human animals in
London to-day. Admirable, doubtless-this
scheme of salvation for the elect by the damna-
tion of the vast majority; but, pray, do not let
us hear anything more about its "beneficence."
I am not speaking at random about these
ethical applications of the conception of struggle
for existence. Darwin himself, as always, is
most cautious and guarded in his reference to
anything that lies outside his own special sphere
of observation. He looks forward to the
elimination of the lower races by the higher
civilised races throughout the world.' He
points out how "a struggle for existence conse-
quent on his rapid multiplication," has ad-
vanced man to his present high condition;
¹ Life and Letters, I., p. 316.
8
DARWINISM AND FOLITICS.
("
'and, if he is to advance still higher, it is to be
feared that he must remain subject to a severe
struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indo-
lence, and the more gifted men would not be
more successful in the battle of life than the less
gifted." This, doubtless, includes the old
objection which Aristotle brought against
Plato's communism, that man needs a stimulus
to exertion and industry. But there is no
jubilation, no exaltation of a natural law into an
ethical ideal. And let us note how Darwin
modifies this very statement in the words that
follow :-
"Important as the struggle for existence has been and
even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is
concerned there are other agencies more important. For
the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or in-
directly, much more through the effects of habit, the
reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc, than through
natural selection; though to this latter agency may be
1 Descent of Man, p. 618.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
9
safely attributed the social instincts which afforded the
basis for the development of the moral sense."
((
Darwin disclaims the connexion, which had
been alleged in Germany, between the doctrine
of natural selection and socialism. He sees
clearly enough that his theory gives a prima
facie support not to socialism, but to industrial
competition. Yet he is amused at the idea of
The Origin of Species having turned Sir Joseph
Hooker into "a jolly old Tory."a Primogeni
ture," he says, "is dreadfully opposed to selec-
tion: suppose the first-born bull was necessarily
made by each farmer the begetter of his stock!"
Still, he admits that English peers have an ad-
vantage in the selection of "beautiful and charm-
ing women out of the lower ranks" and thus get
some benefit from the principle. In answering
Mr. Galton's questions, Darwin describes his
1 Life and Letters III. 237.
2 lb. II. 385.
10
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
own politics as "Liberal or Radical:" and
this was in 1873, by which time Radicalism was
no longer bound to out and out laissez faire.
Evolution, as applied to the whole of the uni-
verse, means a great deal more than the prin-
ciple of natural selection. In the wider sense
it is professedly applied to the guidance of life
by Strauss in his famous book The Old Faith
and the New, where military conquest and
social inequalities are expressly defended as
right, because natural; and nothing but con-
tempt is reserved for those who venture to
hope for the abolition of war, who look beyond
the limits of the nation or who dream of a
better social order.² It might be objected that
in these passages we do not hear the voice of
German science and philosophy but of that re-
actionary military spirit which has infected the
1 ib. III. 178.
2 See esp. secs. 78, 79, 82, 83, 84 in German (ed. 8. 1875) =
secs. 74, 75, 78, 79, 80 in Eng. Tr. (ed. 3. 1874).
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
I 1
new German nation; and I think it could be
shown that such sentiments are inconsistent
with admissions that Strauss himself makes,
although he and most German savants with
him believe that they are a necessary con-
sequence of the Evolutionist creed.
Let us turn, however, to our English philo-
sopher who is always protesting against every-
thing that can on any pretext be ascribed to
the revived militancy of the present day. In
the name of Evolution and on behalf of the
survival of the fittest Mr. Herbert Spencer
cries out against "The Sins of Legislators" in
interfering with the beneficent operation of the
pitiless discipline which kills off the unsuccess-
ful members of society, and against " The Com-
ing Slavery" of socialistic attempts to diminish
the misery of the world. Now, just as in
Strauss's
case the military spirit, SO in
I
¹ See The Man v. the State, esp. the two essays named.
12
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
Spencer's the old-fashioned individualistic
radicalism of his early days might be assigned.
as the true source of such opinions; but there
can be no doubt that the formulæ of Evolution
do supply an apparent justification to the de-
fenders of unrestricted laissez faire and to the
champions, more or less consistent and
thorough-going, of existing inequalities of race,
class and sex, and a plausible weapon of attack
against those who look to something better
than slavery or competition as the basis of
human society. Thus Spencer rejoices over
the Liberty and Property Defence League,
"largely consisting of Conservatives," and the
late Sir Henry Maine in the congenial pages
of the Quarterly Review rejoiced over Mr.
Herbert Spencer and glorified "the beneficent
private war" of economical competition, which
2
1 The Man versus the State, p. 17.
I
2 Republished in Popular Government. See pp. 49, 50 52.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
13
"the
he considered the only alternative to
daily task, enforced by the prison or the
scourge." "So far," he says, "as we have any
experience to teach us, we are driven to the
conclusion that every society of men must
adopt one system or the other, or it will pass
through penury to starvation.'
")
Even those, who are more full of hope for
the future and more full of sympathy for human
beings, are apt to adopt a similar mode of
speaking. Thus, in his interesting little book,
The Story of Creation, Mr. Edward Clodd,
though he looks forward to "a goal, where
might shall be subdued by right," still speaks
as follows:-
"When the weeding process has done its utmost, there re-
mains a sharp struggle for life between the survivors.
Man's normal state is therefore one of conflict; further back
than we can trace, it impelled the defenceless bipeds from
whom he sprang to unity, and the more so because of their
relative inferiority in physique to many other animals. The
range of that unity continued narrow long after he had
14
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
gained lordship over the brute; outside the small com-
binations for securing the primal needs of life the struggle
was ferocious, and, under one form or another, rages along
the line to this day. There is no discharge in that war.'
It may change its tactics and its weapons: among advanced
nations the military method may be more or less superseded
by the industrial, a man may be mercilessly starved instead
of being mercilessly slain; but be it war of camp or
markets, the ultimate appeal is to force of brain or muscle,
and the hardiest or craftiest win. In some respects the
struggle is waged more fiercely than in olden times, while it
is unredeemed by any element of chivalry." (pp. 211, 212.)
It is thus of the extremest practical import-
ance to see what is the real bearing of Evolu-
tion on social problems. We must examine
the relation between biological laws and
social faiths and hopes, if we would make our
opinions self-consistent and self-consistency is
the negative test of truth.
test of truth. Such an ex-
amination is especially incumbent on those who
profess to keep their minds open to all that
science can teach, and at the same time to have
at heart the cause of social reformation. We
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
15
ought to have a reason for the faith that is in
us. To test our scattered opinions and beliefs
by bringing them together is the main function
of a sound philosophy.
I
The phrase" survival of the fittest" is very
apt to mislead, for it suggests the fittest or best
in every sense or in the highest sense, whereas
it only means, as Prof. Huxley has pointed out,
those "best fitted to cope with their circum-
stances " in order to survive and transmit.
offspring. Now when we come to consider
society, we have to deal with a very complex
set of phenomena, and what is fittest in one
aspect may not be fittest in another. But
natural selection implies no further morality
than "Nothing succeeds like success." If the
struggle for food and mates be carried on on its
lowest terms, the strongest and the strongest
1 Art. in "The Struggle for Existence" in Nineteenth Cen-
tury for Feb. 1888, p. 165.
16
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
only would be selected. But cunning can do a
great deal against strength. Now we cannot be
sure that a good combination of strength and
cunning will be selected: strength in some
cases, cunning in others is what we find by
comparing different species of animals and
different races of men. Again, the strongest
and largest and in many ways finest animals
are not necessarily those most capable of
adapting themselves to changed circumstances.
The insignificant may more easily find food and
escape enemies. We cannot be sure that Evo-
lution will always lead to what we should
regard as the greatest perfection of any species.
Degeneration enters in as well as progress.
The latest theory about the Aryan race makes
the Aryans come from the north of Europe,
conquer the feebler races of the south, and,
having proved its fitness in this way, prove its
unfitness in another by being less capable of
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
17
I
surviving in a warm climate than they; so that
an Aryan language may be spoken, where there
remains little or no Aryan blood. Are we en-
titled to maintain, with regard to human races
and human individuals, that the fittest always sur-
vive, except in the sense in which the proposi-
tion is a truism, that those survive who are
most capable of surviving?
Further, we must emphasize the fact that the
struggle goes on not merely between individual
and individual, but between race and race,
The struggle among plants and the lower
animals is mainly between members of the
same species; and the individual competi-
tion between human beings, which is so much
admired by Mr. Herbert Spencer, is of this
primitive kind. When we come to the
struggle between kinds, it is to be noticed that
1 See Art. by Prof. Rhys on "Race Theories and European
Politics," in New Frinceton Review, Jan., 1888.
B
18
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
!
it is fiercest between allied kinds; and so, as
has been pointed out, the economic struggle
between Great Britain and the United States is
fiercer than elsewhere between nations. But,
so soon as we pass to the struggle between
race and race, we find new elements coming in.
The race which is fittest to survive, i.e. most
capable of surviving, will survive; but it does
not therefore follow that the individuals there-
by preserved will be the fittest, either in the
sense of being those who in a struggle between
individual and individual would have survived,
or in the sense of being those whom we should
regard as the finest specimens of their kind.
A race or a nation may succeed by crushing out
the chances of the great majority of its indi-
vidual members. The cruel polity of the bees,
the slave-holding propensities of certain species
of ants have their analogues in human societies.
The success of Sparta in the Hellenic world
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
19
was obtained at the cost of a frightful oppres-
sion of her subject classes and with the result
that Sparta never produced one really great
man. How much more does the world owe to
Athens which failed, than to Sparta which
succeeded in the physical struggle for exis-
tence?
But human beings are not merely, like plants
and animals, grouped into natural species or
varieties. They have come to group them-
selves in very various ways. Thus an indi-
vidual may conceivably belong by descent to
one group, by political allegiance to another,
by language, and all that language carries with
it of tradition and culture, to a third, by re-
ligion to a fourth, by occupation to a fifth-
though in most cases two or more of these will
coincide. Now between each of these groups
and similar groups there are, as the doctrine.
of Evolution teaches us if we need to be
20
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
taught, struggles constantly proceeding. Race
struggles with race, nation with nation,
language with language, religion with religion,
and social castes based on occupation and on
economic status struggle with one another for
pre-eminence, apart from the struggle going on
between individuals and groups of individuals
within each of them. Now, if in each of these
cases the struggle were not complicated by the
other struggles, we might contentedly assert
that natural selection leads to the fittest always
succeeding. But a defeated and subject race
may impose its language, its civilisation or its
religion upon its conquerors; and the apparent
failure of a race or a nation does not entitle us
at once to pronounce it inferior or less fit, be-
cause its failure in warfare may be the prelude
to a greater and more lasting success in peace.
On the other hand it is easy to see how the
pre-eminence of a caste, based either on race or
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
21
bers.
on occupation, may be maintained at the cost of
the physical and intellectual advance of its mem-
Where noble may marry only noble and
where marriages are "arranged," as the phrase
runs (more truthful than most of those current
in the fashionable world), the interests of the
health and of the intelligence of the race may be
sacrificed to the maintenance of a closely coher-
ent class with large estates and social pre-
dominance. Such a type of nobility will in the
long run inevitably lose power cwing to its own
internal decay; but superficially plausible argu-
ments from the doctrine of heredity are occa-
sionally brought forward in its favour. The
democrat is often told that he is very unscien-
tific; but the evolutionist who points to the
aristocratic preferences of history, errs greatly if
he thinks the undoubted pre-eminence of a few
great individuals and even of a few famous fam-
ilies any sound argument in favour of a hered-
22
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
itary aristocratic caste. Darwin, as we have
already seen, admits that the nobility in this
country have a certain advantage in being able
to select their wives more freely than most other
men yet, allowing their superiority in this
matter to the nobilities of other countries and
rejoicing that the institution of the peerage has
saved us from the worse calamity of a "nobility"
in the proper sense, we may be permitted to
regret that these highly privileged persons, the
peers and the peers' eldest sons do not always
think sufficiently of their responsibility to the
future in the selection of their mates.
as we have also seen, inveighs against the folly
of primogeniture: so that, after all, even the
English nobility do not get much countenance
from the theory of natural selection. It is strange
to find the doctrine of heredity invoked by the
defenders of the House of Lords: one would
suspect that they have never looked into Mr.
Darwin,
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
23
Galton's interesting book. It is instructive to
notice the way in which half-understood scien-
tific theories are misapplied to practical matters.
Mr. Galton declares most emphatically that he
looks upon the peerage "as a disastrous insti-
tution owing to its destructive effects on our
valuable races." If an eminent man is elevated
to the House of Lords, his eldest son is tempted
to marry a wealthy heiress, in order to keep up
the show required of a hereditary legislator; but
wealthy heiresses usually tend to be sterile,
being the last representatives of dwindling
families. On the other hand owing to the beau-
tiful British custom
custom of primogeniture, the
younger sons are induced to remain unmarried :
and thus the peerage appears to be an ingen-
ious device for hindering the propagation of
talent. Further Mr. Galton shows clearly
enough the absurdity of expecting to find
1
¹. See Galton's Hereditary Genius p. 140.
24
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
ability transmitted through a long line of de-
scent: the older a man's family, therefore, the
less likely is he to have inherited any of the
ability of its founder. I suppose there is still a
pious Conservative superstition that "our old
nobility" can boast of its "Norman blood "-a
belief which a critical examination of a recent.
copy of the "Peerage" would do a good deal
to weaken. But even supposing the Norman
blood were there, does it follow that it is now
particularly worth having? "It is curious to
remark," says Mr. Galton, "how unimportant to
modern civilisation has become the once famous
and thoroughbred looking Norman.
The type
of his features, which is, probably, in some de-
gree correlated with his peculiar form of ad-
venturous disposition, is no longer characteristic
of our rulers, and is rarely found among celebri-
ties of the present day; it is more often met
with among the undistinguished members of
DARWINISM AND FOLITICS.
25
"'I
highly-born families, and especially among the
less conspicuous officers of the army. I have
not yet raised the question as to what kind of
characteristics can be transmitted from gener-
ation to generation and in what way I have
only tried to show that the scientific doctrine of
heredity is a very treacherous ally of the de-
fenders of aristocratic privilege.
The doctrine of Evolution gives little support.
to the aristocratic Conservative. It may seem
to give more to the "laissez faire" Radical.
The evolutionist politician is more likely to
adopt the view that in the interests of the race
we ought to remove every artificial restriction
on the operation of natural and sexual selection.
But the difficulty is-where are we to find a
line between "natural" and "artificial," if all
the phenomena of society are, as the evolutionist
is bound to hold, subject to the same laws of
¹. Ib. p. 348,
26
DARWINISM AND FOLITICS.
nature? If we are content to remove only
some artificial restrictions, on what principle can
we justify ourselves? If we are to remove
every artificial restriction that hampers the
struggle for existence, are we not going back to
Rousseau's "State of Nature," the primitive,
uncivilised pre-social condition of mankind? If
we expect the "State of Nature" to be better
than the present condition, which is one of at
least mitigated or inconsistent anarchy, are we
not falling back into the "metaphysical" con-
ception of Nature and ignoring the scientific
conception of society? The "State of Nature,"
¿.e., the unsocial state, is more correctly described
by Hobbes as "the war of all against all." On
the other hand, when we find the more tender-
hearted preacher of evolutionist morality point-
ing out that, though the physical well-being of
the race may have suffered through the mitiga-
tion of the primitive struggle and the con-
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
27
sequent preservation of weaklings, we have
gained some intellectual advance through the
occasional chance of a Newton and a moral
advance through the cultivation of sympathy
and tenderness,' in such a position is there not
some inconsistency, some sacrifice of natural
selection in favour of human selection con-
sciously or half-consciously directed to other
ends than those of mere nature? Our attention
is thus called to another factor in that universal
strife which is the story of the universe. So
soon as a sufficient social development and a
sufficiently advanced type of language make it
possible, there begins a competition between
ideas. The
The age of conflict is, in Bagehot's
phrase, ² 2 succeeded by "the age of discussion,"
and the ideas, which rise in the minds of men
with the same tendency to variation that we find
throughout nature, compete with one another
1 E. Clodd Story of Creation, p. 211.
2
Physics and Politics,
28
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
for sustenance and support. The conception of
natural selection may be applied here also to
explain how certain ideas come to obtain that
relatively fixed and definite character which be-
longs, for instance, to the moral principles
currently accepted within a community at any
given time. Thus such ideas as patriotism,
respect of human life as such, self-control in
regard to the bodily appetites, have won their
way so as to become factors in the struggle and
to conflict with the operation of natural selection
as this prevails among the mere animals. Why
then may not such ideas as Equality and
Fraternity claim to have a fair chance in the
struggle for existence? If they can win posses-
sion of more and more minds in the world,
they will become actual influences on conduct and
will from being mere ideals tend to bring
about their own realisation. "Opinions," said
I
1 Cp. Fouillée La Science Sociale Contemporaine, p. xii., &c,
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
29
Lord Palmerston, "are stronger than armies.'
One of the first conditions of any institution
being altered is that people should come
to imagine it as conceivably altered. The
great difficulty of the reformer is to get
people to exert their imagination to that
extent.
Now what does all this amount to except to a
recognition of the difference introduced into
natural evolution by the appearance of conscious-
ness? I shall not now attempt to work out all
the philosophical implications involved in this
recognition of consciousness: nor, in order to
show how through consciousness man becomes
free from the tyranny of nature, shall I quote
the words of any one whose evidence might be
suspected because he might be called a mere
metaphysician. I shall quote the words of a
witness whom no scientific man would reject-
Prof. Huxley :-
30
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
Society like art is a part of nature.
But it is convenient
to distinguish those parts of nature in which man plays the
part of immediate cause as something apart; and, therefore,
society, like art, is usefully to be considered as distinct from
nature. It is the more desirable, and even necessary, to
make this distinction, since society differs from nature in
having a definite moral object; whence it comes about that
the course shaped by the ethical man-the member of society
or citizen-necessarily runs counter to that which the non-
ethical man—the primitive savage, or man as a mere member
of the animal kingdom-tends to adopt. The latter fights
out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any
other animal; the former devotes his best energies to the
object of setting limits to the struggle.
"The history of civilisation—that is of society—is the
record of the attempts which the human race has made to
escape from this position [i.e., the struggle for existence in
which those who were best fitted to cope with their circum-
stances, but not the best in any other sense, survived].
The first men who substituted the state of mutual peace for
that of mutual war, whatever the motive which impelled
them to take that step, created society. But in establishing
peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for exist-
ence. Between the members of that society, at anyrate, it was
not to be pursued à outrance. And of all the successive shapes
which society has taken, that most nearly approaches
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
31
perfection in which war of individual against individual is
most strictly limited."1
Professor Huxley then goes on to show how
the struggle for existence appears in a new form
through the zealous fulfilment of what we are told
was the first commandment given to man-" Be
fruitful and multiply." But, instead of argu-
ing, as before, that the further history of civilisa-
tion must consist in putting a limit to this new
economic struggle, he avoids drawing any such
inference, and very lamely concludes that we
must establish technical schools. These are
most desirable and necessary institutions, but
they might fulfil some better purpose than
what he proposes-which is simply to sharpen
our claws that we may fight our neighbours the
more fiercely and destroy them the more
successfully. Let us be grateful, however, to
Professor Huxley for the scientific conclusions
1 Art. "The Struggle for Existence" in Nineteenth Century
Feb. 1888, pp. 165, 166.
32
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
which he has drawn. As practical premises
they will serve us for a wider syllogism than he
It is the same with
ventures to construct.
Strauss.
In spite of his excessive conservatism
in practical matters, this is the way in which
he formulates in general terms the "Rule of
Life":-
“Ever remember that thou art human, not merely a natural
production; ever remember that all others are human also,
and, with all individual differences, the same as thou, hav-
ing the same needs and claims as thyself: this is the sum
and substance of morality."
“In man Nature endeavoured not merely to exalt, but to
transcend herself. He must not therefore be merely an
animal repeated; he must be something more, something
better."
"Man not only can and should know Nature, but rule
both external Nature, so far as his powers admit, and the
natural within himself."1
It is unnecessary to raise the question how
consciousness makes its appearance.
It is
1 The Old Faith and the New. Eng. Transl. ii. pp. 54, 57,
58, (secs. 70, 71=secs. 74, 75 in German edit. 1875.)
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
33
enough that human beings are not only engaged
in the struggle for existence, but know that they
are so engaged, are capable of looking round
on what they are doing, of reflecting, of com-
paring results and considering some good, some
bad, some to be desired and others to be
avoided. If we distinguish-as Professor
Huxley says it is convenient to do-between
man and nature, then it is of extreme import-
ance to us to discover the natural laws which
operate in society, but it does not follow that
we owe them any allegiance. They are “laws'
simply in the sense of being generalisations
from experience of facts or hypotheses by
which we find it possible to make the facts more
intelligible to ourselves and it is the merest
ambiguity of language that leads to the argu-
ment that what can be called "an economic
law" has
any claim
upon our reverence. It may
tell us something convenient or something in-
C
34
DARWINISSM AND POLITICS.
*
convenient; but of itself it is, like nature,
absolutely non-moral.
On the other hand if we use Nature (with a
very big N) to include all that goes on in
human society, human institutions and human
ideas must be included in this conception of
Nature: else the scientific sociologist is assum-
ing a supernatural, or infranatural, region outside
human society. Governments are natural pro-
ducts and it is inconsistent in Mr. Herbert
Spencer, while telling us that the maxim
66
"
Constitutions are not made but grow" has
become a truism, to go on to blame govern-
ments simply because they "interfere" with
natural laws. Why, such "interferences.
would on his own principles amount to a
miracle! The real and significant distinction is
not that between State-interference" and
"laissez faire," but between intelligent and
(C
scientific, i.e. systematic and far-sighted State-
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
35
action on the one side and that peddling kind
of playing at an occasional and condescending
providence in small matters, which is often
much worse than doing nothing at all. The
State which "protects
protects" a few industries and
doles out its alms to a multitude of paupers is
only yet half conscious of its functions and may
be doing unmitigated evil, except in so far as
it is performing some interesting but rather
cruel experiments for the benefit of sociological
students. "Protection" and a bad poor-law
(i.e. any mode of relief which breeds pauperism
instead of diminishing it) are just the kinds of
State-action which have brought all State-
action into disrepute and make the arguments
against it plausible. There are, however, many
cases where the arguments against a partial
State-action cease to hold against the same
action if made more thoroughgoing, eg, giving
free education to some children may be objected
36
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
to as pauperising: free education as the right
of all would make none paupers. Yet even a
partial State-action may be gladly accepted, as
a recognition that the State has duties towards
its weaker members, however inefficiently it
may discharge them.
The capacity for thinking constitutes man's
freedom. It is by thinking alone that he can
rise above the position of nature's slave.
This
does not amount to asserting the foolish dogma
of arbitrary "free will"-as if every human
being were always equally capable of choosing
between any given course and its opposite-
a dogma which is not only foolish, but mis-
chievous, for it leads to the neglect of the
way in which individual characters depend on
their environment, and to the consequent neglect
of the moral importance of political and social
institutions. Ideas are themselves the out-
come of institutions: and yet they constitute a
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
37
factor that must be taken account of, if we
are to form an adequate conception of social
evolution.
What is effected by conscious effort is not
necessarily in antagonism to what was going on
in the unconscious stage. More often it is a
continuation, an extension, an acceleration of a
process already begun. In the higher organ-
isms, even apart from consciousness, there is,
at least according to Mr. Spencer's generalisa-
tion, less waste than in the lower. Thus the
plants that are fertilised by insects produce
fewer pollen grains than those which have no
conspicuous flowers. Those which have fruits
that are attractive to birds produce fewer seeds
than cryptogamous plants whose germs fill the
air in countless myriads. The great mortality
of savage life and the prevalence of infanticide
are similar instances of waste which disappear
more or less at higher stages in social evolu-
38
DARWINISM AND POLITIĆŠ.
tion. It is very easy for the historian to show
how much service has been rendered to man-
kind by fierce struggles, by war, civil dis-
sension, economic competition. But does it
therefore follow that equally good ends can
never be attained at less cost? Strauss insists
that it is as impossible to abolish war, as to
abolish thunder-storms. To argue thus is to
proceed like certain Indians who are said to
cut down the fruit tree when they wish to
pluck the fruit, or like Charles Lamb's China-
man who burnt down his house every time he
•
wanted to enjoy the luxury of roast pig. Are
we to have so much more faith in the blind
passions of human nature than in what can be
done by conscious effort? With these blind
passions we must reckon, as with other forces
in nature; but there is no reason why we
should accord to them any special prestige,
simply because they are natural. They are to
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
39
be used or to be defeated according as our
thinking decides.
War is "natural" only in the sense of being
the primitive form of the struggle between
races and nations, not in the sense of something
which ought to be. It has indeed contributed
greatly to nation-making and to the develop-
ment of the primitive virtues of courage and
fidelity. Those tribes that were the bravest
and the most coherent have been the most
successful in the struggle for existence, and so
these virtues have come to receive special
respect. But let us notice with what limita-
tions courage was limited to the courage
shown in the battle field, fidelity was limited to
fidelity towards one's own tribe. When re-
flection begins, and when imagination is de-
veloped, the sphere of courage and fidelity
comes to be extended, at least in the minds of
some of the more reflective and sympathetic
40
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
individuals. It is precisely in this way that
moral ideas, which are the product of social
evolution, come to be capable of advance and
progress,
Customs and customs are laws in
their primitive form-are habits regarded as
right, because, having been adopted, they have
proved conducive to the welfare and success of
the tribe or nation; but customs tend to sur-
vive long after the circumstances which called
them into being have changed. If they be-
come very hurtful, the people maintaining them
will in the long run suffer in the struggle with
nature or with other nations which have better
customs, i.e. customs more favourable to
success; but it is a gain to a people if its more
far-sighted members discern the hurtfulness of
a custom in time, and persuade or force their
fellows to discard it before it is too late. This
is in all ages the function of the political, re-
ligious, or social reformer-to save his people
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
41
from destruction or decay by inducing them to
change a custom which, however beneficial
once, and in some respects, has now become
mischievous. Such attempts imply no con-
tradiction to the principle of modification by
natural selection, but are themselves an illustra-
tion of it. Suppose an animal, whose ancestors
lived on the land, takes to the water (or vice
versa) because circumstances have changed, or
in order to escape from excessive competition;
it may succeed better. When Themistocles
made the Athenians into a naval power, this
change was a quite analogous phenomenon.
The difference is, that what Darwin called (con-
fessedly as a mode of expressing ignorance)
the "
spontaneous" variation in the habits of
the animal is supplanted by the deliberate
adoption of a new habit among human beings.
Now among all the more advanced societies
we find this conscious, deliberate adaptation
42
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
supplanting the unconscious and spontaneous,
though in the beginnings of the most successful
institutions there is generally a very large
element of unconsciousness in the procedure.
Thus the great discovery of representative
government, which constitutes the chief differ-
ence between ancient and modern politics, which
has made it possible for democracy to exist
without slavery, and which has made it possible
for large states to possess free institutions, came
about mainly because Englishmen felt it incon-
venient to attend personally when the King
wished to raise money: an irksome duty was
readily transferred to others. But representa-
tive government, as maintained by civil war in
the seventeenth century, and representative
government as imitated in all the most advanced
nations of the world, is something consciously
and deliberately chosen. It is a farther and
¹ See Hearn Government of England, 2nd Edit., pp. 466 ff.
I
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
43
We
more complex application of the convenient
principle of "counting heads to save the trouble
of breaking them." Federation, in its modern
sense,' is a still farther and still more complex
application of the same principle, though Strauss,
with the prejudices of a German monarchist,
thinks a federal state inferior to a nation.
may feel dissatisfied enough with what repre-
sentative institutions still are, even at their best
and when honestly worked; but we should be
indulging in a foolish paradox if we did not see
that any such institutions are better than their
absence, because of the possibilities they contain.
Yet could any political thinker of the ancient
world have believed such institutions possible?
Would he have believed it possible for free
citizens to delegate their functions, even for a
1 I add this qualification, because the Federations of ancient
history appear not to have recognised, except in rudimentary
form, the principle of representation, and thus belonged to a
lower, not a higher, type of society than the city-state.
44
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
time, without surrendering their democratic
freedom? One can see in Strauss's book how
I
little understanding the cultured German may
still have of this great condition of political
advance.
2
Does not this introduction of representative
government, which has solved and will solve
many problems, however many it leaves
unsolved, hold out the promise that similar
good may be done by the substitution of some
more intelligent methods for military and
industrial competition? International arbitration
and economic co-operation are as yet small
beginnings, but not smaller than the first germs
of representative government.
So far as we
¹ In enumerating the different kinds of oligarchy, Aristotle
gives what is practically a definition of representative government
(Pol. IV. 14 § 8, 1298 a 40); but this is merely put forward as a
logical possibility. At least he gives no example, and this slight
naming is the clearest proof of the absence of the idea from
the mind of the greatest political thinker of antiquity.
2 The Old Faith and the New, sec. 81 (German ed. 1875)=
sec. 77 Eng. Tr.
DARWINISM AND FOLITICS.
45
have yet got, neither arbitration nor co-operation
have done for society what their advocates
hoped, but they may be the first "variations,"
which, if they prove their fitness, will bring into
being a new species of civilised society.
Mr. Herbert Spencer considers that there are
only two main types of society, the militant and
the industrial and in industrialism he compre-
hends an absolute system of laissez faire, the
extreme of individualism.
It is strange that he
should not see that the economic struggle is
only a phase of the oldest form of the struggle
for existence-the struggle between individuals.
for subsistence, and that it therefore belongs
to a lower type than the struggles between
organised communities, where a strict organisa-
tion mitigates the internal strife. It is difficult
to see whence Mr. Spencer and his followers
derive their ardent faith in a beneficent result
from this struggle, unless it be, as already
46
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
suggested, from an inconsistent survival of the
old theological optimism or the metaphysical
idea of Nature.
But, it might be objected, the economic
struggle is not unmitigated, for industrial com-
petition is carried on amongst enlightened and
educated people, who will consider one another
and develop their altruistic tendencies, though
not in excess. Yet so fearful is Mr. Spencer of
the interference of the State with his social
aggregate of warring atoms, that he will not
hear of any education except what each family
provides for its own members-a return to the
patriarchal or "Cyclopic " type of society—or
what can be provided by free competition
between private teachers, who will run the
educational business on strict commercial
principles. Thus I am afraid the educational
influences to which he looks will not operate
rapidly. But why, it will be said, not trust to the
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
47
spread of kindlier feelings among individuals to
mitigate the harshness of inevitable natural
laws? Why bring in the ponderous machinery
of legislation? Why crystallise customs into
codes, voluntary associations into definite
political institutions?
I have already referred to the mischief and
danger that may arise from customs which have
outlived their use; but fixed customs, as Bage-
hot has so admirably pointed out,' are essential
in keeping society together, and, as all scientific
students of ethics have come to see, morality is
dependent upon institutions. We may have to
fight against custom to get a hearing for new
ideas; but we must make use of custom to get
them realised. Ideas can only be productive of
their full benefit, if they are fixed in institutions.
We cannot build up anything on a mere shift-
ing basis of opinion. This principle is equally
1 Physics and Politics, p. 25 ff.
48
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
applicable to the removal of old wrongs and to
the introduction of new rights. Many kindly
and enlightened persons here and there felt the
evil of slavery, but their views were mere iso-
lated private opinions till slavery was abolished
by legal enactment in one country after another
throughout the civilised world. Highly res-
pectable and pious people in the last century had
no objection even to the slave-trade. Now that
slavery has been officially buried, it has not many
friends left to shed tears over its grave. Cer-
tain eccentric individuals were disposed to fav-
our religious toleration in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. But even those who,
being inclined to heresy themselves, like John
Milton and John Locke, extended the bounds of
liberty pretty far, had very distinct limits beyond
which they would not go. There is always the
risk of an outburst of the persecuting spirit, even
in communities that are not as a rule fiercely
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
49
fanatical. Hence a great step is gained when
in any country it is expressly and officially de-
clared that distinctions of creed shall make no
difference in the rights of citizens. It is often
argued that the possession of the suffrage is of
very infinitesimal value to the poor man and
will do very little good to the poor woman when
she gets it. What is a vote to those who are in
want of bread? A vote is not merely an
occasional and indirect means of exerting a
small fraction of political influence, but, what is
much more important, it is a stamp of full
citizenship, of dignity and of responsibility. It
is a distinct mark that the possessors of it can
no longer be systematically ignored by govern-
ments and can no longer shirk the duty of
thinking about public and common interests.
The slaves of a kindly master, the subjects of a
kindly tyrant or ruling caste may be very com-
fortable animals: but the master or tyrant may
D
Jor M
50
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
become unkindly or impotent, and the poor
wretches who have been dependent on him
suffer without being able to help themselves. It
is always much easier to ignore an unuttered or
feebly uttered claim than to revoke a right once
granted. The same remark applies to the ac-
quisition of representative institutions by a
country or a locality: it marks a step gained
which is not likely to be lost. Few persons, at
least in this country, care so very much for the
abstract advantage of a republic over a mon-
archy. A nominal republic may be less de-
mocratic than a nominal monarchy and to
change a state into a republic might in some
cases be grasping the shadow and letting the
substance go. But a republic has at least this
advantage, that it does not call the sovereign
power by the name of a person or dynasty, but
proclaims it before all the world "the common-
wealth." "Noblesse oblige:" and a republic sets
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
51
up a higher standard of political morality and
thus deserves to be more harshly judged, if it
falls short even of a monarchy and imitates in
any way the follies and vices that are hardly
avoidable where there is a royal court.
Another reason, why ideas should be em-
bodied in institutions, is that institutions exert
so great an influence upon human charac-
ter-an influence sometimes ignored on pro-
fessedly scientific grounds. Perhaps the most
popularly accepted part of the evolution theory
is the doctrine of heredity; but it may be ques-
tioned how far the popular view, nay even the
view of many who have been trained in science,
is not in reality the survival of a very ancient
superstition, the belief in an inherited family
destiny, a belief which was the natural product
of a time when the family or tribe was the social
and moral unit. Plato in the Laws (ix. 854) pro-
fesses to regard robbers of temples as persons
52
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
suffering from an incurable malady, "a madness
begotten in a man from ancient and unexpiated
crimes of his race, destroying him when his
time is come." Aristotle uses the idea to make
a quiet professorial joke, when he is speaking
about certain abnormal moral tendencies: he
tells of the man who excused himself for beating
his father by saying that it was an inherited prac-
tice in his family for the son to beat the father,
and of another family in which the sons used
to drag their father to the door but no further.
(Eth. Nic. vii. 6 § 2). There is indeed a singular
fascination, horrible at times as it may be, in
the idea that the experiences of ancestors sur-
vive as the feelings of the descendants; but a
great part of the prevalent opinion about heredity
fiction
be only mythology or
masquerading as science. Of course one who
is not a biologist has no right to a private
opinion in a biological controversy. But one
seems to
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
53
must feel a keen interest in the discussion at
present going on, as to whether acquired
characteristics are transmitted or not. The
negative opinion is certainly on the increase,
i.e. the Lamarckian doctrine is tending to dis-
appear from the evolution theory and the
Darwinian principle of natural selection acting
upon "spontaneous" variations is coming to be
accepted as the sole factor in organic evolution.
"Use and disuse" seem at first sight so much
easier to understand than "natural selection,"
that it will probably be some time before they
lose their hold on the imagination. The
temptation undoubtedly is to discuss the
question at once in its application to human
beings, but it can be more safely discussed with
regard to the lower animals, both because the
opportunities of experiment are better and be-
cause there is less risk of bias in forming infer-
ences, In the case of human beings it is so
54
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
very difficult to distinguish what is due to
inheritance in the restricted sense of race-
influence from what is due to imitation, early
training, &c., which constitute inheritance cer-
tainly but in a wider and a sociological, not a
merely biological, sense. When people point
to the remarkable way in which children re-
semble their parents, they are apt to forget that
children as a rule are not merely the children of
their parents but spend all their earliest years with
their parents. Even where a parent is dead,
the child is told of his or her habits and ways of
thought, and unconscious imitation of a father
or mother, whose memory is regarded as some-
thing sacred, may account for a great deal. Mr.
Galton in his work on Hereditary Genius admits
that his investigations altogether suffer from the
defect that there is so great a “lack of reliable
information" about the peculiarities of females
(p. 63). We shall have to wait till public
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
55
careers are more abundantly open to women
before much can be learnt from family pedigrees.
It is certainly striking that, in the two sets of
cases where Mr. Galton considers the maternal
influence to be strong, viz., in the case of scientific
men and in the case of pious divines, (pp. 196,
276) his own explanation turns upon influence
in early years and not upon mere birth. The
clever mother encourages and does not dis-
courage the inquiring child; the pious mother,
if she manages to influence her son at all,
directs all his thoughts and emotions into one
channel. It seems very doubtful whether, except
in fairy tales or romances, the child brought up
away from its parents and in complete ignor-
ance of them (for this also is essential to a fair
experiment) would present any of their moral
characteristics in a definite form. May we say
that a certain amount of psychical energy is in-
herited but the direction it takes is mostly
56
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
determined by circumstances?—though we
must admit that it may be of a kind which more
readily takes to certain occupations than to
others. Individuals start with inherited tend-
encies or capacities (φυσικαί δυνάμεις, ὁρμαί), not
with fully-formed habits (apwpoµévai ëĝeis). An
energetic or an apathetic temperament, a cool
or a nervous temperament is transmitted; but it
seems very doubtful how far mere inheritance
goes beyond that, apart from the external influ-
ences in early life, which generally act along with
it. As we see so often, the son of people, who
have pushed themselves up in the world and
made their fortune, may inherit the energy of his
ancestors but not their business habits and so
he may only go to the devil more vehemently
than others, who come of a race longer ac-
customed to prosperity and who get an early train-
ing in the more elegant squandering of wealth.
On this subject of heredity, though Darwin
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
57
was too modest to urge his own discovery of
natural selection to its full length, he is much
more cautious in his statements than many who
are fond of using his name. In his Autobio-
graphy, it is true, he says:-"I am inclined to
agree with Francis Galton in believing that
education and environment produce only a
small effect on the mind of any one, and that
most of our qualities are innate." 1 But in the
Descent of Man 2 his position is much more
guarded and he seems generally to allow early
influence to account for more than inheritance,
in respect of virtuous habits, &c. With regard to
himself he says that he owed his "humanity'
to the instruction and example of his sisters.³
1 Life and Letters I. p. 22.
2
"}
3
e.g. pp. 122—125. On p. 123 he says:-"There is not the
least inherent improbability, it seems to me, in virtuous tend-
encies being more or less strongly inherited." This is a very
negative and cautious position.
3 Life and Letters I. p. 29. "I doubt indeed whether
humanity is a natural or innate quality."
58
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
66
His statement that "hand-writing is certainly
inherited" seems a very doubtful one.' In his
Life of Erasmus Darwin' he says that his uncle
Charles Darwin "inherited stammering" from
his father, Erasmus. 'With the hope of curing
him his father sent him to France, when about
eight years old, with a private tutor, thinking
that if he was not allowed to speak English for
a time, the habit of stammering might be lost;
and it is a curious fact, that in after years, when
speaking French, he never stammered."
not this "curious fact" an instantia crucis which
proves that his stammering was not inherited?
If it had been, he must have stammered in
every language.
Is
The lower down we go in the scale of animal
intelligence the more seems due to inherited
instincts the higher we go the more is due.
:
1 Descent of Man p. 88. He refers to Variation of Animals
and Plants under Domestication, vol. II. p. 6. [See I. p. 449 in
edition 2.]
2 p. 80, quoted in Life and Letters, I. p. 7.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
59
to imitation and to the training rendered pos-
sible by the greater size and complexity of the
brain and necessary by the prolongation of in-
fancy. In the lower animals any habit which
is useful to the preservation of the species can
only be transmitted as an instinct. In the
higher animals much can be done by imitation
and instruction. Among human beings lan-
guage and social institutions make it possible to
transmit experience quite independently of the
continuity of race, so that even if a family
or a race dies out altogether, its intellectual and
moral acquirements and culture are not neces-
sarily lost to the world. An individual or a
nation may do more for mankind by handing
on ideas and a great example than by leaving
numerous offspring. Darwin himself fully
admits this-
"A man who was not impelled by any deep instinctive
feeling to sacrifice his life for the good of others, yet was
60
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
roused to such action by a sense of glory, would by his
example excite the same wish for glory in other men, and
would strengthen by exercise the noble feeling of admira-
tion. He might thus do far more good to his tribe than by
begetting offspring with a tendency to inherit his own high
character." (Descent of Man. p. 132).
"Great lawgivers, the founders of beneficent religions,
great philosophers and discoverers in science, aid the pro-
gress of mankind in a far higher degree by their works than
by leaving a numerous progeny." (ib. p. 136).
What Darwin says here of the greatest of men
is also in a less degree true of men generally.
Most certainly we "inherit" from those who
have gone before us: but the "inheritance" in
any advanced civilisation is far more in the
intellectual and moral environment-in the spiri-
tual air we breathe, rather than in the blood
that runs in our veins.
Mr. Galton's investigations on heredity do
not seem to commit him to the Lamarckian or
Spencerian view that acquired intellectual or
moral characteristics are inherited; and, as we
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
61
have already seen, he in some cases fully recog-
nises how much the environment of the in-
dividual in early years affects his course in life.
But it cannot be denied that Mr. Galton seems to
lend countenance to a sort of fatalism about the
influence of race, and to a too contented acqui-
escence in existing social arrangements. I said
advisedly "seems;" because I do not think Mr.
Galton's book is quite as comforting to the
opponents of change, if they come to read it
carefully instead of merely claiming its author-
ity on their side. Let us consider a few pas-
sages in detail.
"It is in the most unqualified
manner that I object to pretensions of natural
equality. . . . I acknowledge freely the great
power of education and social influences in
developing the active powers of the mind, just
as I acknowledge the effect of use in develop-
ing the muscles of a blacksmith's arm, and no
further." There is a definite limit to the
62
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
muscular [and intellectual] power of every man,
which he cannot by any education or exertion
overpass. (Hereditary Genius. p. 14). If this
is the dictum of science, it might seem for a
moment to deal a fatal blow to the aspirations
of democracy. But does it? Equality, we
need to be reminded, is not a fact, but an ideal
-something at which we have to aim. And
one of the main things we may hope for in a
better organised society is that the world will
not lose or waste so much of the intellectual
genius in its midst. We need all the eminence,
intellectual, moral, artistic, that we can get-not
that the eminent individual may amass a fortune
or receive the fatal gift of the peerage (as
for those that care for such things-verily they
have their reward), but that he may exercise
his gifts, as all the world's greatest men would
wish to exercise them, for the benefit of his
fellow-men. Mr. Galton seems indeed to
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
63
suggest that eminent men generally do come
to the front as it is; but his statement is a
little rash, and he hardly counts the cost of the
struggle.
"If the eminent' men of any period, had been change-
lings when babies, a very fair proportion [what does he
consider such?] of those who survived and retained their
health up to fifty years of age, would, notwithstanding their
altered circumstances, have equally risen to eminence.
Thus to take a strong case-it is incredible that any
combination of circumstances, could have repressed Lord
Brougham to the level of undistinguished mediocrity."
(p. 38).
Mr. Galton's example is well chosen for his
purpose. Lord Brougham was just the kind of
man who would anywhere have pushed himself
into notoriety of some kind. But those social
hindrances, which "form a system of natural
selection," may allow a great many Lord
Broughams to come to the front in different
disguises and yet may repress some who might
do the world more service than an indefinite
64
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
array of Lord Broughams. Supposing Mr.
Darwin had had to pass his life as an over-
worked and over-worried country surgeon or
had been a factory hand in a huge manufactur-
ing town, he might conceivably have been a
noted man in a small naturalists' club and been
laughed at by his neighbours for collecting
beetles; but would he have discovered the
origin of species and proved his discovery? It
is perfectly true that "social hindrances cannot
impede men of high ability from eminence,'
and that "social advantages are incompetent to
give that status to a man of moderate ability."
But "social hindrances " may exhaust all the
energy of the ablest in the bare struggle for
existence and may direct the energy of those
who do succeed into wrong and mischievous
channels. We cannot invent a social machine
for manufacturing genius, but we might do
something to eliminate the waste and misap
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
65
plication of genius that goes on at present.
Consider the temptations which commercial
competition and the fight for social pre-
eminence offer to the scientific worker, the
writer of books, the artist.
Mr. Galton himself proposes what would
amount to a very considerable reorganisation
of society and suggests some principles which
consistency or practical necessities might oblige
us to carry a little further :-
"The best form of civilisation in respect to the improve-
ment of the race, would be one in which society was not
costly; where incomes were chiefly derived from profess-
ional sources, and not much through inheritance; where
every lad had a chance of showing his abilities, and, if
highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education
and entrance into professional life, by the liberal help of
the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in
his early youth; where marriage was held in as high honour
as in ancient Jewish times; where the pride of race was
encouraged (of course I do not refer to the nonsensical
sentiment of the present day, that goes under that name);
where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in
E
66
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
:
celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and lastly, where the
better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were
invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized."
(p. 362).
On almost the last page of Mr. Galton's
book we have these words:" The human
race can gradually modify its own nature."
(p. 375.) Take along with this a conclusion of
Darwin's (Descent of Man p. 174):—" It may
be doubted whether any character can be
named that is distinctive of a race and is con-
stant," and I do not think there remains much
excuse for the conclusions of fatalism and
laissez faire that are often drawn from the
doctrine of heredity. Especially, if we cannot
trust to acquired habits being transmitted
merely by descent, have we additional reason
for surrounding each successive generation
of individuals, from their youth upwards, with
institutions and laws and customs that will pro-
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
67
mote good and hinder bad tendencies. The
moral significance of the organisation of society
can hardly be over estimated.
It is little use
preaching kindliness and consideration for
others and hoping that sympathetic feelings
will gradually become innate, if the society
into which individuals are born be openly and
confessedly a ceaseless struggle and competi-
tion. For eighteen centuries a gospel of peace
and brotherhood has been preached and talked;
but the child plays with a toy gun and the youth
sees the successful millionaire held up as his
model for imitation-the man who boasts that
he is "self-made" and who, as the American
remarked, has by that boast "taken a great re-
sponsibility off the Almighty." Not only edu-
cation, but the very amusements and healthy
exercises of school life are all infected and cor-
rupted by this diseased spirit of competition. No
wonder that those are scoffed at or denounced
68
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
who venture to think that a society of rational
beings might proceed more rationally. From the
fact that human societies, like natural organisms,
grow and are not made, we have certainly to
learn that every evil cannot be remedied in a day.
But from the other, at least equally important
fact, that human societies do not merely grow
but are consciously altered by human effort, we
have also to learn that every evil is not to be
accepted as inevitable. The spread of ideas
regarding a better organisation of society is
itself a factor in the attainment of that better
organisation-not, of course, that we can make
out a complete plan, like an architect, and then
get it put into practice. Time and experience
alone can suggest the details. But the teach-
ing of evolutionary science, rightly understood,
gives us no excuse for putting aside all schemes
of social reorganisation as mere foolish and
dreamy idealism. A fair study of social evolu-
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
69
tion will at least indicate the direction in which
we have to move.
Hitherto in my argument I have accepted the
formulæ of "struggle for existence" and "natural
selection" as quite sufficient to express the evolu-
tion of human society. They are quite accurate,
if applied with a full recognition of the new
elements which enter into the struggle over and
above those operating in the biological sphere.
But perhaps these formulæ, though accurate,
hardly express the whole truth, Mr. Spencer's
recognition of only two great types of society
-the militant and the industrial—and his
theory that social evolution ends in complete
individualism are scarcely consistent with his
own insistence on the organic or super-organic
nature of society. Sir Henry Maine has only
one great formula-that society advances from
status to contract—and sticks there or else
goes backwards. Is there not a higher type of
70
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
society beyond and above each of these one-
sided extremes-cohesion without individual
liberty and individual liberty of the negative
sort without social cohesion ?
In human society thought or reflection, as we
have seen, enters in as a factor, lifting it above
the merely natural organism, and so perhaps we
may look at the nature of thought in order to
find out the way in which society progresses.
On every subject we think about we begin with
some rough opinion, either received from others
or the result of hasty observation. If we go on
to think about this opinion, we have to question
it, to examine it, and unless we come to a
standstill at the stage of doubt or criticism, we
go on to form some more adequate opinion,
which may indeed be only the old opinion in a
better form or may be something very different.
But this new opinion may in its turn be ques-
tioned in order to be corrected, and so on, for
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
71
the truth always proves itself more complex
than at first appeared: and, unless we lazily
acquiesce in dogmatic solutions, we cannot
cease from the labour of thinking. It might
indeed be more prudent to avoid mentioning
Hegel's name; but this very commonplace pro-
cess is his "dialectic method" in its simplest
and most familiar form. This "advance by
negation" is the way we have to think about
everything. And if we apply this dialectic
method to society, what does it suggest? That
we cannot rest in the critical or negative stage
of modern individualism. But does that mean a
return to the medieval type of society? to "the
good old days" of aristocratic and ecclesiastical
domination? By no means. It implies an ad-
vance to a stage in which all that is most
precious in individualism must be retained along
with the stability of social condition which in-
dividualism has destroyed. And this new stage
72
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
can be best described by the word "Social-
ism.'
""
By way of practical application, let us use
the light gained in our study of the nature of
social evolution generally to consider in detail
three great parts of the social problem: (
State interference with the condition of labour,
(2) the position of women, (3) the population
question, which is obviously connected with
both the preceding.
(1) Strauss, to whom we have referred before
as professedly applying the new faith of Evolu-
tion to the practical guidance of life, objects
even to trade-unions agitating for a reduction
of the hours of labour. He is so hot upon the
point that his patriotism, which elsewhere
seems to constitute the principal part of his
morality, deserts him here, and he suggests that
I
1 The Old Faith and the New, sec. 83 in German edit.
1875=sec. 79 (ii. p. 98) in Eng. Transl.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
73
the employers of labour should "if necessary
send to foreign countries for workmen and then
let the refractory see who will be able to hold
out longest." This is the struggle à outrance,
though he makes no express reference to the
evolutionary formula here. Few thoughtful
Englishnien would now venture to go so far as
that and deliberately to propose, as Strauss
does, the complete suppression of the liberty of
association among the workmen, however much
they may envy autocratic methods and imitate
them, when they get the chance, on a small scale
and in a feeble way. But there are very many,
even of our most Radical politicians, who, while
allowing or encouraging trades-unions to struggle
for higher wages and a reduction of the hours
of labour, object to the State meddling at all in
the matter, except in the case of women and
children, or as J. S. Mill would have put
it, except in the case of children only.
74
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
Adults are to be left to shift for themselves.
Well, we know what that means. It is needless
to use any vivid or picturesque language.
Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear
can see and hear for themselves. This system
of unchecked competition--one cannot repeat it
too often-means a prodigal and frightful waste.
Some have to work too hard and too long:
others cannot get any work to do at all or get
it irregularly and uncertainly others, who
This
might work, do not and will not-the idlers at
both ends of the social scale, the moral refuse
produced by our economic system.
system is exactly what we find in nature
generally; but one would think that human
beings might use their reason to discover some
less wasteful scheme. Water will find its own.
level; but how much mischief may it cause in
so doing?--mischief which can be avoided.
We have beautiful flowers or miserable weeds in
DARWINISM AND POLITICSPOLITICS
75
.
our gardens according as a skilful gardener
"interferes" or not; and when he thins out an
overcrowded bed, he need not throw away the
plants there are many who would be glad
to have them. It is all one great problem of
distribution. Here is so much work needing to
be done and so many persons to do it. The
organisation of labour is not an easy task; but
is it hopeless? At least we might diminish the
disorganisation, which is the system of mere
nature, as that appears to rational beings.
Cannot human societies imitate the higher
forms of nature, not the lower, so as to contrive
some scheme for the diminution of waste?
Strauss is afraid, because of the interests of
civilisation. But the civilisation he thinks of is
that of the antique type of society, a civilisation
limited to the few-a cultured minority, consol-
ing themselves for the loss of old religious beliefs
by reading poetry and hearing concerts and
76
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
operas, amid a subject multitude treated with
some consideration, like dependent and useful
lower animals, but left to poverty and supersti-
tion. What can be worse for civilisation than
that the more energetic and successful workers,
managing to get constant employment, have, as
at present, no sufficient leisure for the cultiva-
tion of their faculties? And when in the case
of the greatest number all available energy is
used up in the struggle to feed the body, what
wonder that the soul is neglected-" where a
soul can be discerned?"
Leisure is necessary
:
for culture and a moderate amount of work is
good for physical, mental and moral health-
excess is bad for all three. Cannot leisure and
work be better distributed, according to a
rational instead of a hap-hazard system? In
the attempt to substitute rational for non-
rational methods there is no denial of the
scientific truth of evolution, and there is an
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
77
application of the principle on which Strauss
himself insists so strongly, that "man must not
merely be an animal repeated, but must be
something more, something better."
(2) The claim of women to an equal share
with men in the advantages and responsibilities
of education and citizenship is very frequently
met by the objection that to grant this claim is
to fly in the face of nature. And the objection,
when it comes from the evolutionist, has a
certain plausibility. He points out, perhaps,
how advance in organic life goes along with in-
creasing differentiation of sex-a rash assertion
in biology, but I have heard it made by a biologist.
And so, it is asked, are not the advocates of
women's rights, trying to reverse all that, and
to produce a morally asexual being? Again, if
we limit ourselves to human society, it is
pointed out that "the difference between the
sexes, as regards the cranial cavity, increases
78
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
with the development of the race, so that the
male European excels much more the female,
than the negro the negress" (quoted from
Vogt by Darwin Descent of Man p. 566 n.;
but it is admitted that more observations are
yet requisite before the fact can be positively
asserted). It is argued from this fact, if such
it be, that the progress of society has brought
with it a still greater differentiation of sex, and,
this having proved beneficial for the human
race, it is folly to seek to reverse it.
Let us
take the last argument first. Because a cer-
tain method has led us up to a certain point, it
does not follow that the same method continued
will carry us on further. Races that have
reached a certain stage may be hindered by
extreme conservatism from making any further
progress-like the Chinese. Again, at what
degree of differentiation between the habits and
lives of the sexes are we to draw the line?
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
79
Englishmen, Frenchmen, Turks would draw it
very differently. And the Turk ought to
please the biological Conservative best, be-
cause he has pushed the differentiation of the
sexes to a logical issue. The persons who use
this kind of argument fancy that they are in-
fluenced by scientific considerations, but they
are really influenced by what they happen to
have grown accustomed to. Thirdly, if there
is this greater difference between the cranial
cavities of savage and civilised men than be-
tween those of savage and civilised women, to
what must it be due?
(a). Those who believe that acquired char-
acteristics (ie. characteristics produced by
agencies external to the organism) are trans-
mitted, must explain this difference by the
difference in institutions, laws and customs.
Well, then--what these have done before in
one direction they may do again in another.
80
.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
POLITICSAnd the same education and the same responsi-
bilities will, in course of time, put the average
woman on the same level with the average
man. (b). If use and disuse are not allowed
as explanations, then this alleged brain in-
feriority of women must be due either to natural
or to sexual selection. (a). If to natural -
selection, this would mean that in the struggle
for existence those races or tribes have suc-
ceeded best in which the males have on the
average had better brains than the females.
And this may have been so in times when
constant fighting was necessary for existence,
though in such a case it would be the greater
superiority of the male and not the greater
relative inferiority of the female that had been
the real cause of success. But this affords no
argument that, when many other conditions of
success than fighting power become necessary,
the process of natural selection will continue to
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
I
81
act in the same way. A people, all whose
members become superior in mental qualities,
will have the advantage over those peoples in
which the development is partial and one-
sided; for, certainly, it could not be argued that
the (alleged) relatively greater inferiority of the
civilised female brain had gone along with an
increased capacity for the purely physical
functions of maternity, as compared with what
is found among savage races. (ß). If, on the
other hand, the alleged difference is due to
sexual selection, this must mean, not merely
that men as a rule have preferred women with
inferior brain power to their own (which is
likely enough), but women whose female chil-
dren were also on the average inferior in this
respect to their male children. Supposing such
a kind of selection to be possible (one can only
admit it for the sake of argument), then, if
men's ideas about women come to be altered,
F
82
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
manner.
sexual selection will work in an opposite
With a new ideal of woman, the
clever would be preferred to the stupid, and the
mother of clever daughters to the mother of
stupid daughters. Thus, even if the assertion
of Carl Vogt were true, it offers no conclusive
argument against the political and social equal-
isation of the sexes; because this equalisation
would on any recognised principles of evolution,
bring about ultimately a natural equality. On
the whole, however, one may fairly retain the
suspicion that this alleged difference is not a
fact, and that the greater average eminence (in
the past) of men than of women in intellectual
pursuits is entirely due (as on any theory it
must be mostly due) to the effect of institutions
and customs and ideas operating within the
lifetime of the individual and not to differences
physically inherited. Little girls are certainly
not on the average stupider than little boys:
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
83
and, if on the average men show more intel-
lectual ability than women, this must be due
to the way in which the two sexes are re-
spectively treated in the interval.
But, even if there were an average mental
superiority in men (we have really no right to
make definite assertions on the subject, because
women have never yet had a fair chance of
showing their capacities on a sufficiently large
scale), Plato's argument would still hold that,
though there may be a general superiority of
men, yet there are many women superior to
many men, and it is a pity that the State should
lose the advantage of their services.
With regard to the argument from nature
generally, even if we agreed to the generalisation
that advance implies increasing differentiation of
sex and not the very reverse, it must be insisted
that difference is not the same thing as inequality
(though the two are very apt to be confounded),
84
DARWINISM AND FOLITICS.
and that the very difference between the sexes
is a reason why the State should not disregard
the opinions and the feelings of half, or in old
countries more than half, the population. But
the main point is really this: that society has
enabled man to rise above the mere animal and,
as has been pointed out, to be influenced not
merely by natural pressure but by ideas. The
idea of equality has grown up-I shall not at
present enquire how far it is due to the universal
citizenship of the Roman Empire and to the
widening conceptions of Roman Law, how far
to the Stoic philosophy with its brotherhood of
mankind, and how far to Christianity as an
inter-national or non-national religion, declaring
the equality of all before God, though carrying
with it the Judaic supremacy of the male sex.
When this idea of equality was proclaimed in
the American revolution, the negro slaves were
conveniently overlooked; when it was proclaimed
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
85
in the French revolution, the existence of a
whole sex seemed to be forgotten by every
one but Condorcet. And there are many old-
fashioned Radicals still, who lack sufficient faith
in their own creed to apply it in a thorough-
How often does one hear the
((
going way.
argument, Oh, but women are naturally
Conservative, and if they had political power, we
should be governed by the priests." It may
rather be said that the instability of republican
government in France has been very much due
to its not having appealed to the sympathies of
the mothers of the French people. If women
are expressly and purposely kept in the
patriarchal stage of social evolution, is it
wonderful that their feelings and sympathies
mostly correspond to an antique social type?
It is hypocritical to deny the political capacity
of women, simply because their political
incapacity has through long centuries been
86
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
diligently cultivated; but this is always the
favourite sort of argument with the jealous
champions of privilege :-first to prevent a race
or class or sex from acquiring a capacity, and
then to justify the refusal of rights on the grounds
of this absence-to shut up a bird in a narrow
cage and then pretend to argue with it that it is
incapable of flying. What is the reason of the
power which the Catholic Church possesses over
the minds of women, except that the Church
alone offers them any escape into a larger circle
of interests than those of the patriarchal family?
They do not reflect that the Church brands them
with a stamp of inferiority,' that did not exist
¹ Even the cult of the Madonna, which is a revival of the
female element in deity, did not do away with the degradation
of the woman. There is a story (given in Grimm's Household
Tales, Note to Tale 139) of St. Bernard, that he once went
into a Cathedral to pay his devotions to the image of the Virgin.
He fell thrice on his knees before it, and full of fervour uttered
the words, “Oh, gracious, mild and highly favoured mother of
God !" Hereupon the image began to speak, and said
'Welcome, my Bernard!" But the saint, who was displeased
by this, reprimanded the Queen of Heaven for speaking, in these
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
87
in the old Aryan religions, which had their gods
and goddesses, priests and priestesses. They do
feel that the rule of the priest may be something
higher than the rule of the household despot.
Religious teachers have understood that their
success must depend on their winning the
mothers of the race. When will political leaders
come to recognise the same?
words, "Silence! No woman is to speak in the congregation !'
This is an admirable illustration of the ecclesiastical and
sentimental theory of womanhood—a worship that professes to
exalt woman-whether the Madonna or das Ewig-Weibliche-
above man, combined with a refusal of rationality that sinks her
beneath him. The same thing appears in quarters where we
should less expect it. Thus we find the late Mr. Laurence
Oliphant, who with many protests against the corruption of the
Churches, builds up on a strangely unscientific foundation what
professes to be a new scientific" religion, and who proclaims
a higher code of morals, based mainly on the elevation of
woman, yet denouncing, like a Catholic or a Comtist priest, the
agitation for "women's rights" and "the higher education of
women,” and maintaining the very retrograde and (in these days)
immoral doctrine that women have no responsibility with regard
to public affairs. (Scientific Religion pp. 316, 324.) In fact the
"Divine Feminine" or Woman"-with a very big capital-is
one of the worst enemies that women have to contend with in
their struggle towards recognition as complete and responsible
human persons,
88
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
I
Mr. Herbert Spencer is afraid that women,
if admitted now to political life, might do mis-
chief by introducing the ethics of the family into
the State. "Under the ethics of the family the
greatest benefits must be given where the
merits are smallest, under the ethics of the State
the benefits must be proportioned to the merits."
Mr. Spencer seems to have more confidence
than most of us would in applying the strict
principle of geometrical proportion to dis-
tributive justice. Do people get benefits in
proportion to their merits in any society we have
ever seen or are likely to see? And would those
persons whose merits are greatest care most for
the greatest rewards? Is it right to separate the
ethics of the family, in Mr. Spencer's favourite
antithetic fashion, from the ethics of the State?
If something is right in a family, it is difficult to
see why it is therefore, without any further
1 Sociology, pp. 793, 794.
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
89
reason, wrong in the State. If the participation
of women in politics means that, as a good family
educates all its members, so must a good State,
what better issue could there be? The family
ideal of the State may be difficult of attainment,
but, as an ideal, it is better than the policeman
theory. It would mean the moralisation of
politics. The cultivation of separate sorts of
virtues and separate ideals of duty in men and
women has led to the whole social fabric being
weaker and unhealthier than it need be.
The history of the position of women is
much more complex than is often represented.
It is not true to say that the status of women
has always improved in direct ratio to the
general advance. The patriarchal stage repre-
sents on the whole a higher type of civilisation
than the matriarchal. But, it is to be observed
those societies which have exaggerated the
patriarchal type and built all their civilisation
90
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
upon it, seem to be incapable of advancing
further. This is conspicuously the case with
Mohammedan peoples. Just as war has fulfilled
important functions in the progress of the
human race, so the terrible powers of the house-
father in certain ancient systems of law have
had their use but it does not follow that what
once aided the race in its struggle with other
races will continue to do so when the struggle
becomes of a higher and more complex kind."
1
I have heard the objection made that, in
countries where it is considered necessary to
have compulsory military service for all males,
it would be unjust and inexpedient that women
should have a voice in political matters. This
objection would be easily met by compelling all
1 "Such is the nature of men that, when they have reached
their ends by a certain road, they cannot understand that, the
times being different, success may be won by other methods
and the old ways are no longer of use." These words represent
the theme of the 9th chap. of Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy,
Bk. iii,
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
91
women physically fit for it to undergo training
as nurses and making them liable to be called
upon to serve as such in time of war. And this
training would be more useful to them and to the
whole community in time of peace than his
military training is to the peasant or artisan.
Of all the objections made to the equality of
the sexes the only one that deserves very seri-
ous attention is that made by Sir James Fitz-
james Stephen in his clever attack on J. S.
Mill. He points out (in Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, p. 237) that women may suffer
more than they have done, if plunged into a
nominally equal but really unequal contest in
the already overcrowded labour market. The
conclusion usually drawn from this argument is
a sentimental reaction in favour of the old family
ideal (for instance in Mr. Besant's books).
There is another alternative and that is the
socialistic. The elevation of the status of
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women and the regulation of the conditions of
labour are ultimately inseparable questions.
On the basis of individualism I cannot see how
it is possible to answer the objections of Sir J.
Fitzjames Stephen.
(3) We began by referring to Malthus, and
with Malthus we must end. Socialists have
usually brushed aside the Malthusian precepts
and somewhat too lightly neglected the Malthus-
ian arguments. To some extent this has been
due to a correct instinct. The "prudence" of
the old school of political economy would mean
that the most careful and intelligent part of the
population should leave the continuance of the
race mainly to the least careful and the least
intelligent portion-thus bringing about a
survival of the unfittest. And so the theory of
natural selection, which was suggested to
Darwin by Malthus's theory of population has
come to be used as a refutation of Malthus's
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
93
I
practical suggestions. Socialist views on the
question have not always had so scientific a
basis, but have often rested on nothing much
better than the popular superstition that where
God sends mouths he sends the food to feed
them, though this may be disguised in a non-theo-
logical form, such as "the earth is capable of pro-
ducing abundance of food for all its inhabitants.”
Now what does this mean? That the earth
at present may be made to bear more than it
now does, and that therefore it will maintain
more than its present number of inhabitants, is
true enough. But only a complete failure to
grasp the meaning of the struggle for existence,
and the relation between increase of means of
subsistence and increase of population could
lead any one to maintain that, absolutely, the
earth can be made capable of supporting an
indefinitely increasing number of inhabitants.
Cp. Galton's Hereditary Genius, p. 356.
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DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
If the checks on population supplied by famine,
war, pestilence and vice be removed in any large
measure, the increase would in time outrun any
possible increase in the means of subsistence,
even with all that improved appliances and
diminished waste could do. Here, as elsewhere,
human beings must raise themselves above
unthinking animals and not trust to a kind
Providence in which they take no part. The
course of events, if left to itself, will act in the
way that we do, when we dispose of superflu-
ous puppies and kittens, but not quite so
rapidly and mercifully. We must become pro-
vident for ourselves. But what then becomes
of the Darwinian objection, the protest "against
the higher races being encouraged to withdraw
from the struggle for existence?" That
would be a valid objection, if we suppose the
present system of free competition in the labour
market to continue for ever. If employers of
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
95
labour remain a separate class (instead of be-
coming directors of labour, acting solely on
behalf of the whole community), and are free to
import the labour of cheaper and more prolific
races, as we have seen even the patriotic
Strauss suggesting, there would certainly be a
continuous degeneration of the species. But,
most assuredly, the day will come and very
soon, when the workers of all the more civil-
ised nations will join together not to undersell
each other and by that time employers will
not be absolutely free to import Chinese or
Malays, who would be practically slaves of a
new type.
It might, however, be objected that if the
more civilised nations keep their numbers fairly
on a level with the means of subsistence at home,
there will no longer be the stream of emigrants
pouring forth from our shores to civilise the
world and develop the resources of new countries:
c6
DARWINISM AND FOLITICS.
"the abler races" will be "withdrawing from
the struggle for existence." There are some
people who seem to think that an unlimited
supply of what we call the Anglo-Saxon race is
the best remedy for all the evils of the world.
Well, without wishing to be needlessly un-
patriotic, I do not think the unlimited Anglo-
Saxon is an altogether unmitigated blessing.
The filibuster, the mercantile adventurer and
the missionary have not been so perfectly success-
ful between them in dealing with the problem of
the lower races; for the mere disappearance of
lower races before the rum supplied by the
trader and the clothes enjoined by the missionary
(to the great profit of the Lancashire manu-
facturer) is not quite a satisfactory solution.
What has been already said about the trans-
mission of a type of culture, irrespective of the
continuity of the race that first developed it,
seems to help one here. We need have less
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
97
doubt of the excellence of our language and of
our literature and of some of our institutions
than of the supreme excellence of our race : and
there is nothing to prevent distant tribes and
nations regarding Europe, and Britain not least,
as the school or university to which they shall
send their most promising youth in order to
adopt just as much of our civilisation as suits
them, so that they may work out their own pro-
blems in their own manner. That would surely
be a healthier way in which the higher might
affect the lower races in the future, educating
them instead of enslaving, demoralising or
destroying them.
As to the adjustment of population to subsis-
tence, Mr. H. Spencer has sufficient faith in the
beneficence of nature to believe this will come
about of itself through a biological law-that
multiplication and individuation vary inversely,
so that, as the physical and intellectual culture
G
98
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
of the individual is more and more attended to,
the increase of the species will gradually dimin-
ish. This "law" is however as yet only a mere
speculation of Mr. Spencer's. There does seem
to be in the world a certain amount of what we
may call natural adaptation, which leads the
more cultured and the more settled nations to be
less prolific than those of the same race or stock
who are living in new countries with plenty of
elbow-room. The English race in Western
America or in Australia does seem to be more
fruitful than in old England or in New Eng-
land. But the whole theory is a very doubtful
one. And a rational adaptation of means to ends
seems requisite to obtain the desired result. This
is pre-eminently a question which can only re-
ceive proper consideration and solution when
women are admitted to full social and political
responsibility. It is the woman who bears the
suffering of maternity and has the care of the
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
99
very young and so the woman is more im-
mediately interested than the man. So long as
women were brought up to believe that their
sole or main function in life was to bear children
and were made to feel that there was some-
thing not only of disadvantage but of disgrace
in being unmarried or childless, what wonder
that population has been increased indefinitely
and recklessly? Every inducement was in that
direction, the ideas of a military society, the in-
fluence of the clergy (and, at least in Protestant
countries, their example also), the employment
of child-labour before the factory acts, the system
of the old poor law-everything encouraged the
natural tendency of the race to increase. With
a change in the prevalent sentiment, a change
in fact will certainly follow. When women have
other interests in the world than those of mater-
nity, things will not go on so blindly as before.
And the race need not necessarily suffer there-
Uor M
100
DARWINISM AND POLITICS,
!
by, but the very reverse.
Fewer children will
be born, but fewer will die, fewer will be sickly.
Those who are born will be better and more in-
telligently cared for. Two healthy well reared
children will be more useful to the community
than a dozen neglected waifs and strays. Here
again we shall only be imitating by rational pro-
cedure the upward tendency of nature, which
consists in the economy of production. Rational
selection will take the place of the cruel process
of natural selection.
If we are still reminded that only through
struggle can mankind attain any good thing, let
us remember that there is a struggle from which
we can never altogether escape-the struggle
against nature, including the blind forces of human
passion. There will always be enough to do in
this ceaseless struggle to call forth all the en-
ergies of which human nature at its very best is
capable. At present how much of these ener-
Mou
DARWINISM AND POLITICS.
ΤΟΙ
gies, intellectual and moral as well as physical,
is wasted in mutual destruction! May we not
hope that by degrees this mutual conflict will be
turned into mutual help? And, if it is pointed
out that even at present mutual help does come
about, even through mutual conflict, indirectly.
and with much loss on the way, may we not hope
to make that mutual help conscious, rational, sys-
tematic, and so to eliminate more and more the
suffering going on around us?
THE END.
S. Cowan & Co., General Printers, Perth.

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