Social Rights And Duties Volume II Part 1

Social Rights And Duties.

by Leslie Stephen.

HEREDITY.

I found, the other day, that an address upon Heredity had been announced, of which I was to be the deliverer. I admit that I was fully responsible for the statement, although, for reasons with which I need not trouble you, I was not quite prepared for it in this form. I mention this fact in order simply to say that the t.i.tle may possibly give rise to false expectations. I am quite incompetent to express any opinion of the slightest scientific value upon certain problems suggested by that rather ugly word "heredity". The question as to the precise relationship between any organism and its parents or remoter ancestors, is one of the highest interest. The solution, for example, of the problem, whether is it possible for a living being to transmit to its descendants qualities which have only been acquired during its own lifetime, has an important bearing upon the general theory of evolution. But I have nothing whatever to suggest in regard to that problem. I simply take it for granted that there is some relation between parents and children: and a relation, speaking in the most general way, such that the qualities with which we start in life, resemble more or less closely those of our ancestors. I may also a.s.sume that, in some form or other, the doctrine of evolution must be accepted: and that all living things now in the world are the descendants, more or less modified, of the population which preceded them. I proceed to ask whether, as some people appear to believe, the acceptance of this doctrine in the most unqualified form, would introduce any difficulty into our primary ethical conceptions. I will also at once give my answer. I do not believe that it introduces any difficulty whatever. I do believe that the general theory of evolution tends in very important ways to give additional distinctness to certain ethical doctrines; although, to go at all fully into the how and the why would take me beyond my present purpose. All that I have to argue to-day is, that a belief in "heredity" need not be a stumbling-block to any reasonable person.

I cannot doubt that the popular mind is vaguely alarmed by the doctrine.

I read, the other day, a novel by a well-known author, of which, so far as I can remember, the main substance was as follows: A virtuous doctor (his virtue had some limitations) studied the problem of heredity, and had read Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and Weissmann, and all the proper authorities. His own researches are carefully described, with the apparent a.s.sumption that they were both profound and of tremendous significance. He had, it appears, acc.u.mulated a vast amount of material; and his method was to cut out slips from newspapers, whenever they recorded any events in his own family history, and to preserve them in a mysterious cabinet. These investigations proved that there was a decided family likeness running through the descendants of a common ancestor. As a general rule, they had all belonged to the cla.s.s "blackguard". From this result he inferred that there was no G.o.d and no soul. His relations were dreadfully scandalised: one was converted to his views; but the others contrived diabolical plots for setting fire to these marvellous collections and so stopping the contagion of these dreadful doctrines at their source. It struck me, I confess, that instead of burning the collections, they would have done better to ask him what was the connection between his premisses and his conclusions. What was this terrible, heart-paralysing truth which the poor man had discovered? Has any human being ever doubted, since mothers were invented, that children are apt to resemble their parents? I do not personally remember the fact, but I should be prepared to bet, if the point could be settled, that, before I was a month old,--and in those days neither Darwin nor Weissmann had published a line,--my nurse and my mother had affirmed that the baby was like his papa. That, at any rate, is a remark, the omission of which would show more originality than the a.s.sertion. If I desired, again, to produce cla.s.sical authority for the importance of race, I should not have to extend my researches beyond the Latin Grammar. If, once more, we look into the writings of famous theologians, we meet it everywhere. I take the first that comes to hand. "Good men,"

says Calvin, "and beyond all others, Augustine, have laboured to demonstrate, that we are not corrupted by any advent.i.tious means but that we derive an innate depravity from our very birth." The denial of this was an instance of consummate impudence--reserved, as Calvin shows, for such wicked heretics as Pelagius. The doctrine of heredity, in short, in a theological version, is essentially involved in the dogmatic foundations of the orthodox creed. I have no doubt that an investigation of the reasonings of Augustine and others would exhibit much affinity to modern controversy, though in a very different terminology. Whatever we may think of its merits, the doctrine of original sin implies that a depraved nature may have been transmitted to the whole human race; and, if the commonly alleged cause of the original depravity strikes us as insufficient, it is, at least, a very familiar argument of divines, that the doctrine corresponds to undeniable facts. Why should it startle us in a scientific dress? If we can transmit depravity, why not genius and bodily health? In one respect, modern theories tend rather to limit than to extend the applicability of the principle. No one ever doubted, nor could doubt, that the child of a monkey is always a monkey; and that the child of a negro, or even of a Mongol, has certain characteristics which distinguish it from the child of a European. But the difference is that, whereas it used to be held that there was an impa.s.sable barrier between the monkey and the man, it is now widely believed that both may be descendants from a common ancestor. Should this belief establish itself, we shall have to admit that, in spite of heredity, organic forms are capable of much wider variation than was believed by our fathers to be even conceivable.

Let us try, then, to discover some more plausible explanation of the fear excited by the doctrine. Now, I wish to give as wide a berth as possible to that freewill controversy which perplexes so many minds, and is apt to intrude at this point. I will try to a.s.sume,--though it is not my own position,--the doctrine of the freedom of the will in the widest sense that any reasonable person can devise. No such person will deny that there is a close connection--the terms of which have not yet been defined--between the physical const.i.tution and the moral or intellectual character. The man plainly grows out of the baby. If the baby's skull has a certain conformation it can only be an idiot; with another skull and brain it may be developed into a Shakespeare or a Dante. The possibilities ranging between those limits are immovably fixed at birth.

And what determines the const.i.tution with which the child is born?

Surely it can be nothing but the const.i.tution and circ.u.mstances of its parents. Whether I can be a great man, or cannot be more than a commonplace man, or a fool,--nay, whether I shall be man or monkey or an oak,--is settled before I have had any power of volition at all. Now, it is curious how, even at this early period, we are led to use delusive language. The difficulty is quaintly indicated in a remark by Jonathan Swift. The dean "hath often been heard to say" (says a fragment of autobiography) "that he felt the consequences of his parents' marriage, not only through the whole course of his education, but during the greater part of his life". If they had not married, he apparently implies, he would have been born of other parents, and certainly would have felt it for life. What the word "he" means in that connection, is a puzzle for logicians. I fell into the difficulty myself, the other day, when I had occasion to say that a man's character had been influenced, both by his inheritance of certain qualities and by the later circ.u.mstances of his education. Having said this, which, I think, aimed at a real meaning, it occurred to me that the phrase was grossly illogical, and I shall be still obliged if any one will put it straight for me. The difficulty was, that I had used the same form of words to indicate the influence of a separable accident, and to describe one aspect of the essential character. To say that a man is influenced by his education is to say that he would have been different had he gone, for example, to another school. That is intelligible. But to say that "he" would have been different if he had been born of other parents is absurd, for "he" would not have been "he". He would not have existed at all. "He" means the man who has grown out of the baby with all its innate qualities; and not some, but all those qualities, the very essence of the man himself, is, of course, the product of his progenitors. Such phrases, in short, suggest the fancy that a man had a pre-existence somewhere, and went about like Er the Pamphylian in Plato's myth, selecting the conditions of his next stay upon earth. In that case, no doubt, there might be some meaning in the doctrine. The character of the future incarnation would depend upon the soul's choice of position. But as we know nothing about any pre-existent soul, we must agree that each of us starts as the little lump of humanity, every characteristic of which is determined by the characteristics of the parents, however much its later career may be affected by the independent powers of thought and volition which it develops. So much, it seems to me, must be granted on all hands, and is perhaps implicitly denied by no one.

But granting this very obvious remark, what harm does "heredity" do us?

It is the most familiar of all remarks that you and I and all of us depend upon our brains in some sense. If they are pierced, we die; if they are inflamed, we go mad; and their const.i.tution determines the whole of our career. A grain of sand in the wrong place, as the old epigrams have told us,--in Caesar's eye, for example,--may change the course of history. That unlucky fly, which, as Fuller remarks, could find no other place to creep into in the whole patrimony of St. Peter except the Pope's throat, choked the unlucky man, and, for the time at least, altered the ecclesiastical order of Christendom. In other words, we are dependent at every instant upon elements in the outside world,--bacteria, for instance,--and the working of our own physical organism. But, that being so, what conceivable difference does it make whether the brain, which we certainly did not ourselves make, has a fixed resemblance to that of our parents, or be, if it be possible, the product of some other series of processes? It is important, no doubt, to recognise the fact; it would be of the highest importance if we could define the exact nature of the fact; but the influence upon any general ethical doctrine of the recognition of the bare fact itself seems to be precisely nothing at all. It is part of the necessary data of all psychological speculation, and has been recognised with more or less precision from the very first attempts to speculate.

Trying, once more, to discover what it is that alarms, or is said to alarm, some people, we are reminded of certain facts, which again are of profound interest in some respects. I take a special instance,--not, unfortunately, a rare or at all a strange instance,--to ill.u.s.trate the point. Many years ago I knew a clergyman, a man of most amiable character and refined tastes. One morning he shocked his friends by performing the Church service in a state of intoxication, and within a few months had drunk himself to death. The case was explained,--that is, a proper name for it was found,--when we learnt that more than one of his nearest relations had developed similar propensities, and died in much the same way. Then we called it an instance of "hereditary dipsomania," and were more or less consoled by the cla.s.sification. We were not, I think, unreasonable. The discovery proved apparently that the man whom we had respected and admired was not a vulgar debauchee, who had been hypocritically concealing his vices; but that he had really possessed the excellent qualities attributed to him, only combined with an unfortunate const.i.tutional tendency, which was as much a part of his original nature as a tendency to gout or consumption. Now this, as I think, suggests the problem which puzzles us at times. A man develops some vicious propensity, for which we were quite unprepared. In some cases, perhaps, he may show homicidal mania or kleptomania, or some of the other manias which physicians have discovered in late years. They say, though the lawyers are rather recalcitrant, that a man suffering from such a mania is not "responsible"; and if asked, why not? they reply, because he was the victim of a disease which made him unable to resist the morbid impulse. But then, we say, are not all our actions dependent upon our physical const.i.tution? If a man develops homicidal mania, may not a murderer of the average type excuse himself upon the same ground? You have committed an action, we say, which shows you to be a man of abnormal wickedness. You are a bloodthirsty, ferocious, inhuman villain. Certainly, he may reply; but if you could examine my brain you would see that I could not be anything else. There is something wrong about its molecular construction, or about the shape of the skull into which it was fitted, which makes bloodthirstiness quite as inevitable in me as a tendency to drink is in others, or perhaps as the most ardent philanthropy may be in some. In short, I am a murderer; but wickedness is so natural to me that you must in all fairness excuse me.

This is, of course, a kind of excuse which would not free a man from the gallows. It would simply suggest that punishment should not be considered from the moral, but, if I may say so, from the sanitary point of view. We should hang the murderer--not to satisfy our sense of justice, but to get rid of a nuisance. I will not now inquire what may be said upon that undoubtedly difficult problem; but I must touch upon the previous question which is raised by the argument. Would our supposed murderer make out a good case for himself? Is there no difference between him and the maniac; or, rather, what is the nature of the difference which we clearly recognise in practice? In the extreme case which our ancestors took as the typical case, the madman kills because he is under some complete illusion: he supposes that he is only breaking a gla.s.s when he is really taking a life, and so forth. He is therefore not wicked, but accidentally mischievous. We have now come to recognise the existence of many states of mind intervening between this and complete sanity. Among them, for example, is the state of mind of the homicidal monomaniac, whose propensity is considered to be the cause of his actions, and which may be consistent with his being in many other respects capable of acting upon the ordinary motives and judging reasonably in most of the affairs of life. What, then, is the meaning of the statement that he is a madman, and therefore excusable? The contention must, of course, be, in the first place, that his character is in some way abnormal. He is not governable by the ordinary motives which determine human action. But, beyond this, it is evident that the abnormality is taken to mean something more than the mere deviation from the average. A man may be abominably wicked, and yet not in the least abnormal in the sense here required. He may be deficient in the higher motives, and the more brutal pa.s.sions may be unusually developed; and yet we do not hold that he therefore deviates from the type. So, in a different sphere, we may have one man possessing enormous strength and another exceedingly feeble, one very active and another very clumsy; and yet they may all be perfectly normal, they are free from physical disease, and all their physical functions may be performed according to the normal system. Entire freedom from disease, in short, is perfectly compatible with exceedingly wide deviations from the average, with capacity for walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, or with inability to walk a single mile; and yet such deviations do not imply a departure from a certain common type. To say precisely what symptoms indicate mere differences within the normal type, and what imply an actual deviation from the type, is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible; and yet that such a distinction exists has to be constantly recognised. "So-and-so is delicate, but not diseased; feeble, but not deformed," has a definite meaning, though we may be unable to define the precise meaning of our words, or to decide which statement is true in particular cases.

The great difficulty in the case of insanity corresponds to this. The physician tells us that the madman's mind works abnormally, but not abnormally in the sense merely of having some faculties weaker and others stronger than is common; but in such a way as to indicate disease, and, moreover, a particular kind of disease, or one, perhaps, of several particular kinds of diseases. The vagueness of this statement provokes lawyers, who have a natural love of definite external tests to govern their decisions; and it has led to a number of delicate discussions, upon which I need not enter. The legal problem seems essentially to be, what tests should guide us in determining whether a man should be regarded as a normal human being, or as a being so far differing from the normal type that he should be treated exceptionally, and especially put under the guidance of other persons, and excused from legal responsibility, that is, liability to punishment.

I have to do with the moral problem alone. It is a still more difficult problem; but it has this advantage, that we do not require so definite an answer. We have not, happily, to decide whether our fellows shall go to heaven or to h.e.l.l, though we have to decide whether they shall be hanged or locked up; and we must be content as a rule with very vague estimates as to their moral character. What we practically have to take, more or less roughly, into account is simply this: that our inference from conduct to character has often to be modified by the existence of these abnormal cases. A man is drunk on an important occasion; I infer, as a rule, that he has all the qualities which go with low sensuality; but in some cases the inference is wrong; the man may be really a person of most admirable feelings; but one of his instincts has suddenly taken an abnormal development, owing to a set of causes entirely different from the usual causes. Another man suddenly and causelessly kills a friend. The natural inference that he must be a bloodthirsty brute is erroneous, if it turns out that he has acted from impulses not generated by any habitual want of benevolence, but from some special defect in the const.i.tution of his brain. In other words, our moral judgment must vary in the two cases, and may vary so much that the same action may rightly suggest only pity in one case and abhorrence in the other; although, in many cases, where it may be very difficult to say what is the precise implication as to character, the judgment must, if we are properly diffident, remain obscure. The moral problem always depends ultimately upon this: What is the character implied by this conduct? If the moral conduct shows malignity within the normal type, it justifies condemnation; if it shows only a blind instinctive impulse, due to a deflection from the type, it may justify no other feelings than those which we have for the poor maniac who fancies himself a king, and takes his limbs to be made of gla.s.s.

If we hold that such responsibility implies free will we shall argue that the madman is deprived of free will, or that his freedom of will is more or less restricted, and that he is therefore irresponsible. In my own opinion, that proposition would be by no means an easy one to establish. I fancy that a man may be insane and yet capable, within very wide limits, of being good or bad, and that therefore we must at any rate hold that he has still some power of free will. The bearing of this upon the question of moral responsibility brings us within sight of some delicate problems. But, however this may be, the criterion by which we shall have to judge whether we are believers in free will or determinists will be the same. The problem is essentially, is this man accessible to the motives by which normal men regulate their conduct? or does he so far deflect from the typical const.i.tution, however that const.i.tution may be precisely defined, that his conscience or his affections or his intellectual powers are unable to act according to the general laws of human nature?

Having said so much, I think that I may proceed to this conclusion, that the theory of heredity can make no real difference whatever to our problem. There is a difficulty for the metaphysician--the difficulty which is involved in discussions between materialists and idealists, determinists and believers in free will. I do not deny the existence of that difficulty. I only say that the question of heredity is altogether irrelevant to the difficulty. The desire to treat ethical problems by the methods of science may predispose a thinker to materialism, and may at the same time lead him to attach particular importance to the doctrine of heredity. But that doctrine only takes note of facts which every theory has to state in its own phraseology, and do not alter the ultimate problem.

Let us, in fact, go back to our murderer. I am not responsible, he says, because I am determined by the processes in my brain. I am a mere machine, grinding out one set of actions or another as external accidents set my wheels and pulleys in motion. If that argument be fatal to moral responsibility, or to the belief that any truly moral action exists (a point which I do not argue), it will no doubt remove the moral element from the treatment both of murderers and madmen. They might still require different measures, just as we treat a machine differently when we consider that it is not of the normal construction, or that its various parts have somehow got out of gear, so that we can no longer, for example, expect that the mainspring will transmit its motion to the wheels. But, in any case, if the dependence upon the body be a fatal objection to morality in the highest sense, the circ.u.mstance that the body is made upon the plan of previously existing bodies makes no additional difficulty. If we could suppose every brain to be started afresh by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, the difficulty would be neither increased nor diminished. The problem, are we automatic? and the validity of the inference, is morality meaningless? are questions altogether independent of the question, what particular kind of automata are we? and do we or do we not resemble a previous generation of automata?

If, however, we reply to the criminal that he is not a machine or an automaton, but a responsible, reasoning, and thinking being, we do not get away from the facts. We then a.s.sert that he is responsible because he possesses a certain moral const.i.tution. But whatever words we may use to express the facts correctly, we must still allow that there is such a correlation between soul and body (if those old-fashioned words be admissible) that the health of his moral const.i.tution depends at every instant upon the health of his nervous system and his brain. It may be shattered or destroyed by an injury; and, if this be so, what does it matter whether the injury--say the defective shape of the skull, which causes pressure on the brain--is due to some accident or to a connate malformation due to his parents? The difficulty, if it be difficulty, is that the want of responsibility is due to some cause, accidental relatively to him; and it matters not whether that cause be in his parents' const.i.tution or in some other combination of circ.u.mstances. In any case, we have to suppose, whatever the relation of mind and body, we must at least a.s.sume that a man is born with some character. Like everything that exists, he has certain definite qualities which he did not make for himself, and upon which his subsequent development depends.

And, if that be once admitted, the whole difficulty still occurs, and the question as to whether the origin of these innate qualities be derived from his parents or from a something else is a mere matter of detail.

In fact, the confusion seems to me to arise from the vague phraseology which induces us to accept, virtually at least, the mental att.i.tude of Dean Swift in Er the Pamphylian. We speak as if the man were an independent ent.i.ty, lying somehow outside the chain of cause and effect, and arbitrarily plunged into it; nay, as if even his inner const.i.tution were something superinduced upon his nature. It is really an absurd abstraction to distinguish between the man and his character, as though he meant a something existing without a character, and afterwards run into a mould by fate. The character is the man in certain relations, and he can never exist without it, any more than a piece of matter can be outside of all particular times and places. If the doctrine of free will and moral responsibility be so interpreted as to imply our acceptance of such fallacies, I can only say that it appears to me to be irreconcilable with the most undeniable facts. But I am very far from supposing that any intelligent supporter of the doctrine would state it in such a form. He would admit as fully as I do the facts, and, if they can be admitted and reconciled to the doctrine of moral responsibility, certainly the doctrine of heredity can be so reconciled. The only peculiarity of the doctrine is, that it has called attention to an order of facts which must in any case be recognised by every philosopher; and that it helps, therefore, to disperse a fallacy which only requires articulate statement to show its radical want of logic or even conceivability. We are, beyond all doubt, affected somehow, and affected profoundly, by our environment; and this particular form of relation to other beings has no more bearing upon the problem than the other forces which have been recognised ever since speculation began.

There is, however, another side from which I must briefly consider the question of heredity; and it is a side which, I think, is really more important, because it involves issues of facts, and has suggested some more reasonable prejudices. It is, undoubtedly, very common that when a theory has obtained a certain currency it should be applied rashly beyond its proper limits. When the speculations of Darwin encouraged us to believe that the natural selection might be a.n.a.logous to artificial selection, that different species of animals have been produced as varieties of dogs and pigeons have been produced by breeders, it was, at least, tempting to apply the same formula directly to other cases. Some men of science have endeavoured to show that genius or criminality is hereditary; and that, if one man writes a great poem and another picks a pocket, it is always in virtue of their hereditary endowment. Within certain limits, this statement is not surprising, and I shall be very glad when men of science can tell us what those limits may be. Without being a man of science, I fully believe that our congenital characteristics form, as I have said, certain impa.s.sable limits to our development. One baby is a potential Shakespeare, and, probably, only one in a million. The qualities with which he starts, again, are, no doubt, derived from his parents, though we do not, as yet, understand in what way; whether, for example, we should infer that Shakespeare's parents had more than usual capacity, or were especially healthy, or had some peculiar form of one-sided development which generated the disease called poetical genius; or whether he may have inherited qualities from a remote ancestor, which had remained latent for several generations.

In any case, he was at birth only a potential Shakespeare. He might have died of the measles, or been made stupid by a sunstroke, or have taken to drink in bad company, or have run away to sea, or been sent to the University and become a mere bishop or professor of casuistry; in short, though he could not easily have done very much better work than he did, he might have done inconceivably less. That is to say, his congenital qualities implied certain powers; but what he would do with them remained to be partly determined by an indefinite variety of external circ.u.mstances acting upon him in various ways. Hence, we have always the complex problem, what, given certain raw material in the shape of new-born babies, will be the characteristics of the finished product in the shape of a grown-up population? If the social state is determined from the inherited qualities directly, we should be able, for example, to infer from a given proportion of criminals, that a certain number of children were born with a corresponding physical const.i.tution, with "foreheads villainous low," and prognathous jaws, and with the other peculiar signs which mark the felon from his birth. In that case, again, we should infer, I suppose, that the only possible means of improving the social state would be by somehow improving the breed; perhaps, by appointing some of the inspectors who play so great a part in modern society, to examine infants, and get rid of those who were thus distinguished, by the means now adopted in the case of superfluous puppies. One objection to this system is, of course, that men of science have not yet shown that they are qualified for exercising such a supervision; and there are other difficulties upon which I need not dwell. This much, indeed, we may grant without any scientific prepossessions whatever. It is clearly very desirable that every generation should raise up for its successors as many children with st.u.r.dy bodies and vigorous brains as possible; and it is to be hoped that the objection to transmitting disease and imbecility may be more generally recognised, and, in some shape or other, have an influence even upon the strongest pa.s.sions. But I am only concerned with the general theory, which, if I understand it rightly, would appear to imply that the characteristics of a society are irrevocably fixed by the characteristics of the children born into it; and, whether this theory be true or false, we must admit that it has a considerable bearing upon morality. If, in fact, we hold it to be rigidly true, we should have to suppose that no serious improvement can be produced in society at large, except by breeding a superior race of men. This, again, is a discouraging prospect. Let me quote what has been said by an authority who expresses, I believe, the accepted scientific view. "There can be no doubt," says Professor Huxley, "that vast changes have taken place in English civilisation since the days of the Tudors. But I am not aware that there is a single particle of evidence in favour of the conclusion that this evolutionary process has been accompanied by any modification of the physical or the mental characters of the men who have been the subjects of it. I have not met with any grounds for suspecting that the average Englishmen of to-day are sensibly different from those that Shakespeare knew and drew." The statement, I imagine, might be very much extended. I do not suppose that the average c.o.c.kney of to-day is a superior animal, physically or morally, to the average Athenian of the days of Pericles, or even, it may be, to the pre-historic savages who made flint implements for the amus.e.m.e.nt of our antiquaries. Briefly, whatever change has taken place, within historical period, has been a social change, not a change in the structure of the individual. This is surely conceivable. We need only consider, for example, how vast a change has been made in all the conditions of life by the modern applications of practical science. Whether, in other respects, we are better or worse than our forefathers, we have an enormously greater aggregate of wealth now than we had, say, two centuries ago; we can support four times the population, though the condition of the lowest stratum may not be better. And this amazing advance of wealth is not due to the fact that Englishmen of to-day have better brains for mathematics than the Englishmen of Newton's time; but to the acc.u.mulation of capital, the improvement of the natural conditions of the soil, the turning to account of vast ma.s.ses of material, previously neglected; to the invention of machinery, and so forth; all of which imply, not necessarily the very slightest improvement of natural capacity, but simply the growth of knowledge, and the fact that each generation has preserved more than it has consumed. What we call progress or civilisation, which means, whatever else it may or may not mean, a gigantic increase in the power of man over nature, is due, therefore, to the one fact that man can acc.u.mulate. He can modify the earth in such a way as to facilitate the labours of the coming generations; he can make tools which last beyond his own time, and which themselves become, as it were, the ancestors of incomparably superior tools; he can, moreover, acc.u.mulate and transmit knowledge, not merely the knowledge of facts, but the knowledge of scientific laws and of useful inventions, and of the right methods of investigating facts. When Newton made a discovery, he made it for all the following generations; and, though it may well be that no superior or even equal intellect has since arisen to carry on his work, the dwarf now stands on the shoulders of the giant. It is not simply that we know more facts. The modes of mathematical inquiry differ as much from those which Newton could employ, as the latest steam engine from the crude fire machine before the time of Watt; and an average undergraduate can solve with ease problems which once puzzled the greatest intellects that ever appeared among men. Man, then, can acc.u.mulate; and that simple fact enables every generation enormously to surpa.s.s its predecessors. Acc.u.mulation, again, is, of course, a form of inheritance. We are born heirs to the intellectual as well as to the material fortunes of our ancestors. But, it is obvious, this is something very different from heredity. It supposes an alteration, not in the man, but in his surroundings or his education in the widest sense; not in his intellectual capacity, but in the knowledge which it can attain and the rules which it has worked out. In order that a man may be capable either of bequeathing or inheriting, he must have certain faculties; he must be an observing, remembering, reasoning animal; but he may become indefinitely richer, not from any improvement in his powers of observing and remembering and using, but simply from the change in his position. People's memories, it is sometimes suggested, have been weakened by the invention of printing. But, weakened or not, we have an incomparably greater knowledge of the past than was formerly possible, because we can now keep our memories upon our bookshelves, in the form of histories and encyclopaedias, and know every fact that we want to know when we want it, without troubling ourselves to fill our minds with all the knowledge that may ever be possibly useful. A library is an external and materialised memory. But without ill.u.s.trating so plain a point any further, I simply take note of what it implies: that is, that, as Professor Huxley has pointed out, all that distinguishes the present state of things from the state of things in the time of Elizabeth, or, perhaps, at the time of remote Egyptian dynasties, may be due, not to any change in the individual, but to what is called the social factor. The inference from the individual to the society, or from the society to the individual, is, therefore, rigidly impossible, because, given the man, the position in which he is placed and the stage of development of the society to which he belongs, are relevant facts which exercise an incalculably great influence.

If this be true, what follows? We remark, in the first place, that the evolution of which we speak in regard to natural history, the process by which the present population of the globe has gradually grown out of the population of remote geological epochs, is slow. The changes which it may produce are not sensible within a generation--for, indeed, the very nature of the case implies that they must take many generations--not perhaps even within such a period as is covered by all authentic history. It is not, of course, on that account to be overlooked for scientific purposes. Monkeys must have grown into men before they could begin to acc.u.mulate capital, either material or spiritual. The faculty of acc.u.mulating must itself have been developed. Only when once it was developed, another process would begin, the process of social evolution, which, however it may resemble the other, or possibly be in some sense its continuation, proceeds, at least, at a totally different rate. The difference is comparable, one may say roughly, to the difference between the speed of an express train and the speed of a four-wheeled waggon.

Beneath the surface, it may be, the slower process is still continuing; men, for anything I can say to the contrary, may be acquiring larger brains and more sensitive bodies; and it is further possible, or rather obvious, that if we can do anything to facilitate this proceeding, to behave so as to give nature a better chance of turning out better work, we ought to do so. Only nature is pretty sure to take her time about it.

How far, again, one process is to be considered as a continuation of the other, or as a modification, or even as in opposition to it, is a point which I cannot now touch. What I have to say is simply this: that if we take any two periods of society, the present, for example, and that of a thousand or five thousand years ago, we shall find enormous or incalculably great differences in the social structure, in the amount of knowledge, in the character of the ethical, religious, and philosophical beliefs, and in the relations between the individuals of which the society is constructed; but between the individuals at the two periods we may find hardly any definable difference whatever. For anything we can say, we should be able, if we could move people about in time as well as in s.p.a.ce, to exchange a thousand infants of the nineteenth century A.D., for a thousand of the nineteenth century B.C., and n.o.body would be able to detect the difference which would result.

Hence it follows, in my opinion, that the evolutionary process with which moralists and political philosophers have practically to deal, is what I have called the social, and not the individual process. We inherit thoughts as we inherit wealth; we inherit customs and laws and forms of worship, and indeed our whole mental furniture; we can add enormously to our inheritance, and can transmit the augmented fund to our descendants. But the other process of inheritance, to which the word "heredity" is taken to apply, is not, immediately at least, c.u.mulative.

We inherit the old faculties, bodily and mental, unaltered, or with infinitesimal alterations, though we live in a different environment, and are ourselves as much altered as our environment. The modern social organism is built up, if I may say so, of cells almost identical in their properties with those of the old organism, although the mode of combination gives entirely new properties to the whole, and brings out new actions and reactions among the const.i.tuent cells themselves.

I have been touching the edge of certain problems of great interest but enormous complexity, and I shall venture to indicate the difference between these views and some which have recently attracted much attention. Mr. Kidd's work upon "Social Evolution" has made the phrase popular; but, instead of using it in my sense, he speaks as though "social evolution" involved what I have called individual evolution. In order to keep within limits, I will confine myself to one case upon which he lays great stress. It will show sufficiently why I hold his mode of reasoning to be inconclusive. Mr. Kidd has achieved success by very excellent qualities, by remarkable literary ability, and by his uniformly high tone of moral feeling. I should, therefore, be very sorry to speak of him otherwise than respectfully. Mr. Kidd, however, chooses to maintain a thesis in which he has certainly no personal interest,--the thesis, namely, that a little stupidity may be a very good thing. This view is, perhaps, intelligible when we observe that he also maintains that the progress of the race depends upon its holding "ultra-rational," which I think he would find it hard to distinguish from "irrational," beliefs. In support of this view he writes a chapter to prove that "progress is not primarily intellectual". The argument of which I have spoken is part of this proof. The Greeks, he tells us, were a race intellectually superior to ourselves. They were, so Mr. Galton informs him, two degrees above modern Englishmen in the scale of intelligence, and as superior to us as we are to the negro. And yet, says Mr. Kidd, this marvellous race died out, and no trace of its blood is now to be found in the present population of the world. Let us look shortly into the logic of this argument, and consider how far it is ent.i.tled to be regarded as scientific reasoning.

First of all, I should ask, what precisely is meant by "the Greeks"? The argument is founded partly on the number of great thinkers, poets, and artists, in proportion to the population. Now, it is obviously essential to a scientific statement that we should know what is the population indicated. If we compare the number of great men at Athens in its best period with the number of free Athenians, we shall get one ratio; if we admit the Athenian slaves, or add Boeotia and other Greek States to our population, we get quite a different ratio. And the difference is of immense importance. The smaller the population, the higher the excellence indicated by a given number of great men; but, also, the smaller the population, the less is the wonder that it should have died out or been swallowed up in the whirlpools of political, religious, and social convulsions. A similar remark applies in regard to the period during which this race flourished. When did they begin and when did they cease to be superior to other people? Till the statement is more precise we do not even know what are the phenomena to be explained; and the case is susceptible of any number of explanations. Did the superior race cease to be prolific; or was it prolific, but of inferior descendants; and, if so, was it because it was mixed with races of an inferior stamp; or was it because its position exposed it to the attacks of more numerous enemies; or because its energy led it to attempt impossible feats? Has it died out, or has it been swamped by other races? To answer such questions is absolutely necessary before we can say positively that the higher organisation was the cause of the decay, or that it did not cause the decay by some indirect process due to the special combination of circ.u.mstances. But to answer such questions, if they be answerable at all, would require the investigations of a lifetime, and a mastery of a whole series of studies, historical, statistical, ethnological, and so forth, in which I am an absolute ignoramus. But I cannot perceive that Mr. Kidd claims more than second-hand information.

But, secondly, there is another obvious question to which an answer is necessary. Mr. Kidd and Mr. Galton deduce their view about Greek intellect, first, from the proportion of great men. Does, then, the occurrence of a group of great men at a certain period prove a superior organisation in the race? That leads to a very familiar problem: What were the causes of what we may call the flowering times of arts and sciences? We are all familiar with the phenomenon; with the sudden display of astonishing excellence at Athens, at Florence, or in the England of Elizabeth. It seems to be the rule that processes which may have been going on quietly for centuries suddenly culminate; that artistic, poetic, or philosophic excellence becomes unprecedentedly common for a generation or two, and that the impulse then dies away as rapidly. It is the kind of problem which is satisfactorily solved by the authors of university prize essays, which somehow fail to convince the world or to be republished by their writers. Are we, then, ent.i.tled to argue from the great works an organic superiority in the race? Must we suppose, for example, that Englishmen at the time of Shakespeare and Bacon and Spenser and Raleigh were an abler race than their descendants, because, when there was a very much smaller number of educated men, they produced more first-rate authors than have been produced by generations much more numerous and more generally cultivated? This seems to me at least to be a very rash hypothesis; and some of the obvious remarks made in our university essays seem to me to indicate considerations which, though not conclusive, cannot be neglected. It is clear, for example, that particular stages of intellectual progress are abnormally stimulating; that, as the last step to a pa.s.s in the mountains suddenly reveals vast prospects, while a hundred equally difficult steps before made no appreciable change, so there are mental advances which, as at the time of Bacon, seemed suddenly to disclose boundless prospects of knowledge. It is the Pisgah sight of the promised land which causes a burst of energy. Or, again, a certain social condition is obviously required; philosophers and poets may exist potentially among barbarous tribes, but they cannot get a chance to speak, and they have no opportunity of communication with other thinkers. The intellect may be impelled in various directions, some of which leave no trace of a tangible kind. The amount of intellectual power implied in building up the Roman Empire may have been as great as that implied in developing Greek art; and in America, as we are often told, intellect turns to dollar-making, instead of book-writing. So, conversely, the outburst of power may indicate, not greater faculties, but special opportunities, or special stimulus, applied to already existing faculties. Everybody who has written an aesthetic treatise has pointed to all manner of conditions which were in this sense favourable to the Greeks. How far such conditions were sufficient I cannot even guess; but at least an allowance must be made for them before we can argue from the achievements to the intrinsic power of the race which achieved. I do not see that it is even "proved" that the average Athenian was in the least superior in this sense to the average Englishman. It would require a lifetime of study to p.r.o.nounce any opinion worth having. I fully confess that, so far as a vague impression is worth anything, it is the most obvious impression, after looking at the Elgin marbles, that the Greeks were possessed of a finer organisation than ourselves. Still, I cannot accept as certain the quasi-mathematical formula that the Greek is to the Englishman as the Englishman to the negro.

This, however, suggests another and very difficult series of problems.

Mr. Kidd is arguing against intellectual superiority. He, of course, does not argue that the general superiority of a race leads to its disappearance; but that a one-sided superiority--an improvement of one set of faculties at the expense of others--may have that result. This at once suggests a whole series of psychological problems. The intellect and the emotional nature are not two separate organs, each capable of independent development. Every mental process involves both, and neither faculty can be developed without reference to the other. Mr. Kidd accepts the conclusion that certain primitive races were as clever as ourselves, because their brains were as large. If the argument be sound, it proves equally that their emotional nature was as well developed as ours; for no one can doubt that the brain is the physical condition of feeling as well as of thought. Even the most abstract thought, as he elsewhere notices, implies certain moral qualities. Newton remarked that he was superior to other men, not because his intellect was clearer, but because he attended more persistently to his problems. The statement, I think, involves a fallacy. Newton himself, no doubt, did better the longer he kept a problem before him. He inferred, unjustifiably, that of two different men, the one who could keep up his attention longest would be the best. That does not follow. The difference may indeed be moral as well as intellectual; and it is quite true that a power of sustained attention is of the highest importance in mathematics, and that that power supposes a moral quality; but, conversely, the power of attention probably implies also the power of clear intellectual vision. A muddle-headed man would find attention useless. This is, of course, still clearer in the case where the mind is exercised upon questions of human interest. The statesman and the dramatist both depend upon their power of sympathy and the strength of their emotions, as much as upon their logical capacity. To feel for others I must imagine their position: if I imagine it, I can hardly avoid feeling for them. "Altruism" is the product, in other words, of a process both intellectual and moral.

Now, remembering this, we see the difficulty of p.r.o.nouncing upon the nature of the Greek organisation. Perhaps the commonest of all remarks upon Greek work is the symmetry and harmony, the "all-roundness," if I may say so, of the development implied. Poetry and philosophy, art and science seem to be so blended in their work that we cannot tell which faculty is predominant. What, then, is the inequality of development which is essential to Mr. Kidd's argument? They were wanting, he seems to answer, in "altruism". What does this mean? The astonishing power of the Greeks was certainly as conspicuous in poetry and art as in anything else; and that power surely implies development of the emotional as well as of the intellectual nature. By a defect of "altruism," I take him to mean that these emotions did not flow along the channel of general philanthropy. They were wanting then, as I should put it, rather in cosmopolitanism than in altruism. If altruism means care for something outside yourself, where could we find better examples of altruism than at Thermopylae or Marathon? Was it not due to Greek altruism in this form (some historians would say) that Mr. Kidd is not now living under the rule of a Persian Satrap? The altruism, no doubt, meant an intense and patriotic devotion to a small State, or an interest in Greek as against barbarian, and was compatible with much brutality to individuals and acquiescence in slavery. But this does not indicate an absence of the emotions themselves, but simply their confinement within narrow limits, by the conditions under which they were placed. Slavery, for example, is abominable; but I see no reason for supposing that the slave-holders in America were worse men by innate const.i.tution than their opponents. They were corrupted by their position.

This, in any case, leads to another problem. Were the Greeks more or less altruistic than other races? If you could show that altruistic races had survived while the Greeks perished, there might be a presumption that the want of altruism was the cause of their decay. But this again does not seem to be the case. Hardly one of the ancient races, indeed, has survived unvaried. The Romans were at least as brutal as the Greeks, and, one would say, as far from "altruistic". Yet they overpowered the Greeks. How, then, can it be inferred that the Greeks perished because of defective altruism? The struggle for existence was between races equally defective to all appearance in that quality; and it must be a sophistry to signalise its absence in one as the cause of its disappearance. There is, indeed, one race to which every one would turn as the most prominent example of survival, namely, the Jews. The Jews have enormous merits and great intellectual endowments; but can anybody say that they were altruistic in the sense of being cosmopolitan? Are they not conspicuous, beyond any race, for the narrower forms of altruism, rejection of a cosmopolitan creed, even when it arose among them, and exclusive devotion to the welfare of their own people? I think that it would be perfectly easy to argue that the Greeks died out just because of their cosmopolitan and therefore dispersive tendencies, and that the Jews have held out from a judicious adherence to narrower views of self-preservation. But personally I regard all such "arguments" as really belonging to the extra-scientific regions of rhetorical ill.u.s.tration.

This suggests one other point which requires consideration. Mr. Kidd regards it as proved that progress has been due to the Christian religion, which revealed the new moral doctrine. The Christian religion introduced, it seems, that belief in the supernatural which is essential to altruism. It seems to me to be inconsistent with his own principles, that he should attribute progress to what is essentially, on his own showing, an intellectual change: that is, to a change in belief and even to a change which, in comparison with the old polytheism, was distinctly sceptical and rationalistic. But one point is clear. The introduction of Christianity may be interpreted more consistently in a totally different way. The Greek who became a Christian was not provided with a new set of emotions, but his emotions were directed into new channels.

He ceased to care for Athens, because Athens had ceased to be an independent State; he began to be cosmopolitan when he was forced to be part of a cosmopolitan empire. The important distinction was no longer the distinction between Athenian and Spartan, but between the different cla.s.ses in the world-wide system. That is to say, the "altruism" which came in with Christianity was not the product of a new dogma suddenly dropped from heaven; but of the new social condition, which made it inevitable that the forces which previously stimulated a local patriotism should now exert themselves nearer a cosmopolitan organisation. This is, of course, a commonplace; but, for that reason, it should not be simply ignored. It suggests one other consequence of Mr. Kidd's theory. It is proved, he says, that the progress of the Western world is due to Christianity. His "proof," as I suppose, is that the States which have sprung out of the old Empire of the West have been Christian and have progressed. How, then, about the Empire of the East?

If the great Kingdoms of the West are the unique example of progress, what is the unique example of decay? Surely, the regions where Christian dogmatic theology was defended by Athanasius and Chrysostom.

If you wish to point out a region where the race has actually gone backwards, you would refer to the Turkish Empire. Why, if Christianity was the sole cause of progress in one quarter, was it comparable with complete decay in the other? Does the Eastern theory about the _filioque_ explain it? Or were the Mohammedans more "altruistic" than the Christians? Or is it that it is absurd, especially upon Mr. Kidd's own doctrine, to a.s.sign the dogmatic creed of a race as the sole cause of its character and its success in the struggle for existence?

I do not lay any stress upon the argument, except in a negative sense. I do not see, that is, how Mr. Kidd can make his theory fit the facts. But I infer one other remark. It is impossible to divine the causes of the rise and fall of empires, the success or decay of a race, from any of these sweeping generalisations about ill-defined qualities. If we ask why the Greeks died out, we should have to take into account another and a totally different set of considerations: what I may call the accidents of their position. We should have to consider all the arguments by which historians have tried to explain the events; the facts of physical geography, for example, which account for the division into small separate States; the relations of the Greeks to the Eastern races on the one side, and to the Romans on the other; and, briefly, to all the material conditions, those different from the intrinsic character of the race, by which the whole course of political development and of the conflict between different peoples, is moulded and directed into particular courses. I do not say, for I cannot guess, what would be the result of such an inquiry; but I think it just as possible that it would lead us to wonder at the persistence of the Greek States for so long a period, as that it would lead us to wonder at their disappearance. Our conclusion might be, that nothing but the astonishing intellectual powers of the Greeks enabled them to play so great a part in the world's history, not that their intellectual superiority was the cause of their decay.

I consider, therefore, that the alleged fact is stated so vaguely that we have no distinct problem set before us; that we don't know what is the process to be explained; that the suggested intellectual superiority is doubtful, at least in degree: that the excess of intellectual above other development, which the superiority is supposed to have created, is not proved, and, still less, that such excess was more conspicuous among the Greeks than among their rivals; that, even if it existed, it is not proved that it would have produced the effect ascribed to it; and, finally, that the other causes which undoubtedly operated, are simply overlooked. I confess, therefore, that the whole argument seems to me to ill.u.s.trate the danger of rashly applying certain scientific formulae,--themselves, perhaps, still doubtful,--to new and exceedingly complex questions. If Darwin had reasoned in this light-hearted way, no one would have been moved by his conclusions.

But I must still add, what brings me back to my point, that even if the proposition were proved, it would not establish the conclusion. It may be, that races of abnormal intellectual development are at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence. That does not prove that "progress is not primarily intellectual". Buckle, who argued that progress was due to intellectual causes exclusively, always a.s.sumed that human nature was constant, or that the faculties did not change. Though I do not accept his view, any more than Mr. Kidd's, I do not see that he was inconsistent. I take the most obvious case to ill.u.s.trate the point.

No one can doubt that one of the most important influences in modern social evolution was the set of mechanical contrivances devised by Arkwright and Watt and their contemporaries. Without them, the enormous development of great cities, of a population of artisans, and of the bringing together of all quarters of the globe, would have been impossible. The inventions, again, were due to no moral purpose in the inventors. They wanted to make money, and represented what is called (I do not say justly) the most egoistic impulse of modern times. One condition, then, of the great social change was essentially intellectual. This does not mean that Watt was a cleverer man than Archimedes. I don't know whether he was or not; but it does mean that the mechanical sciences had improved; and, consequently, that Watt, though not possessed of intrinsically greater powers, was, in this direction, a more intellectual person. He had inherited the truths discovered by Archimedes and many generations of successors. That science should be efficient, it is not required that men should be greater geniuses than their predecessors; but simply that they should know more of the facts and laws of nature, and have, so to speak, better intellectual tools. Mr. Kidd thinks that the inability of a savage to count three does not prove him to be stupid, only to be without certain rules discovered by the higher races. Yet, he will not deny that by the help of arithmetic we can work out sums inconceivable to the savage; and that our power affects our whole social position. Does not the existence of a currency affect mankind; and if we could not count, could we make use of it?

I therefore hold that in many cases the causes of progress are "primarily intellectual". The mechanical discoveries of which I have spoken have revolutionised the whole world. I agree, indeed, fully, that the causes are not exclusively intellectual. A certain social condition--the existence, to say nothing more, of peace and order over wide regions--was as necessary as the intellectual condition to the development of commerce and manufactures. This, of course, implies the growth of corresponding sentiments, including, no doubt, what Mr. Kidd means by altruism. But the change may, and, I fancy, generally does, originate in intellectual movements. The new ideas shake the world.

Reason, says Mr. Kidd, is the great disintegrating and egoistic force. I should say that reasoning is essentially altruistic: my discoveries are mentally discoveries for you; I cannot keep a truth for my private consumption, as I can keep a material product. But it is true, to use eulogistic instead of dyslogistic language, that reason is the great force of movement, and breaks up the old social conditions, not only by getting rid of the ultra-rational, but by spreading the power of the rational; and therefore it inevitably brings about a state of things in which the old moral impulses have to run in new channels; a narrow patriotism, to widen into a regard for the interests of other races; and the cla.s.s distinctions which repose upon no reasonable ground, to disappear in favour of a wider humanity. When we are arguing about an organism, it is surely a mistake to fix our minds upon one aspect of the problem: to deny with Buckle the moral evolution, and with Mr. Kidd to disparage the intellectual evolution.

Mr. Kidd's doctrine appears to me, though, of course, not to him, to be eminently discouraging. If he worked it out logically, his argument, I think, would come to this: that the progress of mankind has resulted from the accidental, that is, inexplicable, appearance of a quality called altruism, which gave to those who possessed it an advantage in the struggle for existence. It would be far more consistent to say that the religious dogma was determined by this new element, than that it was the cause. Altruism, again, was only produced in effect on this hypothesis by the slow results of a process necessarily lasting through many generations; and our only hope must be in a slow organic change of the primary characteristics of mankind. Now, it is, of course, true that those characteristics, whatever they may be, impose definite limits upon our progress. The raw material limits the product; and the new-born baby is the raw material of society, as wool is of cloth: you cannot convert it into tissue of gold. So much is undeniable. We, it is said, have been developed out of an arboreal animal, and I have sometimes regretted that we were not developed out of a flying animal. The course of civilisation would have been very different if we had not been forced to come into contact by crawling and swimming, instead of the much freer methods of aerial travelling. However, as things were, the choice was apparently between wings and hands; and if we could not have both, perhaps hands were preferable, and may in time lead to flying machines.

The speculation, it may be, borders upon the fanciful. I mention it only by way of ill.u.s.trating the unevitable conditions imposed upon us by "heredity". We have to be content with walking instead of flying; and similarly we have to be content with having only the five senses of our forefathers, and the various old-fashioned apparatuses for eating, drinking, digesting, and so forth, which they unconsciously elaborated.

No material change can possibly be made in this system within any period to which we can look forward. To regret these limitations is just as idle as to regret that we cannot fly, or that we cannot extend our voyages to the moon. They are part of the primary data of the problem with which we have to deal; and to regret that that problem was not differently contrived is to propose to set about reconstructing the universe. But when we go on t