Part 16

Into the details of Mr. Wallace's criticisms it is impossible to enter here. We cannot discuss either the mode of origin of the variations in structure which have rendered secondary sexual characters possible or the modes of selection other than sexual which have rendered them, within narrow limits, specifically constant. Mendelism and mutation theories may have something to say on the subject when these theories have been more fully correlated with the basal principles of selection. It is noteworthy that Mr. Wallace says: "Besides the acquisition of weapons by the male for the purpose of fighting with other males, there are some other sexual characters which may have been produced by natural selection. Such are the various sounds and odours which are peculiar to the male, and which serve as a call to the female or as an indication of his presence. These are evidently a valuable addition to the means of recognition of the two sexes, and are a further indication, that the pairing season has arrived; and the production, intensification, and differentiation of these sounds and odours are clearly within the power of natural selection. The same remark will apply to the peculiar calls of birds, and even to the singing of the males." Why the same remark should not apply to their colours and adornments is not obvious. What is obvious is that "means of recognition" and "indication that the pairing season has arrived" are dependent on the perceptive powers of the female who recognises and for whom the indication has meaning. The hypothesis of female preference, stripped of the aesthetic surplusage which is psychologically both unnecessary and unproven, is really only different in degree from that which Mr. Wallace admits in principle when he says that it is probable that the female is pleased or excited by the display.

Let us for our present purpose leave on one side and regard as sub judice the question whether the specific details of secondary sexual characters are the outcome of female choice. For us the question is whether certain psychological accompaniments of the pairing situation have influenced the course of evolution and whether these psychological accompaniments are themselves the outcome of evolution. As a matter of observation, specially differentiated modes of behaviour, often very elaborate, frequently requiring highly developed skill, and apparently highly charged with emotional tone, are the precursors of pairing. They are generally confined to the males, whose fierce combats during the period of sexual activity are part of the emotional manifestation. It is inconceivable that they have no biological meaning; and it is difficult to conceive that they have any other biological end than to evoke in the generally more passive female the pairing impulse. They, are based on instinctive foundations ingrained in the nervous constitution through natural (or may we not say sexual?) selection in virtue of their profound utility. They are called into play by a specialised presentation such as the sight or the scent of the female at, or a little in advance of, a critical period of the physiological rhythm. There is no necessity that the male should have any knowledge of the end to which his strenuous activity leads up. In presence of the female there is an elaborate application of all the energies of behaviour, just because ages of racial preparation have made him biologically and emotionally what he is--a functionally sexual male that must dance or sing or go through hereditary movements of display, when the appropriate stimulation comes. Of course after the first successful courtship his future behaviour will be in some degree modified by his previous experience. No doubt during his first courtship he is gaining the primary data of a peculiarly rich experience, instinctive and emotional. But the biological foundations of the behaviour of courtship are laid in the hereditary coordinations. It would seem that in some cases, not indeed in all, perhaps especially in those cases in which secondary sexual behaviour is most highly evolved,--correlative with the ardour of the male is a certain amount of reluctance in the female. The pairing act on her part only takes place after prolonged stimulation, for affording which the behaviour of male courtship is the requisite presentation. The most vigourous, defiant and mettlesome male is preferred just because he alone affords a contributory stimulation adequate to evoke the pairing impulse with its attendant emotional tone.

It is true that this places female preference or choice on a much lower psychological plane than Darwin in some passages seems to contemplate where, for example, he says that the female appreciates the display of the male and places to her credit a taste for the beautiful. But Darwin himself distinctly states that "it is not probable that she consciously deliberates; but she is most excited or attracted by the most beautiful, or melodious, or gallant males." The view here put forward, which has been developed by Prof. Groos, therefore seems to have Darwin's own sanction. The phenomena are not only biological; there are psychological elements as well. One can hardly suppose that the female is unconscious of the male's presence; the final yielding must surely be accompanied by heightened emotional tone. Whether we call it choice or not is merely a matter of definition of terms. The behaviour is in part determined by supplementary psychological values. Prof. Groos regards the coyness of females as "a most efficient means of preventing the too early and too frequent yielding to the sexual impulse." Be that as it may, it is, in any case, if we grant the facts, a means through which male sexual behaviour with all its biological and psychological implications, is raised to a level otherwise perhaps unattainable by natural means, while in the female it affords opportunities for the development in the individual and evolution in the race of what we may follow Darwin in calling appreciation, if we empty this word of the aesthetic implications which have gathered round it in the mental life of man.

Regarded from this standpoint of sexual selection, broadly considered, has probably been of great importance. The psychological accompaniments of the pairing situation have profoundly influenced the course of biological evolution and are themselves the outcome of that evolution.

Darwin makes only passing reference to those modes of behaviour in animals which go by the name of play. "Nothing," he says, "is more common than for animals to take pleasure in practising whatever instinct they follow at other times for some real good." This is one of the very numerous cases in which a hint of the master has served to stimulate research in his disciples. It was left to Prof. Groos to develop this subject on evolutionary lines and to elaborate in a masterly manner Darwin's suggestion. "The utility of play," he says, "is incalculable. This utility consists in the practice and exercise it affords for some of the more important duties of life,"--that is to say, for the performance of activities which will in adult life be essential to survival. He urges that "the play of young animals has its origin in the fact that certain very important instincts appear at a time when the animal does not seriously need them." It is, however, questionable whether any instincts appear at a time when they are not needed. And it is questionable whether the instinctive and emotional attitude of the play-fight, to take one example, can be identified with those which accompany fighting in earnest, though no doubt they are closely related and have some common factors. It is probable that play, as preparatory behaviour, differs in biological detail (as it almost certainly does in emotional attributes) from the earnest of after-life and that it has been evolved through differentiation and integration of the primary tissue of experience, as a preparation through which certain essential modes of skill may be acquired--those animals in which the preparatory play-propensity was not inherited in due force and requisite amount being subsequently eliminated in the struggle for existence. In any case there is little question that Prof. Groos is right in basing the play-propensity on instinctive foundations. None the less, as he contends, the essential biological value of play is that it is a means of training the educable nerve-tissue, of developing that part of the brain which is modified by experience and which thus acquires new characters, of elaborating the secondary tissue of experience on the predetermined lines of instinctive differentiation and thus furthering the psychological activities which are included under the comprehensive term "intelligent."

In The Descent of Man Darwin dealt at some length with intelligence and the higher mental faculties. His object, he says, is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties; that these faculties are variable and the variations tend to be inherited; and that under natural selection beneficial variations of all kinds will have been preserved and injurious ones eliminated.

Darwin was too good an observer and too honest a man to minimise the "enormous difference" between the level of mental attainment of civilised man and that reached by any animal. His contention was that the difference, great as it is, is one of degree and not of kind. He realised that, in the development of the mental faculties of man, new factors in evolution have supervened--factors which play but a subordinate and subsidiary part in animal intelligence. Intercommunication by means of language, approbation and blame, and all that arises out of reflective thought, are but foreshadowed in the mental life of animals. Still he contends that these may be explained on the doctrine of evolution. He urges "that man is variable in body and mind; and that the variations are induced, either directly or indirectly, by the same general causes, and obey the same general laws, as with the lower animals." He correlates mental development with the evolution of the brain. "As the various mental faculties gradually developed themselves, the brain would almost certainly become larger. No one, I presume, doubts that the large proportion which the size of man's brain bears to his body, compared to the same proportion in the gorilla or orang, is closely connected with his higher mental powers." "With respect to the lower animals," he says, "M. E. Lartet, by comparing the crania of tertiary and recent mammals belonging to the same groups, has come to the remarkable conclusion that the brain is generally larger and the convolutions are more complex in the more recent form."

Sir E. Ray Lankester has sought to express in the simplest terms the implications of the increase in size of the cerebrum. "In what," he asks, "does the advantage of a larger cerebral mass consist?" "Man," he replies, "is born with fewer ready-made tricks of the nerve-centres--these performances of an inherited nervous mechanism so often called by the ill-defined term 'instincts'--than are the monkeys or any other animal. Correlated with the absence of inherited ready-made mechanism, man has a greater capacity of developing in the course of his individual growth similar nervous mechanisms (similar to but not identical with those of 'instinct') than any other animal.... The power of being educated--'educability' as we may term it--is what man possesses in excess as compared with the apes. I think we are justified in forming the hypothesis that it is this 'educability' which is the correlative of the increased size of the cerebrum." There has been natural selection of the more educable animals, for "the character which we describe as 'educability' can be transmitted, it is a congenital character. But the results of education can not be transmitted. In each generation they have to be acquired afresh, and with increased 'educability' they are more readily acquired and a larger variety of them.... The fact is that there is no community between the mechanisms of instinct and the mechanisms of intelligence, and that the latter are later in the history of the evolution of the brain than the former and can only develop in proportion as the former become feeble and defective."

In this statement we have a good example of the further development of views which Darwin foreshadowed but did not thoroughly work out. It states the biological case clearly and tersely. Plasticity of behaviour in special accommodation to special circumstances is of survival value; it depends upon acquired characters; it is correlated with increase in size and complexity of the cerebrum; under natural selection therefore the larger and more complex cerebrum as the organ of plastic behaviour has been the outcome of natural selection. We have thus the biological foundations for a further development of genetic psychology.

There are diversities of opinion, as Darwin showed, with regard to the range of instinct in man and the higher animals as contrasted with lower types. Darwin himself said that "Man, perhaps, has somewhat fewer instincts than those possessed by the animals which come next to him in the series." On the other hand, Prof. Wm. James says that man is probably the animal with most instincts. The true position is that man and the higher animals have fewer complete and self-sufficing instincts than those which stand lower in the scale of mental evolution, but that they have an equally large or perhaps larger mass of instinctive raw material which may furnish the stuff to be elaborated by intelligent processes. There is, perhaps, a greater abundance of the primary tissue of experience to be refashioned and integrated by secondary modification; there is probably the same differentiation in relation to the determining biological ends, but there is at the outset less differentiation of the particular and specific modes of behaviour. The specialised instinctive performances and their concomitant experience-complexes are at the outset more indefinite. Only through acquired connections, correlated with experience, do they become definitely organised.

The full working-out of the delicate and subtle relationship of instinct and educability--that is, of the hereditary and the acquired factors in the mental life--is the task which lies before genetic and comparative psychology. They interact throughout the whole of life, and their interactions are very complex. No one can read the chapters of The Descent of Man which Darwin devotes to a consideration of the mental characters of man and animals without noticing, on the one hand, how sedulous he is in his search for hereditary foundations, and, on the other hand, how fully he realises the importance of acquired habits of mind. The fact that educability itself has innate tendencies--is in fact a partially differentiated educability--renders the unravelling of the factors of mental progress all the more difficult.

In his comparison of the mental powers of men and animals it was essential that Darwin should lay stress on points of similarity rather than on points of difference. Seeking to establish a doctrine of evolution, with its basal concept of continuity of process and community of character, he was bound to render clear and to emphasise the contention that the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is one of degree and not of kind. To this end Darwin not only recorded a large number of valuable observations of his own, and collected a considerable body of information from reliable sources, he presented the whole subject in a new light and showed that a natural history of mind might be written and that this method of study offered a wide and rich field for investigation. Of course those who regarded the study of mind only as a branch of metaphysics smiled at the philosophical ineptitude of the mere man of science. But the investigation, on natural history lines, has been prosecuted with a large measure of success. Much indeed still remains to be done; for special training is required, and the workers are still few. Promise for the future is however afforded by the fact that investigation is prosecuted on experimental lines and that something like organised methods of research are taking form. There is now but little reliance on casual observations recorded by those who have not undergone the necessary discipline in these methods. There is also some change of emphasis in formulating conclusions. Now that the general evolutionary thesis is fully and freely accepted by those who carry on such researches, more stress is laid on the differentiation of the stages of evolutionary advance than on the fact of their underlying community of nature. The conceptual intelligence which is especially characteristic of the higher mental procedure of man is more firmly distinguished from the perceptual intelligence which he shares with the lower animals--distinguished now as a higher product of evolution, no longer as differing in origin or different in kind. Some progress has been made, on the one hand in rendering an account of intelligent profiting by experience under the guidance of pleasure and pain in the perceptual field, on lines predetermined by instinctive differentiation for biological ends, and on the other hand in elucidating the method of conceptual thought employed, for example, by the investigator himself in interpreting the perceptual experience of the lower animals.

Thus there is a growing tendency to realise more fully that there are two orders of educability--first an educability of the perceptual intelligence based on the biological foundation of instinct, and secondly an educability of the conceptual intelligence which refashions and rearranges the data afforded by previous inheritance and acquisition. It is in relation to this second and higher order of educability that the cerebrum of man shows so large an increase of mass and a yet larger increase of effective surface through its rich convolutions. It is through educability of this order that the human child is brought intellectually and affectively into touch with the ideal constructions by means of which man has endeavoured, with more or less success, to reach an interpretation of nature, and to guide the course of the further evolution of his race--ideal constructions which form part of man's environment.

It formed no part of Darwin's purpose to consider, save in broad outline, the methods, or to discuss in any fulness of detail the results of the process by which a differentiation of the mental faculties of man from those of the lower animals has been brought about--a differentiation the existence of which he again and again acknowledges. His purpose was rather to show that, notwithstanding this differentiation, there is basal community in kind. This must be remembered in considering his treatment of the biological foundations on which man's systems of ethics are built. He definitely stated that he approached the subject "exclusively from the side of natural history." His general conclusion is that the moral sense is fundamentally identical with the social instincts, which have been developed for the good of the community; and he suggests that the concept which thus enables us to interpret the biological ground-plan of morals also enables us to frame a rational ideal of the moral end. "As the social instincts," he says, "both of man and the lower animals have no doubt been developed by nearly the same steps, it would be advisable, if found practicable, to use the same definition in both cases, and to take as the standard of morality, the general good or welfare of the community, rather than the general happiness." But the kind of community for the good of which the social instincts of animals and primitive men were biologically developed may be different from that which is the product of civilisation, as Darwin no doubt realised. Darwin's contention was that conscience is a social instinct and has been evolved because it is useful to the tribe in the struggle for existence against other tribes. One the other hand J. S. Mill urged that the moral feelings are not innate but acquired, and Bain held the same view, believing that the moral sense is acquired by each individual during his life-time. Darwin, who notes their opinion with his usual candour, adds that "on the general theory of evolution this is at least extremely improbable." It is impossible to enter into the question here: much turns on the exact connotation of the terms "conscience" and "moral sense," and on the meaning we attach to the statement that the moral sense is fundamentally identical with the social instincts.

Presumably the majority of those who approach the subjects discussed in the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of The Descent of Man in the full conviction that mental phenomena, not less than organic phenomena, have a natural genesis, would, without hesitation, admit that the intellectual and moral systems of civilised man are ideal constructions, the products of conceptual thought, and that as such they are, in their developed form, acquired. The moral sentiments are the emotional analogues of highly developed concepts. This does not however imply that they are outside the range of natural history treatment. Even though it may be desirable to differentiate the moral conduct of men from the social behaviour of animals (to which some such term as "pre-moral" or "quasi-moral" may be applied), still the fact remains that, as Darwin showed, there is abundant evidence of the occurrence of such social behaviour--social behaviour which, even granted that it is in large part intelligently acquired, and is itself so far a product of educability, is of survival value. It makes for that integration without which no social group could hold together and escape elimination. Furthermore, even if we grant that such behaviour is intelligently acquired, that is to say arises through the modification of hereditary instincts and emotions, the fact remains that only through these instinctive and emotional data is afforded the primary tissue of the experience which is susceptible of such modification.

Darwin sought to show, and succeeded in showing, that for the intellectual and moral life there are instinctive foundations which a biological treatment alone can disclose. It is true that he did not in all cases analytically distinguish the foundations from the superstructure. Even to-day we are scarcely in a position to do so adequately. But his treatment was of great value in giving an impetus to further research. This value indeed can scarcely be over-estimated. And when the natural history of the mental operations shall have been written, the cardinal fact will stand forth, that the instinctive and emotional foundations are the outcome of biological evolution and have been ingrained in the race through natural selection. We shall more clearly realise that educability itself is a product of natural selection, though the specific results acquired through cerebral modifications are not transmitted through heredity. It will, perhaps, also be realised that the instinctive foundations of social behaviour are, for us, somewhat out of date and have undergone but little change throughout the progress of civilisation, because natural selection has long since ceased to be the dominant factor in human progress. The history of human progress has been mainly the history of man's higher educability, the products of which he has projected on to his environment. This educability remains on the average what it was a dozen generations ago; but the thought-woven tapestry of his surroundings is refashioned and improved by each succeeding generation. Few men have in greater measure enriched the thought-environment with which it is the aim of education to bring educable human beings into vital contact, than has Charles Darwin. His special field of work was the wide province of biology; but he did much to help us to realise that mental factors have contributed to organic evolution and that in man, the highest product of Evolution, they have reached a position of unquestioned supremacy.

FOOTNOTES:

VII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONCEPTION OF EVOLUTION ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY

BY H. HOeFFDING

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Copenhagen

It is difficult to draw a sharp line between philosophy and natural science. The naturalist who introduces a new principle, or demonstrates a fact which throws a new light on existence, not only renders an important service to philosophy but is himself a philosopher in the broader sense of the word. The aim of philosophy in the stricter sense is to attain points of view from which the fundamental phenomena and the principles of the special sciences can be seen in their relative importance and connection. But philosophy in this stricter sense has always been influenced by philosophy in the broader sense. Greek philosophy came under the influence of logic and mathematics, modern philosophy under the influence of natural science. The name of Charles Darwin stands with those of Galileo, Newton, and Robert Mayer--names which denote new problems and great alterations in our conception of the universe.

First of all we must lay stress on Darwin's own personality. His deep love of truth, his indefatigable inquiry, his wide horizon, and his steady self-criticism make him a scientific model, even if his results and theories should eventually come to possess mainly an historical interest. In the intellectual domain the primary object is to reach high summits from which wide surveys are possible, to reach them toiling honestly upwards by the way of experience, and then not to turn dizzy when a summit is gained. Darwinians have sometimes turned dizzy, but Darwin never. He saw from the first the great importance of his hypothesis, not only because of its solution of the old problem as to the value of the concept of species, not only because of the grand picture of natural evolution which it unrolls, but also because of the life and inspiration its method would impart to the study of comparative anatomy, of instinct and of heredity, and finally because of the influence it would exert on the whole conception of existence. He wrote in his note-book in the year 1837: "My theory would give zest to recent and fossil comparative anatomy; it would lead to the study of instinct, heredity, and mind-heredity, whole metaphysics."

We can distinguish four main points in which Darwin's investigations possess philosophical importance.

The evolution hypothesis is much older than Darwin; it is, indeed, one of the oldest guessings of human thought. In the eighteenth century is was put forward by Diderot and Lamettrie and suggested by Kant (1786). As we shall see later, it was held also by several philosophers in the first half of the nineteenth century. In his preface to The Origin of Species, Darwin mentions the naturalists who were his forerunners. But he has set forth the hypothesis of evolution in so energetic and thorough a manner that it perforce attracts the attention of all thoughtful men in a much higher degree than it did before the publication of the Origin.

And further, the importance of his teaching rests on the fact that he, much more than his predecessors, even than Lamarck, sought a foundation for his hypothesis in definite facts. Modern science began by demanding--with Kepler and Newton--evidence of varae causae; this demand Darwin industriously set himself to satisfy--hence the wealth of material which he collected by his observations and his experiments. He not only revived an old hypothesis, but he saw the necessity of verifying it by facts. Whether the special cause on which he founded the explanation of the origin of species--Natural Selection--is sufficient, is now a subject of discussion. He himself had some doubt in regard to this question, and the criticisms which are directed against his hypothesis hit Darwinism rather than Darwin. In his indefatigable search for empirical evidence he is a model even for his antagonists: he has compelled them to approach the problems of life along other lines than those which were formerly followed.

Whether the special cause to which Darwin appealed is sufficient or not, at least to it is probably due the greater part of the influence which he has exerted on the general trend of thought. "Struggle for existence" and "natural selection" are principles which have been applied, more or less, in every department of thought. Recent research, it is true, has discovered greater empirical discontinuity--leaps, "mutations"--whereas Darwin believed in the importance of small variations slowly accumulated. It has also been shown by the experimental method, which in recent biological work has succeeded Darwin's more historical method, that types once constituted possess great permanence, the fluctuations being restricted within clearly defined boundaries. The problem has become more precise, both as to variation and as to heredity. The inner conditions of life have in both respects shown a greater independence than Darwin had supposed in his theory, though he always admitted that the cause of variation was to him a great enigma, "a most perplexing problem," and that the struggle for life could only occur where variation existed. But, at any rate, it was of the greatest importance that Darwin gave a living impression of the struggle for life which is everywhere going on, and to which even the highest forms of existence must be amenable. The philosophical importance of these ideas does not stand or fall with the answer to the question, whether natural selection is a sufficient explanation of the origin of species or not it has an independent, positive value for everyone who will observe life and reality with an unbiased mind.

In accentuating the struggle for life Darwin stands as a characteristically English thinker: he continues a train of ideas which Hobbes and Malthus had already begun. Moreover in his critical views as to the conception of species he had English forerunners; in the middle ages Occam and Duns Scotus, in the eighteenth century Berkeley and Hume. In his moral philosophy, as we shall see later, he is an adherent of the school which is represented by Hutcheson, Home and Adam Smith. Because he is no philosopher in the stricter sense of the term, it is of great interest to see that his attitude of mind is that of the great thinkers of his nation.