PART II.. The Theory of Evolution.

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

CHAPTER V.

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORALITY.

To relinquish the individualistic theory of ethics does not necessarily imply a recourse to evolution. It may still be possible to rest the foundation of ethics on the state, without that view of the growth of the community and of its connection with the individual which the theory of evolution involves. This, as has already been pointed out, was, in part, what Bentham did; while an attempt--in some respects more elaborate still--to deduce morality from society was made by Hobbes. The theory of Bentham, and of his successor Professor Bain, is indeed partly individualistic, partly social. In the former reference, ethics becomes a theory of prudence; in the latter, a part of legislation. With Hobbes, on the other hand, the identification of individual and social interests is supposed to be brought about by the absolute necessity, in order to personal security, of a supreme political power, into the hands of which all men have agreed to transfer their rights to all things. But both Hobbes and Professor Bain might have avoided obvious difficulties had they had the theory of evolution to assist them, and had they thought themselves justified in making use of it. For want of it the former has to explain morality and its binding force by means of the fiction of an "original contract"; while the latter has to account by the associations of a few years for the harmony of feeling between the individual and the whole, and for the good of the community coming to be so faithfully reflected in the consciences of its members. The theory of evolution, by its doctrine of the hereditary transmission of acquired modifications, gives a scientific basis for this existing solidarity between man and society.

The great consensus of opinion amongst those who are best qualified to judge--amongst those who alone are qualified to judge--may be regarded as having established the claim of the theory of evolution to give the most satisfactory account of all forms of natural life. And it may seem only advancing the theory a step further, or only developing one of its applications, to make it yield a complete explanation of human nature, mental as well as physical. If ethics, then, is to be founded on a "natural" basis, no theory would seem to be complete which leaves evolution out of account.

In general, the theory of evolution is an assertion of the unity of life, or, in its widest form, of the unity of existence. Progressive modifications and hereditary transmission of such modifications are, it is contended, sufficient to explain the different forms and species which life now manifests. The assumption is specially discarded that there are fixed differences between kinds of living things making it impossible for them all to have developed from simple germs, originally of like constitution, which have, in the course of time, become more heterogeneous and complex, and so given rise to the wealth of organic life. But this general doctrine, held (wholly or in part) in modern times by Kant, Wolff, and Lamarck, needed to be supplemented by a definite view of the way in which the progressive modifications took place; and this required to be established as a really operative cause, before evolution could receive scientific proof. This more special element of the theory was Darwin's contribution to the subject. Evolution, he showed,--and herein consists his theoretical advance on Lamarck,--has taken place by the "natural selection" of organisms, so modified as to fit them for survival in the struggle for existence. Organisms in which advantageous modifications have been produced tend to survive, and to transmit their modified structure to descendants, while organisms in which such modifications have not been produced, are less able to preserve their life and to hand it on to successors. Older types, it is true, remain, but only in circumstances in which their continued existence does not seriously interfere with the organisms which, in the struggle for life, have developed a structure better suited to their environment: when more perfect and less perfect forms cannot exist together, only the better adapted survive.

The theory of evolution is thus primarily the history of an order of sequent facts and relations. It is an account of the origin or growth of things, which attempts to explain their nature and constitution by showing how they have come to be what they are. But, in so doing, it naturally reveals the method and tendency of this order. And it is by means of this its teleological aspect that we see how it may be possible for it not merely to trace the development of historical facts, such as the feelings and customs of men, but at the same time to make a more real contribution to ethics by pointing out the course of action to which human nature is adapted. It does not, like the old teleology, attempt to show that each thing has been formed with the design of subserving some particular purpose. On the contrary, it reverses this way of looking at things. The fitness of an organism to fulfil any definite end comes to be regarded as the result not of a conscious design, independent of the environment, but of the modifications produced on the organism through the necessity laid upon it by its surroundings of adapting itself to them or else disappearing. What the theory does show is, that adaptation to environment is necessary for life, and that organisms unable to adapt themselves pass away. Adaptation to environment will thus be implied in, or be an essential means towards, self-preservation and race-preservation, self-development and race-development. And should this preservation or development be looked upon as the end of conduct, the adaptation to environment it implies may help to define and characterise the end.

Again: when an organism adapts itself to its environment, it does so by some modification being produced in its structure corresponding to the modified function required by the conditions of life. In this way, one organism increases in complexity in a certain direction, while another organism, in different circumstances, also develops a more complicated structure, though one of a different kind. Thus organisms, alike to begin with, become heterogeneous in nature through exposure to different surroundings. At the same time, by constant interaction with their environments, they become more definite and coherent in structure. Incipient modifications are developed and defined in different ways by different circumstances, and the parts of a living being are brought into closer reciprocal relations, and thus welded into a coherent organic whole. This is what Mr Spencer means when he says that evolution implies a transition from "an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity": the whole process being interconnected in such a way that these different aspects of it--definiteness, coherence, heterogeneity--increase together and imply one another. By this the inference would appear to be suggested that, if conduct is to harmonise with the conditions of evolution, this characteristic feature of it must be recognised in the ethical end.

In saying this, I am perhaps anticipating results. But it is well to show at the outset how the essentially historical inquiry carried out by the evolutionists may suggest conclusions which are ethical in their nature. To some, indeed, it will appear superfluous to have spent even a sentence in suggesting a primâ facie case for the ethical importance of evolution. If there is one subject more than another, it may be thought, which has secured a place for itself in the scientific consciousness of the day, it is the evolution-theory of ethics. Without question, the phrase has been received into the scientific vocabulary; but there is a good deal, even in the official literature on the question, to make one doubt whether it is always used with a distinct conception of its meaning. When reference is made to the "ethics of evolution," no more is sometimes meant--though a great deal more should be meant--than an historical account of the growth of moral ideas and customs, which may provide (as Mr Stephen expresses it) "a new armoury wherewith to encounter certain plausible objections of the so-called Intuitionists." This, however, would only affect the ethical psychology of an opposed school. The profounder question still remains, What bearing has the theory of evolution, or its historical psychology and sociology, on the nature of the ethical end, or on the standard for distinguishing right and wrong in conduct? The answer to this question will be the "reconstruction" and "deeper change" which Mr Stephen holds to be necessary. It is the ambiguity of the subject--or rather its twofold range--which has made the application of evolution to ethics look so obvious, and made a discussion of the easier question frequently do duty for a solution of the more difficult. The ethical writings of the evolutionists, indeed, often confuse the problems of history and theory in a way which presents the same difficulty to the critic as the works of the corresponding school in jurisprudence. In both, the writers seem disinclined fairly to put to themselves the question as to the kind of subjects to which so fruitful a method as that which has fallen into their hands is appropriate: what its conditions are, and whether it has any limits at all. Every one is now familiar with the evils of hypothetical history, and with the iniquity of the proverbial philosophic offence of constructing facts out of one's inner consciousness. The historical jurists deserve no little credit for the thoroughness with which this has been enforced by them; perhaps, too, the same lesson may be learned from the facts of the development of morality. But it may be questioned whether we are not at the present time more apt to confuse fact and theory in the opposite way: whether the science of law is not sometimes lost sight of in the history of legal institutions, and ethics in danger of being identified with the development of moral sentiments and customs.

We may naturally expect the theory of evolution to throw light on such questions as the growth of moral feelings and ideas, and of the customs and institutions in which morality is expressed and embodied. But to show the process morality has passed through in the individual mind and in society still leaves the question as to the end of conduct unanswered. It is necessary, therefore, to keep clearly before us the distinction between the historical and the ethical problem, if we would successfully attack the subject of the bearing of the theory of evolution on this fundamental question of ethics. To the theory of evolution we are indebted for the opening up of a new field of investigation--the historical treatment of conduct. But it is one thing to describe the way in which men have acted in the past: to determine the end for their action now is quite a different problem; and there is no reason why the distinction should be overlooked. The interest which belongs to the history of morality is not solely nor mainly due to its bearing on questions beyond the historical sphere. That its results will not be without relation--and that of an important kind--to questions of theory may well be expected. But it can only tend to confusion if we treat the development of morality, in the human mind and in society, from a preconceived attitude--dogmatic or agnostic--towards the central problem of ethics.

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The way in which the theory of evolution is applied to ethical psychology is easy enough to understand in principle, though complex and obscure in many of its details. We have only to postulate that mental as well as bodily traits admit of modification, and that modifications once produced can be transmitted to descendants, and it at once follows that sentiments and ideas leading to actions which promote life will be encouraged and developed by natural selection. Thus parental and filial feelings, once originated, may have been developed through those families and tribes in which they were strongest, presenting a more united, and therefore stronger, front against hostile influences. The feelings of tribal sympathy and patriotism, too, may have had a similar history. Those races in which they were strongest would, other things being equal, obtain the mastery over and exterminate other races in which they were relatively weak. The compactness of the community would even be promoted by that fear of the political and of the religious control in which the feeling of obligation is said to have had its root. In general, benevolence and sympathy amongst a people give it a solidarity from which it derives a stronger position, so that in turn the benevolent and sympathetic feelings gain free scope to develop and expand.

But the working out of this theory is not without its own difficulties. In the first place, the factor in the theory of evolution which can be most clearly traced--the principle of natural selection--is not itself a source of change or of the production of new results. It is only the means by which advantageous changes are preserved and disadvantageous changes passed by. The initiative in these changes comes either from the unequal pressure of the environment or from some tendency to vary in the organism itself. Now, if we suppose certain moral relations and the feelings corresponding to them to exist in a society, and to tend to greater certainty and fulness of life on the part of those who possess them, such relations and feelings will be favoured by the operation of natural selection, and will gradually be assimilated into the tissue of the social organism. But this does not account for the origin of morality generally nor of any particular moral relation; it merely shows how, having been somehow originated, it has naturally come to persist. There are thus really two points to be considered in tracing the development of moral ideas--the question of origin and the question of persistence. The latter is accounted for by natural selection; the former must be brought under the obscure laws of variation, laws so obscure that variations in nature are frequently spoken of as if they took place by chance. These two questions are involved at each stage in the progress of morality. But it is at the initial stage that the question of origin is of greatest importance: when the attempt is made to show how, in the course of time, and by the aid of purely physical and biological laws, feelings and conduct, from being merely natural and reflex, have acquired a moral character--when, in a word, the moral is being evolved out of the non-moral. A difficulty comes to the front here which scarcely arises when we are simply tracing the various phases through which the moral consciousness has passed, and the various forms in which moral conduct and feelings have expressed and embodied themselves. The latter subject is obviously within the scope of the theory of evolution, if that theory applies to the processes of the human mind and society as well as to those of external nature. And, although each stage involves a modification to be accounted for not by natural selection, but by the laws of variation, yet the variation is within facts of the same order, and creates no more difficulty than the successive modifications of living tissue which have been implied in the evolution of organic nature. But the transition from the non-moral to the moral is a transition to a different order of facts or--perhaps we should rather say--to a different way of looking at facts, and should not be assumed to be a process of the same kind and explicable by the same method of investigation as the passage from one fact to the similar fact which immediately follows it. It may be compared, perhaps, to the transition from the sphere of inorganic matter to that of life. At the same time, it is frequently maintained that we unduly limit the application of the law of evolution if we deny its power to show how morality has developed out of customs and institutions whose origin can be traced to purely natural or non-moral causes. And, for present purposes, it is sufficient to have pointed out that this does not necessarily follow from the admission that evolution applies to mental and social processes as well as to the facts of external nature. It is not my object to criticise any doctrine of the development of morality; but, starting with the position taken up with regard to it by the theory of evolution, to inquire what conclusions it may lead to as to the end of action.

A further difficulty has to be met by the theory of the development of morality, which is in a sense complementary of the initial difficulty encountered in differentiating the moral from the non-moral. This further difficulty awaits it at a subsequent stage of development when the extension and refinement of moral feeling seem to have gone on in circumstances where there is no room for natural selection to work. Thus it has been admitted that the feeling of sympathy, and the habitual exercise of mutual good offices among members of a community, strengthen that society, and make it fit to prevail in the struggle for existence over other similar societies, the members of which are not so much at one amongst themselves in feeling and in act.

But as benevolence and sympathy widen, and become less closely connected with a definite association of individuals, such as the family or tribe, and there ceases to be a particular body to the welfare of which these social feelings contribute, the operation of the law of natural selection becomes less certain. This law only tends to conserve and perfect the feelings in question, in virtue of the fact that the associations to whose good they lead are successful in the struggle for life over other associations the members of which are not animated by like feelings. The one association lives and expands, while the others are unable to maintain themselves against the encroachments of their neighbours, and thus fall to pieces. The law of natural selection, therefore, comes into play only when there are competing organisms struggling against one another for the means of subsistence and development. Not only is it the case, therefore, that the sympathy which aids the weak who are unable to take care of themselves, does not seem to be of the kind that would contribute to success in the struggle for existence; but the more general and catholic our sympathies are, the less will the law of evolution help to preserve and develop them--because the less will they tend to promote the welfare of one rival association rather than that of another. Thus the growth of really unrestricted sympathy with men as men cannot have been promoted in this way. The "enthusiasm of humanity" which animated the early Christians, the self-renouncing brotherhood of Buddha, the φιλανθρωπία (~philanthrôpia~) attributed to men like Xenocrates who had freed themselves from the aristocratic prejudices of Athens, the "caritas generis humani" of the Stoics,--such feelings as these could not have been encouraged, any more than they could have been produced, by the operation of natural selection. For, however much they tend to elevate the human character, and to promote human happiness, they do not advance the welfare of one body of men to the exclusion of some other competitor in the struggle for existence.

But, although the law of natural evolution cannot account, by survival of the fittest, for any progress made by universal benevolence, yet it may explain the value ascribed to the feeling of benevolence, when its object is the family or the community. Besides--as has already been pointed out--natural selection always implies an initiative got from elsewhere: it does not itself produce modifications; it only chooses out favourable ones and adds them together when produced. It always implies an independent modification of the organism; its part is to select the modifications best fitted to promote life. Hence the mere fact of benevolence being universalised is not in itself an anomaly on the theory of natural selection, any more than is the fact of its being extended from the family to the tribe. Only, the latter extension is one which it perpetuates, the former is not. No aspect of the theory of evolution seems able to account for an extension of the feeling of universal benevolence among different people or throughout different societies. This feeling has neither tended to promote the welfare of the race animated by it to the exclusion of other competing races--for there are no competing races whom it could affect--nor can it be shown that it makes the individuals possessing it fitter to wage successful war against opposing forces, than other individuals.

Apart from such special difficulties, however, comparative psychology has shed a new light on the mental structure of the individual. The facts it brings forward show that the nature of the individual man cannot be explained without taking into account the relations in which he stands to society by birth, education, and business. He is, from the first, surrounded by, and dependent upon, other individuals, and by a set of established usages and institutions which modify his life; and he is connected with these in such a way that it is impossible to consider him as merely acted upon by them and influencing them in turn. He has been produced by, and has become a part of them. His physical and mental structure bears the marks of the same influences as those by which his so-called environment has been formed. He is cell in the "tissue" of which the body social is composed. This was partly recognised, it is true, before the theory of evolution had been elaborated. But the organic nature of the social union is confirmed by that theory, and erected into a scientific view of human life.

Now the various sentiments which bring one man into mental union with others act with greatest facility when men are connected with one another by some definite mutual bond such as that which forms the family, the clan, or the nation. The individual's feeling of sympathy with his neighbours both promotes this social union and depends upon it. But it is characteristic of the theory of evolution to put the external aspect first--the social customs and institutions--and to evolve from them the corresponding sentiments and ideas. Not word or thought or power, it holds, is to be regarded as the origin of morality: "Im Anfang war die That." The whole composed of these units bound together by reciprocity of feeling and function is termed the "social organism"; and what has been called moral sociology shows the way in which the outward forms which express and embody morality have grown up and become part of it.

In this connection, the theory of natural evolution traces the process by which, from the rudimentary beginnings of society, the members composing it have gradually become more coherent amongst one another, related in definite ways instead of merely by chance, and more differentiated in function. Certain rudimentary forms--such as the family (in its rudest structure)--and the corresponding instincts are presupposed. And from this basis the origin of institutions and customs, political, religious, and industrial, is traced. In developing these various customs and institutions, along with the corresponding sentiments, the course of social evolution has had the effect of gradually bringing out and cultivating those feelings and tendencies in the individual which promote the welfare of the organism, while other individual tendencies, hostile to social welfare, have been repressed. Not sympathy and benevolence only, but honesty, temperance, justice, and all the ordinary social and personal virtues, may have their natural history traced in this way--by showing how they have contributed to the life of the individual, or of the society, or of both. Through the operation of purely natural laws, the wicked are "cut off from the earth," while the "perfect remain in it" and leave their possessions to their children. This is an obvious result of natural selection. For those communities are always fittest to survive in which each member, in feeling and in act, is most at one with the whole. The tendency of evolution seems to be to produce not merely an ideal but an actual identification of individual and social interests, in which each man finds his own good in that of the state.

FOOTNOTES:

The social basis of ethics is emphasised by Professor Bain in his Practical Essays (1884), p. 155: "'How is society to be held together?' is the first consideration; and the sociologist--as constitution-builder, administrator, judge--is the person to grapple with the problem. It is with him that law, obligation, right, command, obedience, sanction, have their origin and their explanation. Ethics is an important supplement to social or political law. But it is still a department of law. In any other view it is a maze, a mystery, a hopeless embroilment."

Without denying that it is possible to apply the theory of evolution to mind, Professor Bain holds that, as a fact, moral sentiment has not become organic and hereditary--"that there are no moral instincts properly so called."--The Emotions and the Will, 3d ed., p. 56.

First Principles, 4th ed., p. 380.

Science of Ethics, p. vi.

It would seem that the transmission of mental qualities only takes place in the form of modified physical structure (cf. G. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, 1st series, i. 164). But, if we regard it as established that every mental change has a structural modification corresponding to it, the possibility of mental evolution and inheritance presents no new difficulty.

Ælian, V. H., xiii. 30.

If conscience has no other function than that assigned to it by Clifford, Lectures and Essay, ii. 169, "the preservation of society in the struggle for existence," then it can never reach universal benevolence or prescribe "duties towards all mankind."

A difficulty of another kind is suggested by Professor Bain, who holds that the "pleasure of malevolence" is not only a real element in the human constitution, but greater than would be naturally called forth by the conditions and course of development. "It is remarked by Mr Spencer," he says, "that it was necessary for the progress of the race that destructive activity should not be painful, but on the whole pleasurable. In point of fact, however, the pleasure of destruction has gone much beyond what these words express, and much beyond what is advantageous to the collective interest of animals and of human beings alike. The positive delight in suffering has been at all stages too great."--The Emotions and the Will, p. 66. So far from adopting this argument, however, I must confess myself still amongst the unconvinced regarding the "pleasure of malevolence."

This subject is carefully discussed in Mr Stephen's 'Science of Ethics.'