Part 3

One further point must be considered before this outline sketch of the manner of man's origin can be called complete. The psychical development of Humanity, since its earlier stages, has been largely clue to the reaction of individuals upon one another in those various relations which we characterize as social. In considering the origin of Man, the origin of human society cannot be passed over. Foreshadowings of social relations occur in the animal world, not only in the line of our own vertebrate ancestry, but in certain orders of insects which stand quite remote from that line. Many of the higher mammals are gregarious, and this is especially true of that whole order of primates to which we belong. Rudimentary moral sentiments are also clearly discernible in the highest members of various mammalian orders, and in all but the lowest members of our own order. But in respect of definiteness and permanence the relations between individuals in a state of gregariousness fall far short of the relations between individuals in the rudest human society. The primordial unit of human society is the family, and it was by the establishment of definite and permanent family relationships that the step was taken which raised Man socially above the level of gregarious apehood. This great point was attained through that lengthening of the period of helpless childhood which accompanied the gradually increasing intelligence of our half-human ancestors. When childhood had come to extend over a period of ten or a dozen years--a period which would be doubled, or more than doubled, where several children were born in succession to the same parents--the relationships between father and mother, brethren and sisters, must have become firmly knit; and thus the family, the unit of human society, gradually came into existence. The rudimentary growth of moral sentiment must now have received a definite direction. As already observed, with the beginnings of infancy in the animal world there came the genesis in the parents of feelings and actions not purely self-regarding. Rudimentary sympathies, with rudimentary capacity for self-devotion, are witnessed now and then among higher mammals, such as the dog, and not uncommonly among apes. But as the human family, with its definite relationships, came into being, there must necessarily have grown up between its various members reciprocal necessities of behaviour. The conduct of the individual could no longer be shaped with sole reference to his own selfish desires, but must be to a great extent subordinated to the general welfare of the family. And in judging of the character of his own conduct, the individual must now begin to refer it to some law of things outside of himself; and hence the germs of conscience and of the idea of duty. Such were no doubt the crude beginnings of human morality.

With this genesis of the family, the Creation of Man may be said, in a certain sense, to have been completed. The great extent of cerebral surface, the lengthened period of infancy, the consequent capacity for progress, the definite constitution of the family, and the judgment of actions as good or bad according to some other standard than that of selfish desire,--these are the attributes which essentially distinguish Man from other creatures. All these, we see, are direct or indirect results of the revolution which began when natural selection came to confine itself to psychical variations, to the neglect of physical variations. The immediate result was the increase of cerebrum. This prolonged the infancy, thus giving rise to the capacity for progress; and infancy, in turn, originated the family and thus opened the way for the growth of sympathies and of ethical feelings. All these results have perpetually reacted upon one another until a creature different in kind from all other creatures has been evolved. The creature thus evolved long since became dominant over the earth in a sense in which none of his predecessors ever became dominant; and henceforth the work of evolution, so far as our planet is concerned, is chiefly devoted to the perfecting of this last and most wonderful product of creative energy.

Improvableness of Man.

For the creation of Man was by no means the creation of a perfect being. The most essential feature of Man is his improvableness, and since his first appearance on the earth the changes that have gone on in him have been enormous, though they have continued to run along in the lines of development that were then marked out. The changes have been so great that in many respects the interval between the highest and the lowest men far surpasses quantitatively the interval between the lowest men and the highest apes. If we take into account the creasing of the cerebral surface, the difference between the brain of a Shakespeare and that of an Australian savage would doubtless be fifty times greater than the difference between the Australian's brain and that of an orang-outang. In mathematical capacity the Australian, who cannot tell the number of fingers on his two hands, is much nearer to a lion or wolf than to Sir Rowan Hamilton, who invented the method of quaternions. In moral development this same Australian, whose language contains no words for justice and benevolence, is less remote from dogs and baboons than from a Howard or a Garrison. In progressiveness, too, the difference between the lowest and the highest races of men is no less conspicuous. The Australian is more teachable than the ape, but his limit is nevertheless very quickly reached. All the distinctive attributes of Man, in short, have been developed to an enormous extent through long ages of social evolution.

This psychical development of Man is destined to go on in the future as it has gone on in the past. The creative energy which has been at work through the bygone eternity is not going to become quiescent to-morrow. We have learned something of its methods of working, and from the careful observation of the past we can foresee the future in some of its most general outlines. From what has already gone on during the historic period of man's existence, we can safely predict a change that will by and by distinguish him from all other creatures even more widely and more fundamentally than he is distinguished today. Whenever in the course of organic evolution we see any function beginning as incidental to the performance of other functions, and continuing for many ages to increase in importance until it becomes an indispensable strand in the web of life, we may be sure that by a continuance of the same process its influence is destined to increase still more in the future. Such has been the case with the function of sympathy, and with the ethical feelings which have grown up along with sympathy and depend largely upon it for their vitality. Like everything else which especially distinguishes Man, the altruistic feelings were first called into existence through the first beginnings of infancy in the animal world. Their rudimentary form was that of the transient affection of a female bird or mammal for its young. First given a definite direction through the genesis of the primitive human family, the development of altruism has formed an important part of the progress of civilization, but as yet it has scarcely kept pace with the general development of intelligence. There can be little doubt that in respect of justice and kindness the advance of civilized man has been less marked than in respect of quick-wittedness. Now this is because the advancement of civilized man has been largely effected through fighting, through the continuance of that deadly struggle and competition which has been going on ever since organic life first appeared on the earth. It is through such fierce and perpetual struggle that the higher forms of life have been gradually evolved by natural selection. But we have already seen how in many respects the evolution of Man was the opening of an entirely new chapter in the history of the universe. In no respect was it more so than in the genesis of the altruistic emotions. For when natural selection, through the lengthening of childhood, had secured a determinate development for this class of human feelings, it had at last originated a power which could thrive only through the elimination of strife. And the later history of mankind, during the past thirty centuries, has been characterized by the gradual eliminating of strife, though the process has gone on with the extreme slowness that marks all the work of evolution. It is only at the present clay that, by surveying human history from the widest possible outlook, and with the aid of the habits of thought which the study of evolution fosters, we are enabled distinctly to observe this tendency. As this is the most wonderful of all the phases of that stupendous revolution in nature which was inaugurated in the Creation of Man, it deserves especial attention here; and we shall find it leading us quite directly to our conclusion. From the Origin of Man, when thoroughly comprehended in its general outlines, we shall at length be able to catch some glimpses of his Destiny.

XI.

Universal Warfare of Primeval Men.

In speaking of the higher altruistic feelings as being antagonistic to the continuance of warfare, I did not mean to imply that warfare can ever be directly put down by our horror of cruelty or our moral disapproval of strife. The actual process is much more indirect and complex than this. In respect of belligerency the earliest men were doubtless no better than brutes. They were simply the most crafty and formidable among brutes. To get food was the prime necessity of life, and as long as food was obtainable only by hunting and fishing, or otherwise seizing upon edible objects already in existence, chronic and universal quarrel was inevitable. The conditions of the struggle for existence were not yet visibly changed from what they had been from the outset in the animal world. That struggle meant everlasting slaughter, and the fiercest races of fighters would be just the ones to survive and perpetuate their kind. Those most successful primitive men, from whom civilized peoples are descended, must have excelled in treachery and cruelty, as in quickness of wit and strength of will. That moral sense which makes it seem wicked to steal and murder was scarcely more developed in them than in tigers or wolves. But to all this there was one exception. The family supplied motives for peaceful cooeperation. Within the family limits fidelity and forbearance had their uses, for events could not have been long in showing that the most coherent families would prevail over their less coherent rivals. Observation of the most savage races agrees with the comparative study of the institutions of civilized peoples, in proving that the only bond of political union recognized among primitive men, or conceivable by them, was the physical fact of blood-relationship. Illustrations of this are found in plenty far within the historic period. The very township, which under one name or another has formed the unit of political society among all civilized peoples, was originally the stockaded dwelling-place of a clan which traced its blood to a common ancestor. In such a condition of things the nearest approach ever made to peace was a state of armed truce; and while the simple rules of morality were recognized, they were only regarded as binding within the limits of the clan. There was no recognition of the wickedness of robbery and murder in general.

This state of things, as above hinted, could not come to an end as long as men obtained food by seizing upon edible objects already in existence. The supply of fish, game, or fruit being strictly limited, men must ordinarily fight under penalty of starvation. If we could put a moral interpretation upon events which antedated morality as we understand it, we should say it was their duty to fight; and the reverence accorded to the chieftain who murdered most successfully in behalf of his clansmen was well deserved. It is worthy of note that, in isolated parts of the earth where the natural supply of food is abundant, as in sundry tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean, men have ceased from warfare and become gentle and docile without rising above the intellectual level of savagery. Compared with other savages, they are like the chimpanzee as contrasted with the gorilla. Such exceptional instances well illustrate the general truth that, so long as the method of obtaining food was the same as that employed by brute animals, men must continue to fight like dogs over a bone.

XII.

First checked by the Beginnings of Industrial Civilization.

But presently man's superior intelligence came into play in such wise that other and better methods of getting food were devised. When in intervals of peace men learned to rear flocks and herds, and to till the ground, and when they had further learned to exchange with one another the products of their labour, a new step, of most profound significance, was taken. Tribes which had once learned how to do these things were not long in overcoming their neighbours, and flourishing at their expense, for agriculture allows a vastly greater population to live upon a given area, and in many ways it favours social compactness. An immense series of social changes was now begun. Whereas the only conceivable bond of political combination had heretofore been blood-relationship, a new basis was now furnished by territorial contiguity and by community of occupation. The supply of food was no longer strictly limited, for it could be indefinitely increased by peaceful industry; and moreover, in the free exchange of the products of labour, it ceased to be true that one man's interest was opposed to another's. Men did not at once recognize this fact, and indeed it has not yet become universally recognized, so long have men persisted in interpreting the conditions of industrial life in accordance with the immemorial traditions of the time when the means of subsistence were strictly limited, so that one man's success meant another's starvation. Our robber tariffs--miscalled "protective"--are survivals of the barbarous mode of thinking which fitted the ages before industrial civilization began. But although the pacific implications of free exchange were very slowly recognized, it is not the less true that the beginnings of agriculture and commerce marked the beginnings of the greatest social revolution in the whole career of mankind. Henceforth the conditions for the maintenance of physical life became different from what they had been throughout the past history of the animal world. It was no longer necessary for men to quarrel for their food like dogs over a bone; for they could now obtain it far more effectively by applying their intelligence to the task of utilizing the forces of inanimate nature; and the due execution of such a task was in no wise assisted by wrath and contention, but from the outset was rather hindered by such things.

Such were the beginnings of industrial civilization. Out of its exigencies, continually increasing in complexity, have proceeded, directly or indirectly, the arts and sciences which have given to modern life so much of its interest and value. But more important still has been the work of industrial civilization in the ethical field. By furnishing a wider basis for political union than mere blood-relationship, it greatly extended the area within which moral obligations were recognized as binding. At first confined to the clan, the idea of duty came at length to extend throughout a state in which many clans were combined and fused, and as it thus increased in generality and abstractness, the idea became immeasurably strengthened and ennobled. At last, with the rise of empires, in which many states were brought together in pacific industrial relations, the recognized sphere of moral obligation became enlarged until it comprehended all mankind.

XIII.

Methods of Political Development, and Elimination of Warfare.

This rise of empires, this coalescence of small groups of men into larger and larger political aggregates, has been the chief work of civilization, when looked at on its political side. Like all the work of evolution, this process has gone on irregularly and intermittently, and its ultimate tendency has only gradually become apparent. This process of coalescence has from the outset been brought about by the needs of industrial civilization, and the chief obstacle which it has had to encounter has been the universal hostility and warfare bequeathed from primeval times. The history of mankind has been largely made up of fighting, but in the careers of the most progressive races this fighting has been far from meaningless, like the battles of kites and crows. In the stream of history which, beginning on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, has widened until in our day it covers both sides of the Atlantic and is fast extending over the remotest parts of the earth,--in this main stream of history the warfare which has gone on has had a clearly discernible purpose and meaning. Broadly considered, this warfare has been chiefly the struggle of the higher industrial civilization in defending itself against the attacks of neighbours who had not advanced beyond that early stage of humanity in which warfare was chronic and normal. During the historic period, the wars of Europe have been either contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society, or contests incident upon the imperfect formation of large political aggregates. There have been three ways in which great political bodies have arisen. The earliest and lowest method was that of conquest without incorporation. A single powerful tribe conquered and annexed its neighbours without admitting them to a share in the government. It appropriated their military strength, robbed them of most of the fruits of their labour, and thus virtually enslaved them. Such was the origin of the great despotic empires of Oriental type. Such states degenerate rapidly in military strength. Their slavish populations, accustomed to be starved and beaten or massacred by the tax-gatherer, become unable to fight, so that great armies of them will flee before a handful of freemen, as in the case of the ancient Persians and the modern Egyptians. To strike down the executive head of such an assemblage of enslaved tribes is to effect the conquest or the dissolution of the whole mass, and hence the history of Eastern peoples has been characterized by sudden and gigantic revolutions.

The second method of forming great political bodies was that of conquest with incorporation. The conquering tribe, while annexing its neighbours, gradually admitted them to a share in the government. In this way arose the Roman empire, the largest, the most stable, and in its best days the most pacific political aggregate the world had as yet seen. Throughout the best part of Europe, its conquests succeeded in transforming the ancient predatory type of society into the modern industrial type. It effectually broke up the primeval clan-system, with its narrow ethical ideas, and arrived at the broad conception of rights and duties coextensive with Humanity. But in the method upon which Rome proceeded there was an essential element of weakness. The simple device of representation, by which political power is equally retained in all parts of the community while its exercise is delegated to a central body, was entirely unknown to the Romans. Partly for this reason, and partly because of the terrible military pressure to which the frontier was perpetually exposed, the Roman government became a despotism which gradually took on many of the vices of the Oriental type. The political weakness which resulted from this allowed Europe to be overrun by peoples organized in clans and tribes, and for some time there was a partial retrogression toward the disorder characteristic of primitive ages. The retrogression was but partial and temporary, however; the exposed frontier has been steadily pushed eastward into the heart of Asia; the industrial type of society is no longer menaced by the predatory type; the primeval clan-system has entirely disappeared as a social force; and warfare, once ubiquitous and chronic, has become local and occasional.

The third and highest method of forming great political bodies is that of federation. The element of fighting was essential in the two lower methods, but in this it is not essential. Here there is no conquest, but a voluntary union of small political groups into a great political group. Each little group preserves its local independence intact, while forming part of an indissoluble whole. Obviously this method of political union requires both high intelligence and high ethical development In early times it was impracticable. It was first attempted, with brilliant though ephemeral success, by the Greeks, but it failed for want of the device of representation. In later times it was put into operation, with permanent success, on a small scale by the Swiss, and on a great scale by our forefathers in England. The coalescence of shires into the kingdom of England, effected as it was by means of a representative assembly, and accompanied by the general retention of local self-government, afforded a distinct precedent for such a gigantic federal union as men of English race have since constructed in America. The principle of federation was there, though not the name. And here we hit upon the fundamental contrast between the history of England and that of France. The method by which the modern French nation has been built up has been the Roman method of conquest with incorporation. As the ruler of Paris gradually overcame his vassals, one after another, by warfare or diplomacy, he annexed their counties to his royal domain, and governed them by lieutenants sent from Paris. Self-government was thus crushed out in France, while it was preserved in England. And just as Rome achieved its unprecedented dominion by adopting a political method more effective than any that had been hitherto employed, so England, employing for the first time a still higher and more effective method, has come to play a part in the world compared with which even the part played by Rome seems insignificant. The test of the relative strength of the English and Roman methods came when England and France contended for the possession of North America. The people which preserved its self-government could send forth self-supporting colonies; the people which had lost the very tradition of self-government could not. Hence the dominion of the sea, with that of all the outlying parts of the earth, fell into the hands of men of English race; and hence the federative method of political union--the method which contains every element of permanence, and which is pacific in its very conception--is already assuming a sway which is unquestionably destined to become universal.

Bearing all this in mind, we cannot fail to recognize the truth of the statement that the great wars of the historic period have been either contests between the industrial and the predatory types of society or contests incident upon the imperfect formation of great political aggregates. Throughout the turmoil of the historic period--which on a superficial view seems such a chaos--we see certain definite tendencies at work; the tendency toward the formation of larger and larger political aggregates, and toward the more perfect maintenance of local self-government and individual freedom among the parts of the aggregate. This two-sided process began with the beginnings of industrial civilization; it has aided the progress of industry and been aided by it; and the result has been to diminish the quantity of warfare, and to lessen the number of points at which it touches the ordinary course of civilized life. With the further continuance of this process, but one ultimate result is possible. It must go on until warfare becomes obsolete. The nineteenth century, which has witnessed an unprecedented development of industrial civilization, with its attendant arts and sciences, has also witnessed an unprecedented diminution in the strength of the primeval spirit of militancy. It is not that we have got rid of great wars, but that the relative proportion of human strength which has been employed in warfare has been remarkably less than in any previous age. In our own history, of the two really great wars which have permeated our whole social existence,--the Revolutionary War and the War of Secession,--the first was fought in behalf of the pacific principle of equal representation; the second was fought in behalf of the pacific principle of federalism. In each case, the victory helped to hasten the day when warfare shall become unnecessary. In the few great wars of Europe since the overthrow of Napoleon, we may see the same principle at work. In almost every case the result has been to strengthen the pacific tendencies of modern society. Whereas warfare was once dominant over the face of the earth, and came home in all its horrid details to everybody's door, and threatened the very existence of industrial civilization; it has now become narrowly confined in time and space, it no longer comes home to everybody's door, and, in so far as it is still tolerated, for want of a better method of settling grave international questions, it has become quite ancillary to the paramount needs, of industrial civilization. When we can see so much as this lying before us on the pages of history, we cannot fail to see that the final extinction of warfare is only a question of time. Sooner or later it must come to an end, and the pacific principle of federalism, whereby questions between states are settled, like questions between individuals by due process of law, must reign supreme over all the earth.

XIV.

End of the Working of Natural Selection upon Man. Throwing off the Brute-Inheritance.

As regards the significance of Man's position in the universe, this gradual elimination of strife is a fact of utterly unparalleled grandeur. Words cannot do justice to such a fact. It means that the wholesale destruction of life, which has heretofore characterized evolution ever since life began, and through which the higher forms of organic existence have been produced, must presently come to an end in the case of the chief of God's creatures. It means that the universal struggle for existence, having succeeded in bringing forth that consummate product of creative energy, the Human Soul, has done its work and will presently cease. In the lower regions of organic life it must go on, but as a determining factor in the highest work of evolution it will disappear.

The action of natural selection upon Man has long since been essentially diminished through the operation of social conditions. For in all grades of civilization above the lowest, "there are so many kinds of superiorities which severally enable men to survive, notwithstanding accompanying inferiorities, that natural selection cannot by itself rectify any particular unfitness." In a race of inferior animals any maladjustment is quickly removed by natural selection, because, owing to the universal slaughter, the highest completeness of life possible to a given grade of organization is required for the mere maintenance of life. But under the conditions surrounding human development it is otherwise. There is a wide interval between the highest and lowest degrees of completeness of living that are compatible with maintenance of life.

Hence the wicked flourish. Vice is but slowly eliminated, because mankind has so many other qualities, beside the bad ones, which enable it to subsist and achieve progress in spite of them, that natural selection--which always works through death--cannot come into play. The improvement of civilized man goes on mainly through processes of direct adaptation. The principle in accordance with which the gloved hand of the dandy becomes white and soft while the hand of the labouring man grows brown and tough is the main principle at work in the improvement of Humanity. Our intellectual faculties, our passions and prejudices, our tastes and habits, become strengthened by use and weakened by disuse, just as the blacksmith's arm grows strong and the horse turned out to pasture becomes unfit for work. This law of use and disuse has been of immense importance throughout the whole evolution of organic life. With Man it has come to be paramount.

If now we contrast the civilized man intellectually and morally with the savage, we find that, along with his vast increase of cerebral surface, he has an immensely greater power of representing in imagination objects and relations not present to the senses. This is the fundamental intellectual difference between civilized men and savages. The power of imagination, or ideal representation, underlies the whole of science and art, and it is closely connected with the ability to work hard and submit to present discomfort for the sake of a distant reward. It is also closely connected with the development of the sympathetic feelings. The better we can imagine objects and relations not present to sense, the more readily we can sympathize with other people. Half the cruelty in the world is the direct result of stupid incapacity to put one's self in the other man's place. So closely inter-related are our intellectual and moral natures that the development of sympathy is very considerably determined by increasing width and variety of experience. From the simplest form of sympathy, such as the painful thrill felt on seeing some one in a dangerous position, up to the elaborate complication of altruistic feelings involved in the notion of abstract justice, the development is very largely a development of the representative faculty. The very same causes, therefore, deeply grounded in the nature of industrial civilization, which have developed science and art, have also had a distinct tendency to encourage the growth of the sympathetic emotions.

But, as already observed, these emotions are still too feebly developed, even in the highest races of men. We have made more progress in intelligence than in kindness. For thousands of generations, and until very recent times, one of the chief occupations of men has been to plunder, bruise, and kill one another. The selfish and ugly passions which are primordial--which have the incalculable strength of inheritance from the time when animal consciousness began--have had but little opportunity to grow weak from disuse. The tender and unselfish feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom been allowed to grow strong from exercise. And the whims and prejudices of the primeval militant barbarism are slow in dying out from the midst of peaceful industrial civilization. The coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing, and the butchery of men has greatly diminished. But most people apply to industrial pursuits a notion of antagonism derived from ages of warfare, and seek in all manner of ways to cheat or overreach one another. And as in more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his tens of thousands, so now the man who has made wealth by overreaching his neighbours is not uncommonly spoken of in terms which imply approval. Though gentlemen, moreover, no longer assail one another with knives and clubs, they still inflict wounds with cruel words and sneers. Though the free--thinker is no longer chained to a stake and burned, people still tell lies about him, and do their best to starve him by hurting his reputation. The virtues of forbearance and self-control are still in a very rudimentary state, and of mutual helpfulness there is far too little among men.

Nevertheless in all these respects some improvement has been made, along with the diminution of warfare, and by the time warfare has not merely ceased from the earth but has come to be the dimly remembered phantom of a remote past, the development of the sympathetic side of human nature will doubtless become prodigious. The manifestation of selfish and hateful feelings will be more and more sternly repressed by public opinion, and such feelings will become weakened by disuse, while the sympathetic feelings will increase in strength as the sphere for their exercise is enlarged. And thus at length we see what human progress means. It means throwing off the brute-inheritance,--gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that are by and by to make struggle needless. Man is slowly passing from a primitive social state in which he was little better than a brute, toward an ultimate social state in which his character shall have become so transformed that nothing of the brute can be detected in it. The ape and the tiger in human nature will become extinct. Theology has had much to say about original sin. This original sin is neither more nor less than the brute-inheritance which every man carries with him, and the process of evolution is an advance toward true salvation. Fresh value is thus added to human life. The modern prophet, employing the methods of science, may again proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Work ye, therefore, early and late, to prepare its coming.

XV.