THE DARWINIAN JEREMIAD.
ALETTER from the able critic in the September Fraser, which we print in another column, attempts some reply to our notice this day fortnight of his curious jeremiad over the failure, in the case of Man, of the Darwinian principle of 4, natural selection through the struggle for existence." The -critic's candour, however, induces him to concede so much to us, and to shift so widely the field of discussion, that we should be quite content to leave the matter where he does, but that one side of our belief as to the different " law " which comes into action in the case of man, and that, as it seems to us, the most important, seems neither to have been adequately brought out by us nor apprehended by him. Our correspond- eat has, we think, partly forgotten that the question, as he -originally raised it, was not directly one of practical duty or social policy, but one of pure scientific fact. His case was this :—In the lower races of animals the better organized displace the worse -organized, as Mr. Darwin has shown, partly by securing the best portions of the common food for which they compete, partly by -conquering them if it comes to direct battle, partly by being better adapted in general to the circumstances in which they are placed. Our correspondent lamented that this law fails when we -come to the competitions of classes and individuals in human -societies. Instead of finding, he said, that the men and women of the best physique, the best intelligence, and the best morale -edge out of existence those of poorer physique, lower intelligence, and a worse morale, almost the opposite tendency may be noted.
• Our elaborate modern medicine patches up the worn-out constitu- tions of the luxurious and dissipated ; our property-worshipping institutions secure the greatest hereditary wealth, the largest material advantages, for men far too degenerate to have won any place for themselves, had they been born anywhere but on the -vantage-ground of inherited wealth ; and our charitable institutions • give to the ignorant, the brutal, the coarse multitudes of the semi- pauper classes just sufficient assistance to keep up their rate of multiplication. Under these circumstances the section of society which is most fit for the parentage of the people of the future is least likely to claim the people of the future for its posterity. It is the section which has too little means to marry early with prudence, and too much prudence to marry early without means. Hence, while the indolent and worn-out upper classes, and the ignorant and careless multitude multiply rapidly,—those who have no wealth to begin with, and have the virtue and wisdom to wait for it, multiply slowly. In other words, the best specimens of -humanity do not edge the worst specimens off the face of the earth, but rather do the worst increase with a higher proportional rapidity :than the best.
To this our reply was in effect as follows,—would you really -wish the Darwinian law to extend in its full force to the case of -man, even if you could have it so ? What would that really mean ? It would mean the strong snatching their food from the weak, the .able clearing the field so effectually as to leave nothing for the less -competent, the happy casting no glance either to the right or the left that might bring home to them the sufferings of the unhappy. The true Darwinian law is a law of unalloyed competition,—of 4‘ struggle for existence." If we could have it working with all its force, if we were to get rid of the " failure " which the reviewer 12as noticed, it could only be by expunging those elements in our nature which are the cause of this failure. But what are those elements? What is it which makes it impossible for men to clear away the ailing members of the human family as healthy buffa- loes would gore to death their sick, and to leave paupers to be famished or plague-stricken by the results of their own imprudence or self-indulgence, as locusts leave locusts to rot on the plains they have devoured ? Clearly that which prevents the true Darwinian consummation in the case of man, is the new principle of dis- interestedness, of self-denial, of pity for the weak, of love for the miserable, of compassion for the poor, which is rooted in the highest part of our nature,—in our religion,—and which distin- guishes us from the animal tribes to which the Darwinian law absolutely applies. In historical fact the different Churches, Jewish, Christian, Mahommedan, and others, have done more than any other influences in history to counteract the in- fluence of the Darwinian principle still working in our animal and, as St. Paul says, " carnal " nature. We were not discussing with the critic in Fraser a question of practical duty, but a ques- tion of historical philosophy. What we say is,—sigh for the per- fect action of the competitive Darwinian principle as long as you please in relation to man, all history shows that you will not attain it, and, moreover, that that which prevents you attaining it is just that part of human nature which is best worth having and perpetuating. If there were no " failure " in the operation of the Darwinian principle of selection, there would be a failure in human nature. If there be no such failure in human nature, there must be this failure, which you so much regret, in the operation of the Darwinian principle. It is a mistake to imagine that we were either apologizing for or advocating any particular policy in rela- tion to the physically, intellectually, and morally halt and blind ; we were merely stating a visible fact of immensely broad propor- tions, which ought to arrest the attention of those who complain that "natural selection" does not do its perfect work for man,— namely, that if it did, or could, man would not be man, but some- thing much below what he is. We did not attempt to explain away the evils enumerated by the essayist ; we admitted them ; but what we did object to, was the notion that any manipulation of the Darwinian principle could possibly be the cure. It would cure too much, we said,—extinguish all that is noble in humanity, as well as the evils arising out of that nobility. We ventured to suggest that with regard to man, the true providential method is different in kind from that which is used in developing the lower orders of creation ; and that it may consist more in directly increasing and multiplying a higher order of positive qualities, than in merely eliminating imperfections. At all events, in fact, we do see a whole host of new evils springing into exist- ence in the human race which do not affect the lower animahi at all, and in all probability these new evils are to be contended with and extinguished, if at all, by conscious moral agency, at least Its much as by that process of hereditary elimination which applies chiefly in the lower regions of creation.
Now, as far as we understand our correspondent, we have con- vinced him entirely of all this. He sings the praises of the law of "natural selection" no longer. He contends for a higher principle of moral selection which is not "natural,"—which we call dis- tinctly supernatural,—which, at all events, is not strictly com- petitive at all,—which is not due to a "struggle for existence,"— which includes the idea of self-denial,—which, in a word, only differs from the ordinary moral criticisms on human nature in this, that it would aim as much as possible at the impossible task of restraining by every means in human power—(and prac- tically there are none)—the multiplication of stocks ...tainted either by hereditary disease, or by hereditary poverty and in- competence. Now on this simply 'melees and impracticable aspiration of the Fraser critic's, we passed no opinion, because it never occurred to us to discuss aspirations after the impossible. We only offered a suggestion as to the true moral makeweight which may probably, as a matter of historical fact, be found to supply in the case of man an equivalent for the useful influence of the Darwinian principle of purely natural selection ' in the case of the lower orders of creatures. We said that it might be found that what is lost by the less speedy extinction of feeble physical types of constitution, and the more rapid multiplication of the lowest and least refined moral types, may be much more than regained by the new moral life which springs out of the demands of the weak and the miserable on the self-denial and benevolence of the strong and the happy. Our correspondent seems to concede as much. "I fully recognize," he writes, "that the existence of misery to be relieved, of sufferings to be sympathized with, of weakness to be borne with, of poverty to be assisted, of diseases to be treated, of degradation to be raised, is a most efficient, nay, per- haps an absolutely necessary instrument for the education and development of the best portions of our nature, and for bringing man up to the highest level he is capable of attaining." Well, then, he admits almost all we ask :—only he would eradicate, he says, all these evils rather than merely alleviate and propagate them. So, of course, would we,—if we could. That would indeed be sham benevolence, which, having it in its power to eradicate any evil,—be it disease, or pauperism, or anything else,—only alleviates it in order to leave a sufficient number of patients for the benevolence of the next generation. If we came to speak of concrete duties, we should be the last to deny that a man with hereditary insanity or scrofula, or any other hopeless and yet inevitably transmitted disease, in his family, would be performing a very high kind of duty in refusing to perpetuate it by marrying. But it never occurred to us that the Fraser critic had entered on a discussion of the limits of practical interference with the trans. mission of inherited constitutions, physical or mental ; we thought he was drawing an unfavourable augury for the destiny of man from the fact that there is no fully adequate physical provision for eliminating any constitutional mischief, moral or physical, from the stock. We admit that there is none such.
, Indeed, we are comparatively indifferent whether, as our correspondent. asserts, the best classes are or are not the parents of the next generation, because we believe that the hereditary provisions for eliminating mischief, so essential in the lower races, are replaced by vastly larger moral provisions, independent of the hereditary principle, existing in the case of man. The organic arrangements for draining off imperfections are less, just because the spiritual machinery for doing so is much greater. And this is our answer, as far as one is conceivable, to our correspondent's last paragraph. He accuses us, very oddly and erroneously, of wishing to multiply and perpetuate moral 'whetatones, the race of patients, for the sake of the moral razors which are to be sharpened on them, i.e., the consciences and feel- ings which are to be trained and disciplined by dealings with the sufferers. That is not our view at all. All we say is this :—As a matter of fact unquestionably, hereditary diseases will not be exterminated ; as a matter of fact, pauperism, strive as we may, will always make head against our efforts ; as a matter of fact, a great number of infirmities which would, under the law of " natural selection," disappear by the mere disadvantage they entail in the "struggle for existence" will notIdisappear so rapidly, if at all, and this because a higher law, not a lower, is at work. But what is the compensation ? We believe it to be this,—not merely that the highest class of virtues are called out by the existence of such miseries and infirmities, in those who give their lives to eradicate or alleviate them,—but also that the existence of these infirmities and miseries becomes the condition of a great variety of higher types of character, even amongst those who suffer from them. Ill-health in animals is the condition of no higher class of moral qualities, and, therefore, ill-health in animals is soon eradi- cated by the law of "struggle for existence." Poverty for animals is the condition of no moral qualities at all, and therefore poverty for animals, if it can be said to exist at all, only means famishing and death. So, again, of deformity in animals, or defects of breed of other sorts such as indicate inferiority of capacity,—none of these are capable of leading, in creatures that are not free, to any variety of higher qualities. But with men it is not so. Ill-health, as everybody knows, is the condition of the growth of a great number of the finest qualities of the spirit ; poverty is a condition of the discipline of another great group of virtues, so conspicuous, that "religious poverty" has been mistakenly erected into a merit by some of the most popular religions of the earth ;—and humility, which so far as it is a true virtue, means a readiness to recognize fully all your own shortcomings and all the superior excellences of others, is a virtue which is rarely bred in the midst of perfect prosperity and wealth. We do not, then, in the least wish to pretend that our correspondent's difficulties are not diffi- culties. All we assert is that the Darwinian law, if it could be really efficient in the case of man, would kill a vast deal more thanit would cure ; and also that the very inherited mischiefs which our corre- spondent complains of are, to a large extent, the conditions of the growth of so much good, that we may fairly believe that the true remedy for these evils is not, for the most part, one which would extinguish them by extinguishing the physical stock to which they belong,—but rather the liberal administration, and the free and willing adoption, of large spiritual remedies calculated first to attenuate them, and finally to nourish and discipline a variety of the highest moral types.
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