Evolution New media design

Having regard to the instinctive and hereditary factors of emotional
expression we may ask whether Darwins third principle does not alone
suffice as an explanation. Whether we admit or reject Lamarckian
inheritance it would appear that all hereditary expression must be due
to pre-established connections within the central nervous system and
to a transmitted provision for coordinated response under the
appropriate stimulation. If this be so, Darwins first and second
principles are subordinate and ancillary to the third, an expression,
so far as it is instinctive or heredity, being “the direct result of
the constitution of the nervous system.”
Darwin accepted the emotions themselves as hereditary or acquired
states of mind and devoted his attention to their expression. But
these emotions themselves are genetic products and as such dependent
on organic conditions. It remained, therefore, for psychologists who
accepted evolution and sought to build on biological foundations to
trace the genesis of these modes of animal and human experience. The
subject has been independently developed by Professors Lange and
James;[173] and some modification of their view is regarded by many
evolutionists as affording the best explanation of the facts. We must
fix our attention on the lower emotions, such as anger or fear, and on
their first occurrence in the life of the individual organism. It is a
matter of observation that if a group of young birds which have been
hatched in an incubator are frightened by an appropriate presentation,
auditory or visual, they instinctively respond in special ways. If we
speak of this response as the expression, we find that there are many
factors. There are certain visible modes of behaviour, crouching at
once, scattering and then crouching, remaining motionless, the braced
muscles sustaining an attitude of arrest, and so forth, There are also
certain visceral or organic effects, such as affections of the Twin Creek Animal Hospital Bellevue heart
and respiration. These can be readily observed by taking the young
bird in the hand. Other effects cannot be readily observed; vaso-motor
changes, affections of the alimentary canal, the skin and so forth.
Now the essence of the James-Lange view, as applied to these
congenital effects, is that though we are justified in speaking of
them as effects of the stimulation, we are not justified, without
further evidence, in speaking of them as effects of the emotional
state. May it not rather be that the emotion as a primary mode of
experience is the concomitant of the net result of the organic
situation–the initial presentation, the instinctive mode of
behaviour, the visceral disturbances?

But the deceptive resemblance may be caused in quite a different
manner. I have often speculated as to what advantage the brilliant
white C could give to the otherwise dusky-coloured “Comma butterfly”
(_Grapta C. album_). Poultons recent observations[46] have shown that
this represents the imitation of a crack such as is often seen in Retail Carparts. dry
leaves, and is very conspicuous because the light shines through it.
The utility obviously lies in presenting to the bird the very familiar
picture of a broken leaf with a clear shining slit, and we may
conclude, from the imitation of such small details, that the birds are
very sharp observers and that the smallest deviation from the usual
arrests their attention and incites them to closer investigation. It
is obvious that such detailed–we might almost say such
subtle–deceptive resemblances could only have come about in the
course of long ages through the acquirement from time to time of
something new which heightened the already existing resemblance.
In face of facts like these there can be no question of chance and no
one has succeeded so far in finding any other explanation to replace
that by selection. For the rest, the apparent leaves are by no means
perfect copies of a leaf; many of them only represent the torn or
broken piece, or the half or two-thirds of a leaf, but then the leaves
themselves frequently do not present themselves to the eye as a whole,
but partially concealed among other leaves. Even those butterflies
which, like the species of Kallima and Anaea, represent the whole of a
leaf with stalk, ribs, apex, and the whole breadth, are not actual
copies which would satisfy a botanist; there is often much wanting. In
Kallima the lateral ribs of the leaf are never all included in the
markings; there are only two or three on the left side and at more
four or five on the right, and in many individuals these are rather
obscure, while in others they are comparatively distinct. This
furnishes us with fresh evidence in favour of their origin through
processes of selection, for a botanically perfect picture could not
arise in this way; there could only be a fixing of such details as
heightened the deceptive resemblance.

Darwin was too modest to presume to go beyond the limits laid down by
science. He wanted nothing more than to be able to go, freely and
unhampered by belief in authority or in the Bible, as far as human
knowledge could lead him. We learn this from the concluding words of
his chapter on religion “The mystery of the beginning of all things is
insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an
Agnostic.”[86]
Darwin was always very unwilling Bmw M5 Testdrive to give publicity to his views in
regard to religion. In a letter to Asa Gray on May 22, 1860,[87] he
declares that it is always painful to him to have to enter into
discussion of religious problems. He had, he said, no intention of
writing atheistically.
Finally, let us cite one characteristic sentence from a letter from
Darwin to C. Ridley[88] (Nov. 28, 1878). A clergyman, Dr. Pusey, had
asserted that Darwin had written the _Origin of Species_ with some
relation to theology. Darwin writes emphatically, “Many years ago when
I was collecting facts for the Origin, my belief in what is called a
personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself, and as to the
eternity of matter I never troubled myself about such insoluble
questions.” The expression “many years ago” refers to the time of his
voyage round the world, as has already been pointed out. Darwin means
by this utterance that the views which had gradually developed in his
mind in regard to the origin of species were quite compatible with the
faith of the Church.
If we consider all these utterances of Darwin in regard to religion
and to his outlook on life (Weltanschauung), we shall see at least so
much, that religious reflection could in no way have influenced him in
regard to the writing and publishing of his book on _The Descent of
Man_. Darwin had early won for himself freedom of thought, and to this
freedom he remained true to the end of his life, uninfluenced by the
customs and opinions of the world around him.
Darwin was thus inwardly fortified and armed against the host of
calumnies, accusations, and attacks called forth by the publication of
the _Origin of Species_, and to an even greater extent by the
appearance of the _Descent of Man_. But in his defence he could rely
on the aid of a band of distinguished auxiliaries of the rarest
ability. His faithful confederate, Huxley, was joined by the botanist
Hooker, and, after longer resistance, by the famous geologist Lyell,
whose “conversion” afforded Darwin peculiar satisfaction. All three
took the field with enthusiasm in defence of the natural descent of
man. From Wallace, on the other hand, though he shared with him the
idea of natural selection, Darwin got no support in this matter.
Wallace expressed himself in a strange manner. He admitted everything
in regard to the morphological descent of man, but maintained, in a
mystic way, that something else, something of a spiritual nature must
have been added to what man inherited from his animal ancestors.

Darwins thought hesitated. Logically his theory proves, as Ray
Lankester pointed out, that the struggle for existence may have as its
outcome degeneration as well as amelioration: evolution may Retail Carparts. be
regressive as well as progressive. Then, too–and this is especially
to be borne in mind–each species takes its good where it finds it,
seeks its own path and survives as best it can. Apply this notion to
society and you arrive at the theory of multilinear evolution.
Divergencies will no longer surprise you. You will be forewarned not
to apply to all civilisations the same measure of progress, and you
will recognise that types of evolution may differ just as social
species themselves differ. Have we not here one of the conceptions
which mark off sociology proper from the old philosophy of history?
* * * * *
But if we are to estimate the influence of Darwinism upon sociological
conceptions, we must not dwell only upon the way in which Darwin
impressed the general notion of evolution upon the minds of thinkers.
We must go into details. We must consider the influence of the
particular theories by which he explained the mechanism of this
evolution. The name of the author of _The Origin of Species_ has been
especially attached, as everyone knows, to the doctrines of “natural
selection” and of “struggle for existence,” completed by the notion of
“individual variation.” These doctrines were turned to account by very
different schools of social philosophy. Pessimistic and optimistic,
aristocratic and democratic, individualistic and socialistic systems
were to war with each other for years by casting scraps of Darwinism
at each others heads.
It was the spectacle of human contrivance that suggested to Darwin his
conception of natural selection. It was in studying the methods of
pigeon breeders that he divined the processes by which nature, in the
absence of design, obtains analogous results in the differentiation of
types. As soon as the importance of artificial selection in the
transformation of species of animals was understood, reflection
naturally turned to the human species, and the question arose, How far
do men observe, in connection with themselves, those laws of which
they make practical application in the case of animals? Here we come
upon one of the ideas which guided the researches of Gallon, Darwins
cousin. The author of _Inquiries into Human Faculty and its
Development_,[247] has often expressed his surprise that, considering
all the precautions taken, for example, in the breeding of horses,
none whatever are taken in the breeding of the human species. It seems
to be forgotten that the species suffers when the “fittest” are not
able to perpetuate their type. Ritchie, in his _Darwinism and
Politics_[248] reminds us of Darwins remark that the institution of
the peerage might be defended on the ground that peers, owing to the
prestige they enjoy, are enabled to select as wives “the most
beautiful and charming women out of the lower ranks.”[249] But, says
Galton, it is as often as not “heiresses” that they pick out, and
birth statistics seem to show that these are either less robust or
less fecund than others. The truth is that considerations continue to
preside over marriage which are entirely foreign to the improvement of
type, much as this is a condition of general progress. Hence the
importance of completing Odins and De Candolles statistics which are
designed to show how characters are incorporated in organisms, how
they are transmitted, how lost, and according to what law eugenic,
elements depart from the mean or return to it.
But thinkers do not always content themselves with undertaking merely
the minute researches which the idea of Selection suggests. They are
eager to defend this or that thesis. In the name of this idea certain
social anthropologists have recast the conception of the process of
civilisation, and have affirmed that Social Selection generally works
against the trend of Natural Selection. Vacher de Lapouge–following
up an observation by Broca on the point–enumerates the various
institutions, or customs, such as the celibacy of priests and military
conscription, which cause elimination or sterilisation of the bearers
of certain superior qualities, intellectual or physical. In a more
general way he attacks the democratic movement, a movement, as P.

But since adaptations point to _changes_ which have been undergone by
the ancestral forms of existing species, it is necessary, first of
all, to inquire how far species in general are _variable_. Thus
Darwins attention was directed in the first place to the phenomenon
of variability, and the use man has made of this, from very early
times, in the breeding of his domesticated animals and cultivated
plants. He inquired carefully how breeders set to work, when they
wished to modify the structure and appearance of a species to their
own ends, and it was soon clear to him that _selection for breeding
purposes_ played the chief part.
But how was it possible that such processes should occur in free
nature? Who is here the breeder, making the selection, choosing out
one individual to bring forth offspring and rejecting others? That was
the problem that for a long time remained a riddle to him.
Darwin himself relates how illumination suddenly came to him. He had
been reading, for his own pleasure, Malthus book on Population, and,
as he had long known from numerous observations, that every species
gives rise to many more descendants than ever attain to maturity, and
that, therefore, the greater number of the descendants of a species
perish without reproducing, the idea came to him that the decision as
to which member of a species was to perish and which was to attain to
maturity and reproduction might not be a matter of chance, but might
be determined by the constitution of the individuals themselves,
according as they were more or less fitted for survival. With this
idea the foundation of the theory of selection was laid.
In _artificial selection_ the breeder chooses out for pairing only
such individuals as possess the character Bbc Car Wars Police Volvo Crashes Twice desired by him in a somewhat
higher degree than the rest of the race. Some of the descendants
inherit this character, often in a still higher degree, and if this
method be pursued throughout several generations, the race is
transformed in respect of that particular character.
_Natural selection_ depends on the same three factors as _artificial
selection_: on _variability_, _inheritance_, and _selection for
breeding_, but this last is here carried out not by a breeder but by
what Darwin called the “struggle for existence.” This last factor is
one of the special features of the Darwinian conception of nature.

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 Retail Carparts. 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 mans environment.
It formed no part of Darwins 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 mans systems of ethics are built. He definitely stated that
he approached the subject “exclusively from the side of natural
history.”[192] 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,[193] “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.”

Those who agree with me in rejecting the _Lamarckian principle_ will
regard selection as the only _guiding_ factor in evolution, which
creates what is new out of the transmissible variations, by ordering
and arranging these, selecting them in relation to their number and
size, as the architect does his building-stones so that a particular
style must result.[55] But the building-stones themselves, the
variations, have their basis in the influences which cause variation
in those vital units which are handed on from one generation to
another, whether, taken together they form the _whole_ organism, as in
Bacteria and other low forms of life, or only a germ-substance, as in
unicellular and multicellular organisms.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: _Vorträge über Descendenztheorie_, Jena, 1904, II. 269.
Eng. Transl. London, 1904, II. p. 317.]
[Footnote 34: See Poulton, _Essays on Evolution_, Oxford, 1908. pp.
xix-xxii.]
[Footnote 35: _Origin of Species_ (6th edit), pp. 176 _et seq._]
[Footnote 36: Chun, _Reise der Valdivia_, Leipzig, 1904.]
[Footnote 37: Plate, _Selektionsprinzip u. Probleme der Artbildung_
(3rd edit.), Leipzig, 1908.]
[Footnote 38: _Studien zur Descendenz-Theorie_ II., “Die Enstehung der
Zeichnung bei den Schmetterlings-raupen,” Leipzig, 1876.]
[Footnote 39: _Origin of Species_ (6th edit.), p. 232.]
[Footnote 40: _Origin of Species_, p. 233; see also edit. 1, p. 242.]
[Footnote 41: _Ibid._ p. 230.]
[Footnote 42: _The Effect of External Influences upon Development_,
Romanes Lecture, Oxford, 1894.]
[Footnote 43: See Poulton, _Essays on Evolution_, 1908, pp. 316, 317.]
[Footnote 44: _The Evolution Theory_, London, 1904, I. p. 219.]
[Footnote 45: _Report of the British Association_ (Bristol, 1898),
London, 1899, pp. 906-909.]
[Footnote 46: _Proc. Ent. Soc._, London, May 6, 1903.]
[Footnote 47: _Essays on Evolution_, 1889-1907, Oxford, 1908,
_passim_, e.g. p. 269.]
[Footnote 48: The expression does not refer to all the enemies of this
butterfly; against ichneumon-flies, for instance, their unpleasant
smell usually gives no protection.]
[Footnote 49: Professor Poulton has corrected some wrong descriptions
which I had unfortunately overlooked in the Plates of my book
_Vorträge über Descendenztheorie_, and which refer to _Papilio
dardanus_ (_merope_). These mistakes are of no importance as far as an
understanding of the mimicry-theory is concerned, but I hope shortly
to be able to correct them in a later edition.]
[Footnote 50: _Journ. Linn. Soc. London_ (_Zool._), Vol. xxvi. 1898,
pp. 598-602.]
[Footnote 51: In _Kosmos_, 1879, p. 100.]
[Footnote 52: _Habit and Instinct_, London. 1896.]
[Footnote 53: This has been discussed in many of my earlier works. See
for instance _The All-Sufficiency of Natural Selection, a reply to
Herbert Spencer_, London, 1893.]
[Footnote 54: _The Evolution Theory_, London, 1904, p. 144.]
[Footnote 55: _Variation under Domestication_, 1875, II. pp. 426,
427.]
III
HEREDITY AND VARIATION IN MODERN LIGHTS
BY W. BATESON, M.A., F.R.S.
_Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge_
Darwins work has the property Volvo Electric Car Recharge Concept Hybrid In-wheel Motor Ev Clip of greatness in that it may be admired
from more aspects than one. For some the perception of the principle
of Natural Selection stands out as his most wonderful achievement to
which all the rest is subordinate. Others, among whom I would range
myself, look up to him rather as the first who plainly distinguished,
collected, and comprehensively studied that new class of evidence from
which hereafter a true understanding of the process of Evolution may
be developed. We each prefer our own standpoint of admiration; but I
think that it will be in their wider aspect that his labours will most
command the veneration of posterity.
A treatise written to advance knowledge may be read in two moods. The
reader may keep his mind passive, willing merely to receive the
impress of the writers thought; or he may read with his attention
strained and alert, asking at every instant how the new knowledge can
be used in a further advance, watching continually for fresh footholds
by which to climb higher still. Of Shelley it has been said that he
was a poet for poets: so Darwin was a naturalist for naturalists. It
is when his writings are used in the critical and more exacting spirit
with which we test the outfit for our own enterprise that we learn
their full value and strength. Whether we glance back and compare his
performance with the efforts of his predecessors, or look forward
along the course which modern research is disclosing, we shall honour
most in him not the rounded merit of finite accomplishment, but the
creative power by which he inaugurated a line of discovery endless in
variety and extension. Let us attempt thus to see his work in true
perspective between the past from which it grew, and the present which
is its consequence. Darwin attacked the problem of Evolution by
reference to facts of three classes: Variation; Heredity; Natural

Christians the reform was positive. What was discarded was a
limitation, a negation. The movement was essentially conservative,
even actually reconstructive. For the language disused was a language
inconsistent with the definitions of orthodoxy; it set bounds to the
infinite, and by implication withdrew from the creative rule all such
processes as could be brought within the descriptions of research. It
ascribed fixity and finality to that “creature” in which an apostle
taught us to recognise the birth-struggles of an unexhausted progress.
It tended to banish mystery from the world we see, and to confine it
to a remote first age.
In the reformed, the restored, language of religion, Creation became
again not a link in a rational series to complete a circle of the
sciences, but the mysterious and permanent relation between the
infinite and the finite, between the moving changes we know in part,
and the Power, after the fashion of that observation, unknown, which
is itself “unmoved all motions source.”[236]
With regard to man it is hardly necessary, even were it possible, to
illustrate the application of this bolder faith. When the record of
his high extraction fell under dispute, we were driven to a
contemplation of the whole of his life, rather than of a part and that
part out of sight. We remembered again, out of Aristotle, that the
result of a process interprets its beginnings. We were obliged to read
the title of such dignity as we may claim, in results and still more
in aspirations.
Some men still measure the value of great present facts in
life–reason and virtue and sacrifice–by what a self-disparaged
reason can collect of the meaner rudiments of these noble gifts. Mr.
Balfour has admirably displayed the discrepancy, in this view, between
the alleged origin and the alleged authority of reason. Such an
argument ought to be used not to discredit the confident reason, but
to illuminate and dignify its dark beginnings, and to show that at
every step in the long course of growth a Power was at work which is
not included in any term or in all the terms of the series.
I submit that the more men know of actual Christian teaching, its
fidelity to the past, and its sincerity in face of discovery, the more
certainly they will judge that the stimulus of the doctrine of
evolution has produced in the long run vigour as well as flexibility
in the doctrine of Creation and of man.
I pass from Evolution in general to Natural Selection.
The character in religious language which I have for short called
mechanical was not absent in the argument from design as stated before
Darwin. It seemed to have reference to a world conceived as fixed. It
pointed, not to the plastic capacity and energy of living matter, but
to the fixed adaptation of this and that organ to an unchanging place
or function.
Mr. Hobhouse has given us the valuable phrase “a niche of organic
opportunity.” Such a phrase would have borne a different sense in
non-evolutionary thought. In that thought, the opportunity was an
opportunity for the Creative Power, and Design appeared in the
preparation of the organism to fit the niche. The idea of the niche
and its occupant growing together from simpler to more complex mutual
adjustment was unwelcome to this teleology. If the adaptation was
traced to the influence, through competition, of the environment, the
old teleology lost an illustration and a proof. For the cogency of the
proof in every instance depended upon the absence Carpets. of explanation.
Where the process of adaptation was discerned, the evidence of Purpose
or Design was weak. It was strong only when the natural antecedents
were not discovered, strongest when they could be declared
undiscoverable.
Paleys favourite word is “Contrivance”; and for him contrivance is
most certain where production is most obscure. He points out the
physiological advantage of the _valvulae conniventes_ to man, and the
advantage for teleology of the fact that they cannot have been formed
by “action and pressure.” What is not due to pressure may be
attributed to design, and when a “mechanical” process more subtle than
pressure was suggested, the case for design was so far weakened. The
cumulative proof from the multitude of instances began to disappear
when, in selection, a natural sequence was suggested in which all the
adaptations might be reached by the motive power of life, and
especially when, as in Darwins teaching, there was full recognition
of the reactions of life to the stimulus of circumstance. “The
organism fits the niche,” said the teleologist, “because the Creator
formed it so as to fit.” “The organism fits the niche,” said the
naturalist, “because unless it fitted it could not exist.” “It was
fitted to survive,” said the theologian. “It survives because it
fits,” said the selectionist. The two forms of statement are not
incompatible; but the new statement, by provision of an ideally
universal explanation of process, was hostile to a doctrine of purpose
which relied upon evidences always exceptional however numerous.

Lamarckian factor may be excluded altogether, for it can be
demonstrated that here at any rate the effects of use and disuse
cannot be transmitted.
But if it be asked why we are unwilling to admit the coöperation of
the Darwinian factor of selection and the Lamarckian factor, since
this would afford us an easy and satisfactory explanation of the
phenomena, I answer: _Because the Lamarckian principle is fallacious,
and because by accepting it we close the way towards deeper insight_.
It is not a spirit of combativeness or a desire for self-vindication
that induces me to take the field once more against the Lamarckian
principle, it is the conviction that the progress of our knowledge is
being obstructed by the acceptance of this fallacious principle, since
the facile explanation it apparently affords prevents our seeking
after a truer explanation and a deeper analysis.
The workers in the various species of ants are sterile, that is to
say, they take no regular part in the reproduction of the species,
although individuals among them may occasionally lay eggs. In addition
to this they have lost the wings, and the _receptaculum seminis_, and
their compound eyes have degenerated to a few facets. How could this
last change have come about through disuse, since the eyes of workers
are exposed to light in the same way as are those of the sexual
insects and thus in this particular case are not liable to “disuse” at
all? The same is true of the _receptaculum seminis_, which can only
have been disused as far as its glandular portion and its stalk are
concerned, and also of the wings, the nerves tracheae and epidermal
cells of which could not cease to function until the whole wing had
degenerated, for the chitinous skeleton of the wing does not function
at all in the active sense.
But, on the other hand, the workers in all species have undergone
modifications in a positive direction, as, for instance, the greater
development of brain. In many species large workers have evolved,–the
so-called _soldiers_, Pet Grooming. with enormous jaws and teeth, which defend the
colony,–and in others there are _small_ workers which have taken over
other special functions, such as the rearing of the young Aphides.

Bourget says, which is “anti-physical” and contrary to the natural
laws of progress; though it has been inspired “by the dreams of that
most visionary of all centuries, the eighteenth.”[250] The “Equality”
which levels down and mixes (justly condemned, he holds, by the Comte
de Gobineau), prevents the aristocracy of the blond dolichocephales
from holding the position and playing the part which, in the interests
of all, should belong to them. Otto Ammon, in his _Natural Selection
in Man_, and in _The Social Order and its Natural Bases_,[251]
defended analogous doctrines in Germany; setting the curve
representing frequency of talent over against that of income, he
attempted to show that all democratic measures which aim at promoting
the rise in the social scale of the talented are useless, if not
dangerous; that they only increase the panmixia, to the great
detriment of the species and of society.
Among the aristocratic theories which Darwinism has thus inspired we
must reckon that of Nietzsche. It is well known that in order to
complete his philosophy he added biological studies to his
philological; and more than once in his remarks upon the _Wille zur
Macht_ he definitely alludes to Darwin; though it must be confessed
Pet Food. that it is generally in order to proclaim the insufficiency of the
processes by which Darwin seeks to explain the genesis of species.
Nevertheless, Nietzsches mind is completely possessed by an ideal of
Selection. He, too, has a horror of panmixia. The naturalists
conception of “the fittest” is joined by him to that of the “hero” of
romance to furnish a basis for his doctrine of the Superman. Let us
hasten to add, moreover, that at the very moment when support was
being sought in the theory of Selection for the various forms of the
aristocratic doctrine, those same forms were being battered down on
another side by means of that very theory. Attention was drawn to the
fact that by virtue of the laws which Darwin himself had discovered
isolation leads to etiolation. There is a risk that the privilege
which withdraws the privileged elements of Society from competition
will cause them to degenerate. In fact, Jacoby in his _Studies in
Selection, in connexion with Heredity in Man_,[252] concludes that
“sterility, mental debility, premature death and, finally, the
extinction of the stock were not specially and exclusively the fate of
sovereign dynasties; all privileged classes, all families in
exclusively elevated positions share the fate of reigning families,
although in a minor degree and in direct proportion to the loftiness
of their social standing. From the mass of human beings spring
individuals, families, races, which tend to raise themselves above the
common level; painfully they climb the rugged heights, attain the
summits of power, of wealth, of intelligence, of talent, and then, no
sooner are they there than they topple down and disappear in gulfs of
mental and physical degeneracy.” The demographical researches of
Hansen[253] (following up and completing Dumonts) tended, indeed, to
show that urban as well as feudal aristocracies, burgher classes as
well as noble castes, were liable to become effete. Hence it might
well be concluded that the democratic movement, operating as it does
to break down class barriers, was promoting instead of impeding human
selection.
* * * * *
So we see that, according to the point of view, very different
conclusions have been drawn from the application of the Darwinian idea
of Selection to human society. Darwins other central idea, closely
bound up with this, that, namely, of the “struggle for existence” also
has been diversely utilised. But discussion has chiefly centered upon
its signification. And while some endeavour to extend its application
to everything, we find others trying to limit its range. The
conception of a “struggle for existence” has in the present day been
taken up into the social sciences from natural science, and adopted.
But originally it descended from social science to natural. Darwins
law is, as he himself said, only Malthus law generalised and extended
to the animal world: a growing disproportion between the supply of
food and the number of the living is the fatal order whence arises the
necessity of universal struggle, a struggle which, to the great
advantage of the species, allows only the best equipped individuals to
survive. Nature is regarded by Huxley as an immense arena where all
living beings are gladiators.[254]
Such a generalisation was well adapted to feed the stream of
pessimistic thought; and it furnished to the apologists of war, in
particular, new arguments, weighted with all the authority which in
these days attaches to scientific deliverances. If people no longer
say, as Bonald did, and Moltke after him, that war is a providential
fact, they yet lay stress on the point that it is a natural fact. To
the peace party Dragomirovs objection is urged that its attempts are
contrary to the fundamental laws of nature, and that no sea wall can
hold against breakers that come with such gathered force.