Part 7

Modern philanthropy--so far at least as it ever studies ultimate results--constantly relies on this ill-founded belief as its justification for ignoring the warnings of those who point out the ultimately disastrous results of a systematic defiance or reversal of the great law of natural selection. This reliance finds strong support in Mr. Spencer's latest teachings, for he holds that the inheritance of the effects of use and disuse takes place universally, and that it is now "the chief factor" in the evolution of civilized man (pp. 35, 74, iv)--natural selection being quite inadequate for the work of progressive modification. Practically he abandons the hope of evolution by natural selection, and substitutes the ideal of a nation being "modified _en masse_ by transmission of the effects" of its institutions and habits. Use-inheritance will "mould its members far more rapidly and comprehensively" than can be effected by the survival of the fittest alone.

But could we rely upon the aid of use-inheritance if it really were a universal law and not a mere simulation of one? Let us consider some of the features of this alleged factor of evolution, seeing that it is henceforth to be our principal means of securing the improvement of our species and our continued adaptation to the changing conditions of a progressive civilization.

It is curiously uncertain and irregular in its action. It diminishes or abolishes some structures (such as jaws or eyes) without correspondingly diminishing or abolishing other equally disused and closely related parts (such as teeth, or eye-stalks). It thickens ducks' leg-bones while allowing them to shorten. It shortens the disused wing-bones of ducks and the leg-bones of rabbits while allowing them to thicken; and yet in other cases it greatly reduces the thickness of bones without shortening them. It transmits tameness most powerfully in an animal which usually cannot acquire it. It aids in webbing the feet of water-dogs, but fails to web the feet of the water-hen or to remove the web in the feet of upland geese.[72] It allows the disused fibula to retain a potentiality of development fully equal to that possessed by the long-used tibia. It lengthens legs because they are used in supporting the body, and shortens arms because they are used in pulling. Whether it enlarges brain if used in one way and diminishes it if used in another, we cannot tell; but it must obviously deaden nervous sensibilities in some cases and intensify them in others. It enlarges hands long before they are used, and thickens soles long before the time for walking on them. At the same time, as if by an oversight, it so delays its transmission of the habit of walking on these thickened soles, that the gradual and tedious acquisition of the non-transmitted habit costs the infant much time and trouble and often some pain and danger. Yet where aided by natural selection, as with chickens and foals, it transmits the habit in wonderful perfection and at a remarkably early date. It transmits new paces in horses in a single generation, but fails to perpetuate the songs of birds. It modifies offspring like parents, and yet allows the formation of two reproductive types in plants, and of two or more types widely different from the parents in some of the higher insects. It is said to be indispensable for the co-ordinated development of man and the giraffe and the elk, but appears to be unnecessary for the evolution and the maintenance of wonderful structures and habits and instincts in a thousand species of ants and bees and termites. It is the only possible means of complex evolution and adaptation of co-operative parts, and yet in Mr. Spencer's most representative case it renders such important parts as teeth and jaws unsuited for each other, and is said to ruin the teeth by the consequent overcrowding and decay. It survives amidst a general "lack of recognised evidence," and only seems to act usefully and healthily and regularly in quarters where it can least easily be distinguished from other more powerful and demonstrable factors of evolution. So little does it care to display its powers where they would be easily verifiable as well as useful that practical breeders ignore it. So slight is its independent power that it seems to allow natural selection or sexual selection or artificial selection to modify organisms in sheer defiance of its utmost opposition, just as readily as they modify organisms in other directions with its utmost help. If it partially perpetuates and extends the pecked-out indentations in the motmot's tail feathers, it on the other hand fails to transmit the slightest trace of mutilation in an almost infinite number of ordinary cases, and even where the mutilation is repeated for a hundred generations; and it apparently repairs rather than transmits the ordinary and oft-repeated losses caused by plucking hair, down and feathers, and the wear and tear of claws, teeth, hoofs and skin.

It is often mischievous as well as anomalous in its action. Under civilization with its division of labour, the various functions of mind and body are very unequally exercised. There is overwork or misuse of one part and disuse and neglect of others, leading to the partial breakdown or degeneration of various organs and to general deterioration of health through disturbed balance of the constitution. The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. In many ways education and civilization foster nervousness and weakness, and undermine the rude natural health and spirits of the human animal. Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, extra brain work, late hours, dissipation, overwork, indoor life, division of labour, preservation of the weak, and many other causes, all help to injure the modern constitution; so that the prospect of cumulative intensification of these evils by the additional influence of use-inheritance is not an encouraging one. It is true that modern progress and prosperity are improving the people in various respects by their direct action; but if use-inheritance has any share in effecting this improvement it must also transmit increased wants and more luxurious habits, together with such evils as have already been referred to. As depicted by its defenders, use-inheritance transmits evils far more powerfully and promptly than benefits. It transmits insanity and shattered nerves rather than the healthy brain which preceded the breakdown. It perpetuates, and cumulatively intensifies, a deterioration in the senses of civilized men, but it fails to perpetuate the rank vigour of various plants when too well nourished, or the flourishing condition of various animals when too fat or when tamed. It already transmits the short-sight caused by so modern an art as watchmaking, but so fails to transmit the long-practised art of seeing (as it does of walking and talking) that vision is worse than useless to a man until he gradually acquires the necessary but non-transmitted associations of sensation and idea by his own experience. In a well-known case, a blind man on gaining his sight by an operation said that "all objects seemed to touch his eyes, as what he felt did his skin"--so little had the universal experience of countless ages impressed itself on his faculties. Under normal healthy conditions use-inheritance is so slow in its action that "several generations" must elapse before it produces any appreciable effect, and then that effect is only precisely what selection might be expected to bring about without its aid. Strong for evil and slow for good, it can convey epilepsy promptly in guinea pigs, but transmits the acquirements of genius so poorly that our best student of the heredity of genius has to account for the frequent and remarkable deterioration of the offspring by a theory which is strongly hostile to use-inheritance. It would tend to make organisms unworkable by the excessive differences in its rate and manner of action on co-operative parts, and by adapting these parts to the total amount of nourishment received rather than to occasional necessity or actual usefulness. It would tend to stereotype habits and convert reason into instinct.

How then can we rely upon use-inheritance for the improvement of the race? Even if it is not a sheer delusion, it may be more detrimental as a positive evil than it is advantageous as an unnecessary benefit; and as a normal modifying agent it is miserably weak and untrustworthy in comparison with the powerful selective influences by which nature and society continually and inevitably affect the species for good or for evil. The effects of use and disuse--rightly directed by education in its widest sense--must of course be called in to secure the highly essential but nevertheless _superficial, limited, and partly deceptive_ improvement of individuals and of social manners and methods; but as this artificial development of already existing potentialities does not directly or readily tend to become congenital, it is evident that some considerable amount of natural or artificial selection of the more favourably varying individuals will still be the only means of securing the race against the constant tendency to degeneration which would ultimately swallow up all the advantages of civilization. The selective influences by which our present high level has been reached and maintained may well be modified, but they must not be abandoned or reversed in the rash expectation that State education, or State feeding of children, or State housing of the poor, or any amount of State socialism or public or private philanthropy, will prove permanently satisfactory substitutes. If ruinous deterioration and other more immediate evils, are to be avoided, the race must still be to the swift and the battle to the strong. The healthy Individualism so earnestly championed by Mr. Spencer must be allowed free play. Open competition, as Darwin teaches, with its survival and multiplication of the fittest, must be allowed to decide the battle of life independently of a foolish benevolence that prefers the elaborate cultivation and multiplication of weeds to the growth of corn and roses. We are trustees for the countless generations of the future. If we are wise we shall trust to the great ruling truths that we assuredly know, rather than to the seductive claims of an alleged factor of evolution for which no satisfactory evidence can be produced.

THE END.

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FOOTNOTES:

[72] Professor Romanes had casts made of the feet of upland geese, and could not detect any diminution as compared with the web of other geese in relation to the toes.

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