Part 4

I do not propose to follow the example of many rather hasty philosophers and biologists, who have thought that, whenever the study of lower organisms permitted the promulgation of a biological law, such law can be lifted bodily from its context and be applied without modification to human affairs. Man is an organism--but a very exceptional and peculiar organism. Any biological law which epitomizes only facts about the lower creatures is not a general biological law, for general biological laws must take account not only of plants and animals, but of man as well. In practice, however, the simplest method is to frame our biological laws without considering man, and then to see in what way they must be modified if they are to be applied to him.

Man differs biologically from other organisms in the following main ways. First, he has the power of thinking in concepts; in other words, his power of learning by experience is not always conditioned directly by the accidents of his own life, as is the case with animals endowed only with associative memory, but he can, by reaching the general from the special, attain to the possibility of dealing with many more, and more complicated, eventualities. Next, by means of speech, writing, and printing, he has developed a new mode of inheritance.[10] Each community, and indeed humanity as a whole, transmits its peculiarities to later ages by means of tradition, using that word in its largest sense. Physical inheritance of the same type as in all higher animals and plants is the necessary basis, but the distinctive characters of any civilization are based on this new tradition-inheritance. Thirdly, the type of mind which has been evolved in man is much more plastic--a much more elastic and flexible mechanism than any tool previously evolved by life for handling the problems of existence. As a consequence of this we have the substitution of general educability for specific instincts. For the power of performing comparatively few actions smoothly and without trouble, there is exchanged the possibility of a vastly increased range of action, but one which has to be learnt. As another consequence, man has come by the power--impossible to any other organism--of leading what is to all intents and purposes a multiple existence. It is for this very reason difficult to fit man into many of the ordinary biological categories. The physical and mental structure and the mode of life of even the highest of the animals are for all practical purposes a fixed quantity. An ant, for all its delicacy of adjustment, is little less than a sentient cog shaped to fit in just one way into the machinery of the community; a dog, for all his power of learning, is tied down and imprisoned within a rigidity and narrowness of bodily and mental organization difficult for us to imagine.

Man passes freely from one aggregation to another. He can change his nation or his city; he can belong to a dozen organizations--biologically speaking, can be aggregated in a dozen different ways--and play a different part as unit in each. He can follow one profession in the morning, another at night, and be a hobby-horse rider in between.

This plastic mind has endowed him with a new biological possibility. He can do what no other organism can--he can be both specialized and generalized at one and the same time.

In biology, the aggregation of units to form units of higher grade has been always followed by division of labour among the units; and this division of labour has, in all infrahuman history, been made possible only by an irreversible specialization.[11] A soldier-ant is a soldier, and there its possibilities end. It cannot do what the worker or the queen can do. A muscle-cell, because it has gained the power to contract, is cut off from other possibilities; it cannot secrete, or digest, or carry messages. The aggregate of nerve-cells which makes the physical basis of mind is held fixed to its post, incapable of turning to other functions.

It follows that the units of all such aggregates are subordinate to the whole--they have lost their independence, and can often no longer be considered as individuals at all, except historically. But in man, none of these things hold. A man can for half his day be the merest cog, subordinate in every detail of his action to the needs of the community, but for the other half be himself, a full and complete individuality, making the community serve his own ends and needs. For him, aggregation does not mean complete and irreversible subordination; his specialization is reversible, and indeed his potentialities as an individual actually increase with the increased individuality of the aggregate to which he belongs.

Bearing these differences in mind, we may turn to consider how our doctrine of progress helps us in studying humanity.

At the outset we must guard ourselves against the idea that human society has reached any high level of biological individuation. I may perhaps quote from what I have written elsewhere: “If we were to draw a parallel between primitive types of society and some primitive mammal such as a duck-billed platypus, and to compare the course which we hope society will in time accomplish with what has been accomplished in the progress of the mammalian type from a creature resembling the platypus up to man, with what creature should we have to compare the existing state of human communities? I venture to say that we should be flattering ourselves if we were to fix upon the dog.”

Then we must remember that Natural Selection in man has fallen chiefly upon groups, not upon individuals, and differences in the nature and organization of human groups are determined chiefly by what we can best sum up as differences of tradition in the widest sense of the term. The later history of mankind, from a period long antedating written records, has been one of the rapid rise and equally rapid extinction, not only of one group-unit after another, but of one type of group-unit after another. It is further obvious at first glance that the group-units, the types of society which are at present dominant, are far from perfect and far from stable, and indeed that they are evolving, with speed of change hitherto unsurpassed, towards new and unknown forms.

When the mammalian type first became dominant on the globe--at the transition between the Secondary and Tertiary periods--a somewhat similar history was passed through. The new type of organization gave its possessors marked advantages over other animal types: but the full potentialities of the mammal (excluding man) were not realized until well over half of the Tertiary period had elapsed, and man was being prepared in the womb of circumstance. The Pliocene sees the triumph of the perfected types of mammal: the preceding Miocene, broadly speaking, sees the first rise of these new types, while the Eocene and Oligocene show us a rapid rise and as rapid extinction of variation upon variation on the original theme.[12] With man, however, only the beginnings of a similar process have as yet come to pass.

Further, we must distinguish clearly between the different ways in which progress may be operative in man. In the first place it can appear, as we have just pointed out, in the organization of the communities to which he belongs and on which natural selection seems mainly to act. Secondly, it can appear as a raising of the _average_ of certain qualities among the individuals composing those communities. And thirdly, it can appear as a raising of the _upper level_ of attainment in those qualities, in the appearance of individuals biologically higher than any that have previously existed.

This last point may be first dealt with. It has often been urged as an argument against the doctrine of progress that we can trace no advance in the capabilities of the individual man throughout history, and it has even been asserted that no such advance has occurred during pre-history. To this latter criticism there is the obvious reply that at some period there was an origin of human from non-human organisms, and that during the period of transition at least (and probably for a considerable time afterward) there naturally must have been a raising of the upper level of attainments, and still more of possibility. The main point at issue, however, is not to be gainsaid. It appears[13] that comparatively early in the evolution of man, there appeared, in some branches of the stock, a type of mental organization which has not yet been improved upon. An individual possessing it is capable, when developing in proper environment (the most important single elements of which are the organization and tradition of the community to which he belongs) of attaining to possibilities which, measured in terms of the potentialities of any previous organism, are wellnigh boundless. He can survey the whole of mankind, penetrate the future with prophecy, bring the gamut of experience within a work of art, discover the laws by which the universe operates. Judged thus, Goethe is no greater and no less great than Leonardo, Shakespeare than Dante or Æschylus, Darwin than Pasteur, Kant than Plato.

The best type of human mind operating to the best advantage, is introduced to possibilities so vast in comparison with its paltry span of existence that it can never realize more than a fraction of them. Furthermore, since the incidence of natural selection has fallen, from long before historical time, upon the community and its traditions far more than upon the individual, and since the conditions under which the possibilities of the individual can be even qualitatively realized have been rarely forthcoming, it is not surprising that the level of possibility itself has not been raised. Indeed, only too often there has been reversed selection, and the exceptional man has suffered from his exceptional endowments.

There is no theoretical objection whatever to the idea that new types of mind, new modes of thought, new levels of attainment, could be reached by life: the mental difference between low types of men and men of genius is almost as great as that between man and ape. The difference in practical intelligence between a hen, a dog, a chimpanzee, and a man is largely a difference in the complexity of the situations which can be grasped as a whole so that the right way out is adopted as the result of this unitary comprehension.[14] There is no reason to doubt that other types of mental mechanism are possible which would make our grasp of complex situations appear pitiful and hen-like in its limitations, which would enable their possessors to _see_ and solve in a flash where we can only grope and guess or at best calculate laboriously and step by step. But this will not take place, first until the community-environment is made as favourable as possible for such development, and secondly until there is begun a deliberate biological encouragement of new possibilities of intuition, say, or of communication between mind and mind.

As regards the second point, the raising of the average as opposed to the upper level of attainment, not much need be said. That part of our civilization which can be thought of as progressive is largely concerned with this very thing--with making it possible for men to realize in larger measure their inherent possibilities. Further, in so far as there exists selection within the community, it largely, under present conditions, encourages qualities such as intelligence and initiative, which are biologically progressive. And finally, when Eugenics shall become practical politics, its action, so far as we can see, will be at first entirely devoted to this raising of the average, by altering the proportion of good and bad stock, and if possible eliminating the lowest strata, in a genetically mixed population.[15]

Since, however, the main stress in human evolution has been upon the community and upon tradition, it is here that we shall expect to find most definite evidences of progress, and it is here that we do in fact find them.

We have in the first place the increase of the size of units, familiar to us already in lower forms. This, however, is tending to a limit, which will be attained when the present competition of sovereign states has been replaced (as, if we can read the future from the past, it inevitably will be) by some form of federation covering the globe. We find an immense increase of control over environment--a theme so hackneyed as to need no labouring. We find an almost equally striking, if less spectacular, increase in independence. Man becomes less and less at the mercy of the forces of nature and of other organisms, attains much more to self-regulation. This has depended upon increased efficiency of “organs”--here the extra-organismal organs we call tools and machines; and upon increased rapidity and certainty of communication both within and between units. There has been an almost overwhelming increase (displaying too not a uniform but an accelerated motion) of knowledge, of the possibilities of acquiring new knowledge, and of what may be called the “group-memory”--the power of storing and rendering knowledge available, and this in its turn brings about a huge increase in the size of the environment with which man either physically or mentally comes into contact.

As regards increase of harmony or co-ordination, human communities have advanced but little, although in the increase of powers of communication there has been laid the foundation for such possibility.

That this lack of progress is partly due to the extreme rapidity of change in type of unit and of the units’ increase in size, is not doubtful; a further ground for it, however, is to be found in the fact that human societies present a new biological problem, in so much as it is impossible, man being what he is, to solve the relationship of individual and community, of smaller and larger unit, in the simple way in which it has always been solved before--by specialization and subordination of the individuals.[16] The early development of codes of law, codes of ritual, and codes of morals represents the first attempt at a solution of the problem: the modern rise of arbitration as a method of settling disputes between whole units and large groups within units is another important step in the same direction. Nevertheless, it is here that the most drastic change of method will have to be brought into being if man’s development is to continue progressive.

There is, however, a weighty criticism of the validity of human progress. Granted that human science and invention have made enormous strides, that knowledge has increased and convenience multiplied--is _man_, the living, feeling, personal human being, any the better in essentials for all of this--has it not merely made life more complex at the expense of its depth, more rapid at the expense of its tranquillity and suavity? This is especially obvious in the field of art. It is impossible to maintain that any one of a certain number--a hundred, or perhaps a thousand--of great poets, painters, sculptors, or musicians is greater or has achieved finer things than any other of the number. What is more, in most arts--notably sculpture, painting, and poetry, the possibilities of expression and achievement do not increase, and once a certain pitch of skill is reached, tend to extinguish themselves in technique and virtuosity. When this happens, new ideas generally come upon the scene and work up again from a relatively primitive to a complicated technique along a more or less different path--and so on and so forth _ad infinitum_.

This is not so true of architecture, and still less so of music. In intellectual matters it is clearly not true of mathematics, where each advance provides the foundation for the solution of more complex problems, nor, similarly, of much of science. But even in this intellectual domain, where the accumulation of knowledge is so evident, where the increasing difficulty and complexity of the problems soluble and solved is so remarkable--even here the individual achievement can scarcely be properly said to increase, certainly not the individual merit or the individual satisfaction. Newton’s achievement was no less splendid because to-day any fourth-rate mathematician can use the calculus, nor Euclid’s for that his discoveries can be explained to every schoolboy; while for Harvey to discover the circulation of the blood or for Dalton to demonstrate the particulate nature of matter was certainly no slighter task than that needed to show the reality of internal secretion or to discover the infra-atomic world of electrons. The task occupied all their powers, its accomplishment satisfied them; and the powers themselves have not increased--only the ways in which men have learned to use them.

This criticism has been partly dealt with before. We have seen that the present organization of human mind introduces its possessor to a practical infinitude of possibility. We have also seen that there is no theoretical obstacle to be seen at present to an increase of human powers, be it in range of comprehension, intensity of feeling, or brilliance of intuition. More to our present purpose is the reply that, whereas in all these ways the inherent capabilities have not increased, yet the opportunities of realizing these capabilities have for the bulk of the population increased--in particular, for instance, of gratifying the more complex and the more intellectual emotions, with the multiplication of theatres, of books, of pictures, of concerts. Here, for once, the average has advanced more than the upper level. Whatever overstress and maladjustment the complexity of modern civilization has brought with it, it has certainly made it easier for more men and women to realize more of their potentialities now than a thousand years ago, and far more than a hundred thousand years ago.

There are, then, these facts to set on the credit side of Progress’ balance-sheet. It is easy enough to see items on the debit side, and indeed to be so horrifiedly fascinated by it as not to have eyes for anything else. Human history is in one view but a long record of suffering, oppression, and folly. Slavery, torture, religious persecution, war, pestilence and famine, the greed of those who possess power, the dirt and sloth and ignorance of those who do not--the elements of the picture keep on recurring, if not in the old forms, then in new ones. Pain, disease, disappointment, and death are inevitable. Even when a civilization seems to be progressing, there always comes a time when it passes its zenith and topples through decay or defect to ruin. How is it possible to speak of progress when at this present moment there are vast poverty-stricken and slum populations with all the great nations, and when these same great nations have just been engaged in the most appalling war in history?

It is a formidable indictment: but I venture to assert that it can be met by the same argument with which, in the realm of biology, was met the argument from degeneration.

Such facts show at once that any idea of inevitable or of universal progress is untenable, the product of an irrational idealism which prefers its own desires to reality. They show further that, up to the present, suffering and pain on the one hand, and on the other degeneration in a certain number of individuals, are as universal and apparently inevitable in human as in animal evolution. But they do not show that some sort of progress may not have occurred--not necessarily the kind of progress that some of us would like, not necessarily as rapid as could be desired, but yet indubitably and solidly Progress. We have seen that in the hundreds of thousands of species which constitute life, that which has been increased most obviously is the upper level of certain qualities--primitive forms have persisted, degenerate forms have arisen side by side with and in spite of the steady improvement in the highest types. This has happened in man also.

The upper level of control and of independence in human group-units, and in a certain number of fortunate individuals, has obviously increased; but there are the slums, there are the drab lives of thousands in great cities, there are poverty, degeneracy, and crime. All that we can say is that to many at least it seems theoretically possible that man should be able to reduce the amount of degeneration, waste, and pain, to increase the changes to be summed up as progressive.

The future Golden Age of Millenniarism is as impossible a notion as the past Golden Age of Mythology, and more demoralizing. Bury, with pardonable sarcasm, speaks of the result hoped for in it as “a menagerie of happy men ... in which the dynamic character of history disappears.” But once we have accepted (as the great majority accept) life as somehow worth living, the belief in progress asserts only (though there is much in that “only”) that life may be made more worth living to a larger proportion of people, although effort and failure always will and always must be conditions of its operation. As Goethe said, “Let humanity last as long as it will, there will always be hindrances in its way, and all kinds of distress, to make it develop its powers.”

It is important to remember, what we have already noted, that the history of mankind is largely the history of competition between group-units or communities. When rare communities have been able to escape from this race of competition and have deliberately devoted the energy and resources thus set free to better community-regulation and an improvement in the lives of the individuals composing them, then, like Denmark, they have moved rapidly along a path of real progress. Once an efficient federation of communities has come into being, Progress can knock at the door with some chance of being admitted. In general, it is enough for our present purpose to have shown that some modicum of progress has occurred within the species Man; and that some of the characteristics which most saliently mark him off from other organisms--his powers of generalization and his self-consciousness--are in themselves germs, potentialities of great progress in the future, because through them blind biological progress can become economical, foreseeing, and conscious of herself.

There remains for me only one task--to investigate more closely the relation of that fact of evolutionary direction which we have called biological progress, to our ideas of value. What we have found is that there exists a certain general direction of movement in the evolution of living things; towards the increase of certain of their properties. But when we make a further analysis, we find that movement in this direction is movement towards a realization of the things judged by the human mind to have value. It is movement towards an increase of power, of knowledge, of purpose, of emotion, of harmony, of independence. Increases in these faculties combine, once a certain stage in mental development is reached, to mean the embracing of ever larger syntheses by the organism possessing them--practical syntheses, as in business, or exploration, or administration; intellectual, as in philosophy or in the establishment of scientific laws; emotional, as in love or in the passion for nature; artistic, as in a symphony or great drama. These capabilities are greater in man than in the higher animals, in the higher animals than in the lower, more and more windows being closed and powers pruned away as we descend the scale.