But it is at the scientific and not at the moral point of view that they place themselves when they connect their economic history with Darwin's work. Thanks to this unifying hypothesis, they claim to have constructed—as Marx does in his preface to "Das Kapital"—a veritable natural history of social evolution. Engels speaks in praise of his friend Marx as having discovered the true mainspring of history hidden under the veil of idealism and sentimentalism, and as having proclaimed in the primum vivere the inevitableness of the struggle for existence. Marx himself, in "Das Kapital", indicated another analogy when he dwelt upon the importance of a general technology for the explanation of this psychology:—a history of tools which would be to social organs what Darwinism is to the organs of animal species. And the very importance they attach to tools, to apparatus, to machines, abundantly proves that neither Marx nor Engels were likely to forget the special characters which mark off the human world from the animal. The former always remains to a great extent an artificial world. Inventions change the face of its institutions. New modes of production revolutionise not only modes of government, but modes even of collective thought. Therefore it is that the evolution of society is controlled by laws special to it, of which the spectacle of nature offers no suggestion.
If, however, even in this special sphere, it can still be urged that the evolution of the material conditions of society is in accord with Darwin's theory, it is because the influence of the methods of production is itself to be explained by the incessant strife of the various classes with each other. So that in the end Marx, like Darwin, finds the source of all progress in struggle. Both are grandsons of Heraclitus:—polemos pater panton. It sometimes happens, in these days, that the doctrine of revolutionary socialism is contrasted as rude and healthy with what may seem to be the enervating tendency of "solidarist" philanthropy: the apologists of the doctrine then pride themselves above all upon their faithfulness to Darwinian principles.
So far we have been mainly concerned to show the use that social philosophies have made of the Darwinian laws for practical purposes: in order to orientate society towards their ideals each school tries to show that the authority of natural science is on its side. But even in the most objective of theories, those which systematically make abstraction of all political tendencies in order to study the social reality in itself, traces of Darwinism are readily to be found.
Let us take for example Durkheim's theory of Division of Labour ("De la Division du Travail social", Paris, 1893.) The conclusions he derives from it are that whenever professional specialisation causes multiplication of distinct branches of activity, we get organic solidarity—implying differences—substituted for mechanical solidarity, based upon likenesses. The umbilical cord, as Marx said, which connects the individual consciousness with the collective consciousness is cut. The personality becomes more and more emancipated. But on what does this phenomenon, so big with consequences, itself depend? The author goes to social morphology for the answer: it is, he says, the growing density of population which brings with it this increasing differentiation of activities. But, again, why? Because the greater density, in thrusting men up against each other, augments the intensity of their competition for the means of existence; and for the problems which society thus has to face differentiation of functions presents itself as the gentlest solution.
Here one sees that the writer borrows directly from Darwin. Competition is at its maximum between similars, Darwin had declared; different species, not laying claim to the same food, could more easily coexist. Here lay the explanation of the fact that upon the same oak hundreds of different insects might be found. Other things being equal, the same applies to society. He who finds some unadopted speciality possesses a means of his own for getting a living. It is by this division of their manifold tasks that men contrive not to crush each other. Here we obviously have a Darwinian law serving as intermediary in the explanation of that progress of division of labour which itself explains so much in the social evolution.
And we might take another example, at the other end of the series of sociological systems. G. Tarde is a sociologist with the most pronounced anti-naturalistic views. He has attempted to show that all application of the laws of natural science to society is misleading. In his "Opposition Universelle" he has directly combatted all forms of sociological Darwinism. According to him the idea that the evolution of society can be traced on the same plan as the evolution of species is chimerical. Social evolution is at the mercy of all kinds of inventions, which by virtue of the laws of imitation modify, through individual to individual, through neighbourhood to neighbourhood, the general state of those beliefs and desires which are the only "quantities" whose variation matters to the sociologist. But, it may be rejoined, that however psychical the forces may be, they are none the less subject to Darwinian laws. They compete with each other; they struggle for the mastery of minds. Between types of ideas, as between organic forms, selection operates. And though it may be that these types are ushered into the arena by unexpected discoveries, we yet recognise in the psychological accidents, which Tarde places at the base of everything, near relatives of those small accidental variations upon which Darwin builds. Thus, accepting Tarde's own representations, it is quite possible to express in Darwinian terms, with the necessary transpositions, one of the most idealistic sociologies that have ever been constructed.
These few examples suffice. They enable us to estimate the extent of the field of influence of Darwinism. It affects sociology not only through the agency of its advocates but through that of its opponents. The questionings to which it has given rise have proved no less fruitful than the solutions it has suggested. In short, few doctrines, in the history of social philosophy, will have produced on their passage a finer outcrop of ideas.
XXIV. THE INFLUENCE OF DARWIN UPON RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. By P.N. Waggett, M.A., S.S.J.E.
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