Social Environment and Moral Progress

by Alfred Russel Wallace

So the wonderfully varied bills of birds cannot be conceived as having been modified by use, and are, in fact, unchangeable when once formed. Yet, as they vary largely in every species, they are readily modified, so as to become adapted to new conditions by the "survival of the fittest."

Equally impossible is it to connect any use or disuse, or environmental action, in the production, the gradual development, or complete adaptation to their conditions of life of the outer coverings of almost all living things—the hair of mammalia, the feathers of birds, the scales or horny skins or solid shields of reptiles, the solid shells of molluscs, wonderfully ribbed or spined, whorled, or turreted, and infinitely varied in surface colour and markings. Even more conclusive are the facts presented by the vast hosts of the insect world, from the massive armour of

the ever-present beetle tribe, more varied in form, structure, ornament, and colour than any other comparable group of living things, to the widely different lepidoptera, equalling, or perhaps surpassing, the whole class of birds in their marvellous grace and beauty, yet all utterly beyond any possible direct action of the environment or of use and disuse in their development, and their close adaptation to that environment.

Organic nature is indisputably one and indivisible. It has been developed throughout by means of the fundamental forces of life, of growth and reproduction, and the equally fundamental laws of variation, heredity, and enormous increase, resulting in a perpetual adaptation in form, structure, colour, and habits to the slowly changing environment. These forces and laws are universal in their action; they are demonstrably adequate to the production of the whole of the phenomena we are now discussing. We see, then, that over by far the greater part of the whole world of life any modification of external structure, form, or colouring during the life of the individual is impossible; while in the remainder its action, if it

exists at all, is of very limited range. No adequate proof of the inheritance of the slight changes thus caused has ever yet been given, and it is therefore wholly unnecessary and illogical to assume its existence and to adduce it as having any part in the ever-active and universal process of evolution.

Throughout the whole series of the animal world, and especially in the higher groups which approach nearest to ourselves, mental and physical characters are so inextricably intermixed in their relation to the laws of evolution and heredity, that either of them studied separately leads us to the same conclusions. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that breeders of animals of all kinds act upon the principle that all the qualities of the various stocks, whether bodily or mental, are innate and have been due to selection; while training, though necessary to bring out the good qualities of the individual, has had no part in the production of those qualities. When a horse or dog of good pedigree is accidentally injured so that it cannot be regularly trained, it is still used for breeding purposes without any doubt as to its conveying to

its progeny the highest qualities of its parentage.

In the case of the human race, however, many writers thoughtlessly speak of the hereditary effects of strength or skill due to any mechanical work or special art being continued generation after generation in the same family, as among the castes of India. But of any progressive improvement there is no evidence whatever. Those children who had a natural aptitude for the work would, of course, form the successors of their parents, and there is no proof of anything hereditary except as regards this innate aptitude.

Many people are alarmed at the statement that the effects of education and training are not hereditary, and think that if that were really the case there would be no hope of improvement of the race; but closer consideration will show them that if the results of our education in the widest sense, in the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the world at large, had really been hereditary, even in the slightest degree, then indeed there would be little hope for humanity; and there is no clearer proof of this than the fact that we have not all been made much worse—the wonder

being that any fragment of morality, or humanity, or the love of truth or justice for their own sakes still exists among us.