A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution

by Cora May Williams

Amongst so-called civilized human beings, too, the care of parents for offspring is by no means universal, and mothers are known whom not even the fear of the law can hinder from sacrificing their children by the slow torture of starvation for the gain of a few pounds or for even simple relief from the trouble of their rearing. The reports of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children show that not strangers but parents are the most frequent sinners against the child. Nor is infanticide and neglect confined to the poorer classes. I repeat, if a being of some other species enabled to obtain only such external knowledge of us as we have of other species, some being beholding us, for instance, from distant planets, should endeavor to form a theory of our inner egoism and altruism, of sentiment and motive, he might be as puzzled as we are when we study the conduct of bees and ants. Even the helplessness of the ant species, Polyergus rufescens, at which we often wonder as stupidity, has its parallel in some of the former slave-owners of the southern states of North America, who live in the utmost poverty and ignorance because they have lost the habits of industry and consider work beneath them. Mother-love is certainly the rule amongst us; but it is not more constant or self-sacrificing than with some other species, though it, in general, accompanies the child farther in his career. This rule is not, however, universal. Human mothers of a lower type, who show fondness for their children when they are little, often exhibit little or none for them after they have grown out of arms.

It is claimed that altruism was, in its origin, egoism. Everything depends, in theory on this point, on our definition of the terms "origin" and "altruism." If we regard the life of animals in general or the life of any particular species as having been non-social before it was social, and as having become social through increase of numbers, the "chance" association which arose naturally in this way being favored by natural selection, we must assume function fundamentally advantageous to self without regard to the results to other beings to have been primary, whether or not we call this function egoism. With regard to animal life in general, we cannot avoid adopting some such view as this, since we find few species forming lasting bonds of association, a large number forming only exceedingly short ones, and some forming none at all, and since we must furthermore suppose a scarcity of living individuals to have preceded their multiplicity. Moreover, we cannot suppose consciousness to have been absent, in the case of many of the animal species, during the whole of this development. And where there is consciousness, pleasure must be a concomitant along the line of development, and customary forms of action come to present ends, whether or not the individual has the abstract concept of "ends."

But we need to remember that even the human race has not yet arrived at perfection, and that even moral altruism (for not all altruism is necessarily moral) is not yet absolutely attained in any species. Our ordinary use of the term is progressive; that which is altruistic at one period of history is often looked upon, at a later period, as merely a higher form of egoism. This fact should be borne in mind when, in Ethics or Political Economy, we inquire whether man was, in the beginning, altruistic. What do we mean here by "altruism," and what by "beginning"? A similar criticism may be made on the rather more usual question as to whether man was, in the beginning, social; what is the beginning of our species, and what degree of association is necessary in order that the individuals associating may be termed "social"? The question is a difficult one to answer from any point of view. While the majority of human beings, even the most savage, show some degree of gregariousness, there appear to be some tribes that are even less social in their habits than the most of our ape-cousins. Mr. Dalton says of the savages of Inner Borneo that they live in the most perfect state of nature, do not cultivate the earth or live in huts, do not eat either rice or salt, and do not associate with each other, but wander like wild animals in the forest. "The sexes meet in the jungle, or the man carries away a woman from some campong. When the children are old enough to shift for themselves, they usually separate, neither one afterwards thinking of the other."[149]

As to just what form the development of altruism from egoism may have assumed in the case of any particular species, or how the individuals of the species may first have been led to association, the state of science does not, at present, enable us to say. Most authors, indeed, incline to class all social development as having its origin in some one form of family relation. Rolph, for instance, refers it to the necessary association of the sexes, at certain times, for the purpose of copulation. Others regard the care of the female for its young as the primary form from which all social organization has developed. Inasmuch, however, as the line of ascent from primitive protoplasm to man cannot be regarded as straight, but has very many branches, it is quite conceivable that the development may have taken place in different ways in different branches or different species; and the very various forms which social organization shows in different species is direct evidence in favor of such a supposition. Thus it is not, for instance, in some species, the mother animal, but the male, who cares for the young, and again, in other cases, affectionate relations of the sexes are not a prominent feature of the social structure. The attitude of a swarm of bees towards the queen, her progeny, and the drones, presents aspects entirely different from those of ant-nests or human tribal or state organization. In some species where the female exhibits considerable care and concern for her eggs or offspring, there is no especial friendliness between the sexes, and in other cases, where no care is given to offspring, there is still apparently some degree of friendliness, or at least of physical attraction, between male and female. It is not only conceivable that the habit of association may have been developed by different means in different species, but it is also conceivable that, in some cases, several forms of family relation may have assisted equally, and in other cases have united, even if not in equal measure, in producing the result. The association of parent with offspring, for instance, is in most cases impossible without some degree of association between the offspring.

However we may suppose social relations to have originated in the case of any particular species, whether through the sexual or the parental relations or through both combined, and whether we trace these relations themselves back, in the one instance, to the original union of the sexes in the individual, and propagation as self-division, in the other to the unity of mother and offspring before the individual life commences, or whether we simply begin with some non-hostile contact of individuals as already existent, it is evident that, with increasing competition, coöperation must be to the advantage of those coöperating. Those individuals whose single strength is supplemented by the aid of others must succeed best in the struggle for existence. Moreover, with the exercise of altruistic forms of action, we must suppose pleasure in its exercise to increase, in so far as we suppose any consciousness at all in the animal performing the action. The greater the degree of exercise, the greater the pleasure connected with the action, and the more readily the organism will respond to conditions permitting its accomplishment; while repetition, again, must increase tendency to repetition. This is true not only of exactly the same form of action, but also of similar forms, that is, of forms having some like elements. The conditions of action are never exactly the same; the environment is continually changing; but the animal tends to choose, among possible forms of action, that which corresponds most nearly to most exercised and pleasurable forms.

At just what period we are to regard the altruistic forms of action as becoming in spirit altruistic depends, as has already been said, on our definition of the degree of disinterested feeling necessary to altruism proper, aside from our theories of the existence and form of consciousness in the case of any particular species at any particular point of development. In the case of even disinterested human action, the altruism is not generally, or at least in very many cases, wholly unmixed with any thought of self, though this thought may not hold first place. If self-sacrifice be the test of altruistic feeling, then we must suppose the latter to exist, in some relations, even far down in the scale of being. In this case, just as in other cases where choice is necessary, the stronger tendency conquers even with the result of pain of disappointment in some other direction. The case of altruistic action is hence not unique in this respect, and it might perhaps be argued that such self-sacrifice would therefore be possible without any consideration or consciousness of the good accruing to others through its performance. But if we analyze the development of any habit, we find that the pleasure of the act speedily connects itself with all the constant results of the act that come within the experience of the performer of the act and are recognized as its results. Any result at first unpleasant must, if it is constant, either lead to the discontinuance of the act or else, with time, lose much of its quality of unpleasantness. Either the expected pain of this one factor is sufficient to counterbalance the pleasure awaited in the act, and a repetition of the act is thus avoided, or, as in all other cases of habitual experience, the pain or discomfort gradually diminishes, until, if the habit be long enough continued, pleasure takes its place. The pleasure of others must be a constant result of action that secures their welfare, and if this result comes within the conscious experience of the performer of the action, we can scarcely avoid supposing that, even if his action is in the beginning purely selfish, the pleasure of those benefited must come in time to play a part in the pleasure of the performer. The part it plays will not be, in the beginning, naturally, a very important one, but its importance will increase with time. If this is true in a measure even of the individual, it is doubly true of the species. Wherever, therefore, we may suppose the existence of sufficient intelligence for the inference of pleasure from its outer signs in others, it must be admitted to be possible and even probable that constant habits of self-sacrifice and helpfulness to others will be accompanied by some measure of altruistic feeling. And even if we suppose an insufficiency of intelligence for such inference, it is still possible and even probable that the constant symptoms of pleasure in others will come to be a part of the conditions of the pleasure of the individual or the species in whom habits of self-sacrifice have become constant, although their inner significance is not recognized. It may be objected that, if actual altruistic feeling were present in animals which show a certain amount of helpfulness towards others of their kind, this altruism would not desert these others at the very time of their greatest need or when any great peril to self is involved, or that it would show itself in many other acts than just those which, as in the case of the ants, secure the preservation of a society, or in that of some other species give a certain protection to the female during breeding time. The argument is wholly inconclusive, and has already been answered. The action of natural selection in the preservation of those forms of tendency that secure the preservation of the species does not annul the action of the will or render the presence of strong emotion in the direction of the tendency thus preserved impossible; on the contrary, we must suppose all tendency, in man equally with other animal species, to be the result of natural selection. And in man, too, altruism that is sufficient for some degree of sacrifice is insufficient for a greater. In man, as in other species, altruistic feeling and altruistic action vary according to the particular directions in which habit in the species and in the individual has been cultivated. Men and women who are not kind to each other will frequently be kind to little children. The average Englishman is kind to his dog in spite of his total indifference to the pain inflicted on the very nearly if not quite as intelligent fox; and he will grow indignant to the verge of tears over abuse of a horse, while he will regard the like abuse with little or no emotion when it is inflicted on a miserable donkey. I doubt if the average Englishman would shoot horses or dogs, even if they were good for food and useless otherwise, and abounded wild in Great Britain. But this is merely because association and habit have made him acquainted with the capacity of feeling in the horse and dog, and have accustomed him to humane treatment of them.

An argument sometimes advanced against the theory of a derivation of altruism from egoism is that such altruism has no premises or reasons; if, say the advocates of this argument, a man performs an apparently altruistic act to-day from selfish motives, and performs the same act to-morrow without calculation of the benefit to self to be gained from it,—if such a change were possible,—then this man must simply have forgotten his motives for the act. But this is not altruism proper. Such action is the result of a logical confusion, but it can never be altruism. Altruism proper has a motive, and this motive is the desire to do good to others. With regard to this argument it may simply be said that it is wholly untenable from any evolutionist standpoint; it destroys at once the possibility of any moral progress. Intended to defend altruism and moral principle in general from what is designated as degradation, it is itself degrading in its denial of the compatibility of natural and moral advance. It posits the assertion that nothing can ever become that which it was not from the beginning, an assertion utterly inconsistent with any theory of growth, whether evolutional or otherwise. It is contradictory, too, of the directly observed every-day facts of individual experience. The ends with which we perform our acts, and the same acts, certainly change from day to day. The adult would have reason for shame were the ends with which he performs certain acts the same with those with which he performed those same acts when he was a child. The emotions with which we regard life and its various relations alter every day. If the change from egoism to altruism could be pronounced logical confusion, then all mental evolution must constitute an increase of intellectual disorder, a continuous progress towards less instead of greater intelligence. Where is the beginning of feeling and what was feeling in the beginning? Of what nature were the motives of our ape-like progenitors, and of what nature the first motive that appeared in the universe? and how have we ever arrived at the possession of other motives than these? What a confusion worse confounded must be our present motives, and of what a chaos of thought and emotion must the human intellect consist! The origin of any such argument as this, intended to disprove the theory of a derivation of altruism from egoism, is probably in the failure to distinguish the fact that both altruism and egoism, as we know them, are comparative, not absolute. Naturally, absolute altruism could not develop immediately from absolute egoism, that is, the one could not change immediately into the other. But there are very few human beings in whom some degree of altruism does not exist; and all we may note directly of change of motive in ourselves, as well as all we ever could note of change in external action in other species, is gradual increase in this direction. In the individual case it is quite possible for change to take place in the opposite direction of the development of greater egoism.

In connection with the discussion of the development of motives, we may inquire what is the final end of action; I refer not to the ideal end but the actual end, although the two are not always distinguished in the answer to this question. The confusion of the two generally arises from forgetfulness of the fact that an end is the part of the result of an act particularly willed by the performer. The concept is again a teleological one, although often advanced, in some form, by persons of materialistic views. Thus some authors, looking at the process of evolution as continual survival of the fittest, and observing that natural selection thus tends continually towards health, so that the action of existing species is, in a large and ever increasing measure, favorable to health, assert that the latter is the end of action. Others, in like manner and from similar premises, argue that the preservation of the species is the end of action; or sometimes the logical inaccuracy involved in making health or the preservation of species the universal end of action is partly concealed by giving the assertion the form that one or the other of these is "the end attained" by action. To these statements may be answered: The health of the individual, although it sometimes appears as the end willed, is by no means the constant and universal end, but, on the contrary, rather an infrequent end. As to the preservation of the species, the concept has never been heard of by a majority of human beings, and a thing cannot be an end to those who have not heard of it. It is doubtful, moreover, whether even those to whom it is familiar often, if ever, make it the end of action. With regard to pleasure, it has already been said that special calculation of the pleasure to accrue to self is by no means a necessary part of the motive to action. Attention may again be called to the fact that it is not the future pleasure that decides the will to action in the case of struggle of conflicting tendencies, but that it is the more pleasurable representation, and that it is present pleasure which decides in any case. Or, rather, it is not the pleasure, the feeling alone, that decides, for feeling is never found alone; it is always combined with thought-images. The strength of pleasurable feeling is the "tone" in which the intensity of the function manifests itself, and according to which it tends to further expression in action. In the imagination of action and its results, or the thought of it, reflection may linger especially on any one of its elements,—on any part of the action or its results as inferred from the analogy of past experience; the pleasure to self is not necessarily the element on which the mind lays stress, and the pleasure to others may be the element with which thought is particularly occupied and which turns the scale of choice; just as, also, in the actual action and its results, the pleasure in pleasure or benefit accruing to others may more than counterbalance the pain which some other inevitable phase of the action or its results brings with it.

Much that has been said of the development of egoism from altruism still holds true of the individual, even if the idea of a progress in altruism through heredity be surrendered. The consideration of the question of heredity is, however, necessary to any complete or wide-reaching theory of moral progress. Hitherto, the actuality of the inheritance of altruistic tendency has been assumed on the strength of previous considerations with regard to heredity in general, according to which we could not conceive all the multifarious differences which appear in all the species and varieties of animal nature to have been present in simplest primal organisms, or all the differences of the different species and varieties which have arisen through sexual propagation from common ancestors to have been present as inherent potentialities in the germ-plasm, as such, of their common ancestors, and so cannot consider the lesser variations which go to make up the larger ones as due merely to the germ-plasm. It remains for us to examine the facts more particularly with respect to this special form of tendency. Stephen says: "An unreasoning animal can only adapt itself to new circumstances, except within a very narrow range, by acquiring a new organization; or, in other words, by becoming a different animal. Its habits and instincts may therefore remain fixed through countless generations. But man, by accumulating experiences, can virtually alter both his faculties and his surroundings without altering his organization. When this accumulation extends beyond the individual, it implies a social development, and explains the enormous changes wrought within historical times, and which define the difference between the savage and the civilized man."[150] "Briefly, society exists as it exists in virtue of this organization, which is as real as the organization of any material instrument, though it depends upon habits and instincts instead of arrangements of tangible and visible objects."[151] "Children, no doubt, start with infinitely varying aptitudes for moral culture, as they start with stomachs of varying strength of digestion; but, in every case, the action of the social medium is an essential factor of the result."[152] Now, in the first place, objection may be made to the term "unreasoning animal," in that, whatever we may think with regard to inorganic matter and plant-life or even with regard to the lower forms of animal-life, the whole theory of evolution is opposed to the supposition that reason suddenly arises in man; and in that we have, moreover, in the case of many of the higher species, very conclusive evidence of the presence of some degree of reason. Mr. Stephen does not elsewhere make any positive assertion of the entire absence of reason in animals; yet to his remark that "It may be that germs of this capacity [i.e. the capacity to learn by experience and impart this knowledge to others] are to be found in the lower animals" he adds, "but we shall make no sensible error if we regard it, as it has always been regarded, as the exclusive prerogative of humanity."[153] That is, we make no sensible error if we regard the progress of other animal species than our own to be wholly "organic," that of our own species, on the other hand, to be wholly an accumulation of common knowledge. The division between man and the rest of the animal kingdom is thus made a very distinct and absolute line. It may be noticed, second, that the third quotation of the three cited consecutively above contains a very different statement from that of the first quotation. And it may be said, third, that the second quotation, while seeming to bear out the first, is in reality a contradiction of it, since it makes social organization dependent upon "habits" and "instincts."

Exactly what is it that is meant by the alteration of organization which is pronounced unnecessary to the "virtual" alteration of human faculties? From the modern spiritualistic, the materialistic, the positivistic, or any modern standpoint at all, it is difficult to perceive how mental alteration can be supposed without the assumption of an exactly corresponding physiological change. In view of the exceedingly minute structure of the nervous system, which is chiefly affected by such change, we may suppose this change to be so fine as to be imperceptible to sense-perception, but, since it must, in any case, be exactly coördinate with the psychical change, I fail to see how we can scientifically regard the one and at the same time ignore the other and pronounce it of no significance. And if we suppose any fixation of psychical alteration, we cannot avoid likewise supposing an exactly coördinate fixation of physiological alteration. Of course the question remains as to the extent to which fixation takes place in either case, and this question we have yet to consider. The weakness of Mr. Stephen's position lies in his assumption of fixation on the one side and his denial of it on the other.