He assumed that the predatory system which he saw prevailing in the domain of Nature must prevail also in the domain of Man; and thus became an apostle of laissez faire and of the competitive system. As such he advocated the utmost limitation of state interference and opposed the Socialistic trend of modern legislation on the ground that man is, as it were, doomed to perfection by the principles of evolution, and that any effort of his to modify evolution can only result in retarding it. He was led by the analogy between society and organism into the theory that human institutions must be allowed to grow as organisms grow, and that efforts on the part of man to construct his own institutions produce more evil than good.
Mr. Huxley demolished the whole sociological structure which Herbert Spencer built up on these errors in three essays, to which the reader is referred.[200] The subject is also fully treated in the first volume of "Government or Human Evolution."[201] The effort will be made here to condense the argument and conclusions therein drawn by a short study of environment—natural and human—with a view to demonstrating the control which man has acquired over his environment and thereby over his ultimate destiny. This leads to a study of the effect of the competitive and coöperative systems on type respectively, how far society is a growth and how far a construction, and how far human nature can be modified by the conscious, deliberate purpose of Man; all this to demonstrate that human happiness can be best attained by substituting coöperation for competition to the extent necessary to put an end to the evils resulting from the competition of to-day, without for that reason eliminating wholesome competition altogether.
There are two kinds of environment: the environment we find in Nature, and the environment made by Man.
We shall study first the environment of Nature, and begin by distinguishing therein two systems: the competitive, or so-called struggle for life; and the coöperative or community system; confining ourselves to facts observed in Nature prior to or outside of the intervention of Man.
§ 1. The Natural Environment
(a) The Struggle for Life, or the Competitive System
Beasts of the field are necessary products of their environment.
The study of the crust of the earth reveals that upon the central mass there have been laid layer upon layer of sand, clay, and limestone by successive seas, which have successively rested on now buried continents. Nearly every layer contains fragments of shell, scale, or bone belonging to the beasts that have succeeded to one another upon the earth during millions of years.
These layers of sand, clay, and limestone are the leaves of a gigantic book, the earliest of which are burned by fire, the next scarred by it, and the most recent illustrated by pictures so vivid that we can read the story there of the development of Man from the lowest of all forms of life.
The rocks are charts painted by the hand of Nature herself.