Darwin, and After Darwin, Volume 2 of 3 / Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility

by George John Romanes

Once more, with regard to the naked skin, it seems sufficient to quote the following passage from the first edition of the Descent of Man.

"The Rev. T. R. Stebbing, in commenting on this view, remarks, that had Mr. Wallace 'employed his usual ingenuity on the question of man's hairless skin, he might have seen the possibility of its selection through its superior beauty, or the health attaching to superior cleanliness. At any rate it is surprising that he should picture to himself a superior intelligence plucking the hair from the backs of savage men (to whom, according to his own account, it would have been useful and beneficial), in order that the descendants of the poor shorn wretches might, after many deaths from cold and damp in the course of many generations,' have been forced to raise themselves in the scale of civilization through the practice of various arts, in the manner indicated by Mr. Wallace[18]."

To this it may be added that the Chimpanzee "Sally" was largely denuded of hair, especially on the back, or the part of "man's organization" on which Mr. Wallace lays special stress, as being in this respect out of analogy with other mammalia[19].

Lastly, touching his statement that the brain of savage man is both quantitatively and qualitatively in advance of his requirements, it is here also sufficient to refer to Darwin's answer, as given in the Descent of Man. Mr. Wallace, indeed, ignores this answer in his recent re-publication of the argument; but it is impossible to understand why he should have done so. To me, at all events, it seems that one out of several considerations which Darwin advances is alone sufficient to show the futility of this argument. I allude to the consideration that the power of forming abstract ideas with the complex machinery of language as the vehicle of their expression, is probably of itself enough to account for both the mass and the structure of a savage's brain. But this leads us to the second division of Mr. Wallace's argument, or that derived from the mental endowments of mankind.

Here the peculiarities called into evidence are, "the Mathematical Faculty," "the Artistic Faculties," and "the Moral Sense." With regard to the latter, he avows himself a member of the intuitional school of ethics; but does not prove a very powerful advocate as against the utilitarian[20].

It comes, then, to this. According to Mr. Wallace's eventual conclusion, man is to be separated from the rest of organic nature, and the steady progress of evolution by natural causes is to be regarded as stopped at its final stage, because the human mind presents the faculties of mathematical calculation and aesthetic perception. Surely, on antecedent grounds alone, it must be apparent that there is here no kind of proportion between the conclusion and the data from which it is drawn. That we are not confined to any such grounds, I will now try to show.

Let it be remembered, however, that in the following brief criticism I am not concerned with the issue as to whether, or how far, the "faculties" in question have owed their origin or their development to natural selection. I am concerned only with the doctrine that in order to account for such and such particular "faculty" of the human mind, some order of causation must be supposed other than what we call natural. I am not a Neo-Darwinist, and so have no desire to make "natural selection" synonymous with "natural causation" throughout the whole domain of life and of mind. And I quite agree with Mr. Wallace that, at any rate, the "aesthetic faculty" cannot conceivably have been produced by natural selection—seeing that it is of no conceivable life-serving value in any of the stages of its growth. Moreover, it appears to me that the same thing has to be said of the play instincts, sense of the ludicrous, and sundry other "faculties" of mind among the lower animals. It being thus understood that I am not differing from Mr. Wallace where he imposes "limits" on the powers of natural selection, but only where he seems to take for granted that this is the same thing as imposing limits on the powers of natural causation, my criticism is as follows.

In the first place, it is a psychological fallacy to regard the so-called "faculties" of mind as analogous to "organs" of the body. To classify the latter with reference to the functions which they severally perform is to follow a natural method of classification. But it is an artificial method which seeks to partition mental faculty into this, that, and the other mental faculties. Like all other purely artificial classifications, this one has its practical uses; but, also like them, it is destitute of philosophical meaning. This statement is so well recognized by psychologists, that there is no occasion to justify it. But I must remark that any cogency which Mr. Wallace's argument may appear to present, arises from his not having recognized the fact which the statement conveys. For, had he considered the mind as a whole, instead of having contemplated it under the artificial categories of constituent "faculties," he would probably not have laid any such special stress upon some of the latter. In other words, he would have seen that the general development of the human mind as a whole has presumably involved the growth of those conventionally abstracted parts, which he regards as really separate endowments. Or, if he should find it easier to retain the terms of his metaphor, we may answer him by saying that the "faculties" of mind are "correlated," like "organs" of the body; and, therefore, that any general development of the various other "faculties" have presumably entailed a collateral development of the two in question.

Again, in the second place, it would seem that Mr. Wallace has not sufficiently considered the co-operation of either well-known natural causes, which must have materially assisted the survival of the fittest where these two "faculties" are concerned. For, even if we disregard the inherited effects of use—which, however, if entertained as possible in any degree at all, must have here constituted an important factor,—there remain on the one hand, the unquestionable influences of individual education and, on the other hand, of the selection principle operating in the mind itself.

Taking these two points separately, it is surely sufficiently well known that individual education—or special training, whether of mind or body—usually raises congenital powers of any kind to a more or less considerable level above those of the normal type. In other words, whatever doubt there may be touching the inherited effects of use, there can be no question touching the immense developmental effects thereof in the individual life-time. Now, the conditions of savage life are not such as lead to any deliberate cultivation of the "faculties" either of the mathematical or aesthetic order. Consequently, as might be expected, we find both of them in what Mr. Wallace regards as but a "latent" stage of development. But in just the same way do we find that the marvellous powers of an acrobat when specially trained from childhood—say to curve his spine backwards until his teeth can bite his heels—are "latent" in all men. Or, more correctly, they are potential in every child. So it is with the prodigious muscular development of a trained athlete, and with any number of other cases where either the body or the mind is concerned. Why then should Mr. Wallace select the particular instances of the mathematical and aesthetic powers in savages as in any special sense "prophetic" of future development in trained members of civilized races? Although it is true that these "latent capacities and powers are unused by savages," is it not equally true that savages fail to use their latent capacities and powers as tumblers and athletes? Moreover, is it not likewise true that as used by savages, or as occurring normally in man, such capacities and powers are no less poorly developed than are those of the "faculties" on which Mr. Wallace lays so much stress? In other words, are not "latent capacities and powers" of all kinds more or less equally in excess of anything that is ever required of them by man in a state of nature? Therefore, if we say that where mathematics and the fine arts are concerned the potential capacities of savage man are in some mystical sense "prophetic" of a Newton or a Beethoven, so in consistency ought we to say that in these same capacities we discern a similar prophecy of those other uses of civilized life which we have in a rope-dancer or a clown.