The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope

by Henry Edward Crampton

On the contrary, as we trace the development of social organization from its earliest rudiments it becomes ever clearer that evolution has been continuous, and that during later ages there has been no suspension of the natural laws which earlier produced the human type of organism. The lessons we have learned are by no means to be ignored from this point forward; all of our conceptions of human biological history must be kept in mind, for anything new that we may learn is superadded to the rest,—it cannot disturb or alter the foundations already laid. It is even more important to realize that the same scientific method is to be employed which has been so fruitful heretofore. It has given us interesting facts; it has indicated the most profitable lines of attack upon one and another scientific problem; and it has demonstrated the practical value of accurate knowledge, even of information about the evolutionary process. As familiarity with the laws of human physiology enables one to lead a more hygienic and efficient life, and as the results of analyzing the evolution of mentality make it possible to advance intellectually with greater sureness, conserving our mental energies for effort along lines established by hereditary endowment, so now we are justified in expecting that a clear insight into the origin of our social situation and social obligations will have a higher usefulness beyond the value of the mere interest inhering in our new knowledge. Every one is necessarily concerned with social questions; never before has there been so much world-wide discussion of topics in this field. And while it is true that much good may be accomplished in utter ignorance of the past history of human institutions and of the underlying principles which control the varied types of organic associations, surely enlightened efforts will be more effective for good. Therefore every member of a community who is capable of thinking straight rests under an obligation imposed by nature to learn how he is related to his fellow-men; he must act in concert with them or else he forfeits his rights as a social unit. And it is his clear duty to search among the results of science for aid in ascertaining what he ought to do, and what reasons are given by evolution for the nature of his vital duties.

Despite the growing appreciation of the fundamental relation between biology and sociology, it is still far from universal. That the latter science is in a sense a division of the former is more often recognized by the biologist than by the average well-informed student of human social phenomena. The layman in sociology too often concerns himself solely with the complexities of the human problems, and he remains unaware of the manifold products in the way of communal organisms far lower in the scale of life firmly established as primitive biological associations ages before the first human beings so advanced in mental stature that tribal unions were found good. Among insects especially the biologist finds many types of organized living things, ranging widely from the solitary individual—a counterpart of something even more primitive than the most unsocial savage now existing—up to communities that rival human civilization, as regards the concerted effect of the diversified lives of the component units. The student of the whole of living nature is favored still more in that he learns how the make-up of such a simple organism as a jellyfish displays principles underlying the structure of the whole and the interplay of the parts that are identical with principles of organization everywhere else. And all of these things can be dealt with in a purely impersonal way which is impossible when attention is restricted to the human case alone. Thus it becomes the biologist's privilege and his duty as well to place his findings before those who wish to understand the constitution of human society in order that evils may be lessened and benefits may be extended. He does this so far as he may be able in full confidence that the elements and basic principles are discoverable in lower nature, just as they are in the case of the material make-up and mental constitution of the single human individual.

A more explicit preliminary statement must now be given of the grounds for the belief that social evolution is but a part of organic evolution in general. Some of these reasons are not far to seek, but their cogency can scarcely be appreciated until we have examined the concrete facts of the whole biological series. Any human society selected for examination—be it a tribe, a village community, or a nation—is in last analysis an aggregate of human units and nothing besides. Its life consists of the combined activities of such components—and nothing else. Could we subtract the members one by one, there would be no intangible residuum after all the people and their lives had been taken away. When these simple facts are recognized, it is clear at once that the concerted activities performed by biological units cannot be anything but organic in their ultimate basis and nature; the evolution of such activities thus takes its place as a part of organic evolution.

The task of tracing out the history of social organizations of whatever grade can now be defined in precise terms: in simple words, it is to learn how the activities of the component biological units making up any association really differ from the vital performances of biological units existing by themselves. What is it that distinguishes a savage of antiquity from an American of to-day? The modern example is just as much an animal as the earlier type, and his physiology is essentially the same. It is something added to the common biological qualities of all men, some relation which does not appear as such in the life of rude tribes, that makes the distinction. And it is just this superadded relation that requires explanation, as regards its exact biological value and its historic development as well.

In undertaking this difficult task, it seems best to begin with the very simplest organisms that biology knows, working upwards through the scale to man. By this course the most basic elements of organization can be discovered without having to look for them among the intricate details of our own vital situation, where secondary and adventitious elements stand out in undue prominence, and where the impersonal view is well-nigh impossible. Step by step we will then work up the scale of social morphology, approaching in the natural evolutionary order that part of the subject which interests us most deeply.

Just as the construction of an edifice must begin with the fashioning of the individual brick and bolt and girder, so the evolution of a biological association begins with the unitary organisms consisting of single cells, like Amoeba. We have had occasion to discuss this animal many times in our previous studies of one or another aspect of evolution, and once again we must return to it in order to reëstablish certain points that are of fundamental importance for our present purposes. Within the limits of its simple body, Amoeba performs the several tasks which nature demands a living thing shall do; it feeds and respires and moves, continually utilizing matter and energy obtained from the environment for the reconstruction of its substance and replenishment of its vital powers; it coördinates the activities of its simple body, and by its reflex responses to environmental influences it maintains its adjustment to the external conditions of life. The animal does all of these things with a purely individual benefit, namely, the prolongation of its own life. While it is performing these individual tasks, it does not concern itself with anything else but its own welfare; the interests of other living things are not involved in any way, excepting in the case of other organisms that may serve the animal as food. Amoeba, like every other living thing, if it is to exist, must unconsciously obey the first great commandment of nature,—"Preserve thyself."

But its life is incomplete if it stops with the furtherance of aims that we may call purely selfish. Nature also demands that an Amoeba, again like every other living thing, shall perpetuate its kind. The mode by which it reproduces is ordinarily quite simple; the animal grows to a certain bulk and then it divides into two masses of protoplasm, each of which receives a portion of the mother nucleus. Sometimes by a peculiar process it breaks up into numerous small fragments called spores, which also receive portions of the parent nucleus. The most striking feature in both kinds of reproduction in Amoeba is the complete destruction of the individual parent that exists before the act and does not afterwards. It is quite true that every part of the mother animal passes over into one or another of its products, but it is equally true that no one of these products is by itself the original individual. So even the simplest animal we know performs a task that is not only useless to itself, but is completely destructive of itself, for nature's greater purpose of preserving the race. We can readily see why this must be so; there is no place in the world for a species whose members put individual well-being above the welfare of the race, for which the production of new generations is essential, even though the satisfaction of this demand should necessitate the sacrifice of the parent organism. We might hesitate to use the word "altruistic" in describing the self-destructive reproductive act of an Amoeba, because this word connotes some degree of consciousness of the existence of other than personal interests, and of the welfare of different individuals. There is no reason to believe that such conscious recognition of any natural duties is possible in the case of so low an organism. But the fact remains that the result worked out by nature is the same as though there were a definite understanding of real duties. Even this unitary organism, then, acts mechanically so as to fulfil two primal obligations, first to itself, through activities with individual benefit as the result, and to the race by the act of reproduction which closes its individual existence and inaugurates a new generation.

The life of this example, representing the whole series of one-celled organisms, is almost infinitely simpler than that of a member of a human community, yet it reveals the beginnings of certain characteristics of the latter. Here, it is true, the natural obligations in question are not like those which are ordinarily denoted social, but it is equally true that even in this most elementary instance a living thing does not live unto itself alone. It is easy to see the value to the species as a whole of obedience to the second great law—"Preserve thy kind." But a little further thought makes it plain that even the performance of acts in compliance with the first mandate—"preserve thyself"—are not purely selfish, although their immediate value is realized as individual benefit. Surely an organism that failed to live an efficient individual life would be ineffective in reproduction, so that from one point of view everything an animal does is tributary to the culminating act performed for the larger good of the life of the whole species. It is a nice balance that nature has worked out in Amoeba, as well as in all other cases, between the personal life of the individual, complete only when the final process of multiplication supervenes, and this process itself, which demands an efficient performance, even though this is destructive of the performer.

Before passing to the next members of the series, which reveal additional principles more truly social in the human sense, let us pause to note that already we have found certain natural criteria that belong in the department of ethics. Even in the case of the biological unit like Amoeba, which is entirely solitary and unrelated to other individuals of its kind excepting in so far as it is a link in the chain of successive generations, any vital activity can be called good or bad, right or wrong. Nature judges an act good and right if it tends to preserve the animal and the species; an act is wrong and evil if it is biologically destructive of the animal or if it interferes with the perpetuation of its kind. Again it must be pointed out that these terms are human words, employed for the complex conceptions that belong alone to retrospective and contemplative human consciousness to most of us they seem to imply the existence of some absolute standard or ideal by which a given act may be tested to see if it is right or the opposite.

If human ethics is truly unrelated to beginnings found in lower nature, something that has arisen by itself from supernature, then we must not use the terms in question except by way of analogy. If, however, nature has been continuous in the working out of every department of human life and human thought through evolution, then the criteria of the righteousness of the acts performed even by an Amoeba may be found to be basic and fundamental for ethical systems of whatever human race or time. This subject remains to be discussed in the final chapter, but it must be clear that we cannot survey the evolutionary process by which social systems have come into being without dealing at the same time with the origin and growth of ethical conduct as such.