The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope

by Henry Edward Crampton

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Ethics is the science of duty. It is usually restricted to an examination of purely human obligations, and to a search for the reasons why men should do certain things and refrain from committing other acts. Like psychology and sociology, ethics began as a strictly formal and a priori system of dogmas which related to the life of cultured human beings alone. Again, like the sciences specified, it gradually broadened its scope so as to include the conventions of races lower in the scale than the civilized peoples who only were sufficiently advanced intellectually to conceive it. Thus the comparative method came to be employed, and in direct proportion to its use, more liberal views have developed regarding the diverse methods of thought and standards of social life and of conduct among differently conditioned peoples. Still more important is the demonstration that human ethics as a whole, like human faculty and civilization, takes its place at the end of a scale whose beginnings can be found in lower organic nature.

Those who have followed the account of social evolution given in the preceding chapter must realize that the basic general principles of natural ethics, as contrasted with "formal" ethics, have already been discovered and formulated. A biological association of whatever grade and degree of complexity is impossible unless biological duties are discharged. Human ethical conduct differs from insect and protozoön ethical conduct only in the element of a participation in the process by the explicit consciousness of man that he has definite obligations to others; and this distinguishing characteristic is the direct outcome of an evolution which adds reflection and conceptual thought to a mental framework derived from prehuman ancestors. The insect hurries about in its daily life as an animated machine, whose activities are defined by heredity; its special mode of conduct is just what nature has produced by selection from among countless other forms of living which have not had the same degree of biological utility. But man alone recognizes vaguely or clearly the "why and wherefore" of his acts that are far more instinctive than he supposes; he only is consciously aware of the bonds of kinship and economic interdependence. He looks about for the authority which imposes his duties and fashions his bonds, and conceives this authority as something superhuman, until the comparative studies of evolutionary phenomena reveal the true causes in uniform nature itself.

According to biological ethics, the fundamental obligations of all living things are the same, even though the modes of discharging them may be various. Every individual must lead an efficient personal life by procuring food, but animals differ very much in their alimentary apparatus; among other things they must respire, but some are so simply organized that they do not need elaborate organs like the tufted gills of a crustacean or the lungs of higher vertebrates. Every individual of whatever grade must also provide in some way for the maintenance of the species, but some, like a conger eel, produce enormous numbers of eggs which are left uncared for, while others, like birds, bring forth only a few young, which receive constant attention and protection until they are able to shift for themselves. Nature has no place for even a human community unless individual and racial interests are conserved, so that the greatest duties are definitely formulated—all else is secondary and less essential. Selfish action on the part of every unit is obligatory, but it must always be antecedent to endeavor in the wider interests of the race if the unit is a solitary individual; if it is a member of an association of any grade, then it must serve its fellows in some way. Egoism and altruism are natural essential guides to conduct; neither can safely exclude the other, and their antithesis sets a problem for every organism, which is to work out the proper compromise that will be most satisfactory to nature. The Golden Rule is taught by biology because it is demonstrated empirically, and not because it has any a priori value as an ideal ethical principle.

But utilitarian or natural ethics need not stop with the statement of vague generalities like the foregoing. In human society, as in the life of low animals, the worth and value of any form of conduct and of every single act can be estimated by definite biological criteria. The institution of marriage and the conventions of common morality have their biological value in their provision for the care of children; the safeguards of property rights enable the industrious—the biologically efficient—to keep the fruits of their labors; the establishment of formal civil and criminal laws is biologically valuable in a social way, in so far as such laws diminish the unsettling effects of personal animosity and the desire to wreak personal vengeance; the establishment and differentiation of legislative, executive, and judicial organs of government lead to greater social solidarity and higher biological efficiency. Thus unchecked individualism is just as wrong ethically and biologically among men as it would be in the case of insect communities, as pointed out in the preceding chapter; no one has a right to expect service or deference to personal interest from others if he fails to work for them and for the good of all. It is true that the social structure will stand a great amount of tension, but if this becomes too great, either a readjustment is effected, as when King John was forced by the barons to concede their rights, or else the whole nation suffers, owing to the selfishness of a few. In the war between Russia and Japan, the latter won because the individual soldier merged his individuality in the larger mechanism of the regiment and brigade and army corps, gladly sacrificing his life for the nation represented by the person of its Emperor. The single Russian soldier may have been far superior to a Japanese in muscular strength, and perhaps in arms also, but selfishness and greed on the part of many who were responsible for the organization and equipment of the Russian armies rendered the whole fighting machine less coherent and therefore less efficient than that of the Japanese.

In the evolution of ethics the recognition of ideals of conduct has followed long after the institution of a particular precept by nature, which is obeyed instinctively and mechanically by force of inheritance. In the case of the communities of insects, the results are the same as though the individual animal fully recognized the value of concerted endeavor. So among primitive savages of to-day there is only a vague conception of abstract duty as such, or it may be practically lacking, as in the case of the Fuegians. So also a growing child is substantially egoistic, and it must be taught by precept and example that the rights of others can be safeguarded only by the altruistic correction of personal action, long before the child can grasp the higher conceptions of ethics. If a human being never learns to do so, and becomes a criminal through force of heredity or circumstances, the machinery of the law automatically comes into operation to conserve the welfare of the community. Such a criminal may be unable to control his destiny, and may not be responsible for being what he is, but nevertheless he must pay the penalty for his unsocial heritage by suffering elimination.

Ethical systems are built around man's vague recognition of certain natural obligations, and they have thus become more or less complex, and more or less varied as worked out by different peoples. They must necessarily be much concerned with social questions, with morals in the usual sense and the more rigid principles enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have also become closely connected with religion and theological elements. Especially is this true in the ethics of barbarous and savage peoples, who accredit the "categorical imperative" to some supernatural power, as we are to see in a later section. The one point that comes out clearly is that the systems of conduct and duties have evolved so as to be very different among various races, and that in the history of any one people, ethics has passed through many varied conditions. What may be deemed right at one period becomes wrong at another when conditions may be changed; in medieval England the penalty of death was prescribed for one who killed a king's deer, as well as for a highway murderer. The Fijian of a quarter century ago killed his parents when they became too old to be effective members of their tribe. And so deeply ingrained was this principle of duty that elderly people would voluntarily go to a living grave surrounded by their friends; while in other authentic cases, parents have first killed their sons who failed to obey the tribal law, and have then committed suicide. We can see how nature and necessity would institute a law requiring such conduct where a tribe must carry on almost incessant warfare and where the available food supplies would be enough for only the most efficient individuals. Infanticide also has been practised for reasons of biological utility, as among the Romans, who at first maintained their racial vigor by deliberately ordering the death of weak babes. But times have changed, and ethics has become very different with passing decades. Our civilization has resulted in a development of human sympathy as an emotional outgrowth of necessary altruism; this motive directs us through charitable institutions and hospitals to prolong countless lives which are more or less inefficient, but which do not render the whole body politic incompetent in its struggle for existence.

Nature then has itself attended to the development and institution of ethics. As we look back over the long series of stages leading to our own system of conduct the most striking feature of the history is the increasing power of self-control or inhibition. As a natural instinct this tends to prevent the committing of acts which for one reason or another are naturally harmful to society as a whole. What we call conscience is an instinct implanted by purely natural factors, and it unconsciously turns the course of human action in the directions of selfish and altruistic interests. Conscience, then, without ceasing to have validity and efficiency, appears on the same plane with all of the other products of evolution which owe their existence to individual or social utility.

Theology and religion involve intimately related conceptions of the world, its make-up, and its causes. Strictly speaking, religion is a system of piety and worship, while theology deals more particularly with the ultimate and supernatural powers conceived in one way or another as the God and the gods who have constructed the universe and have subsequently ordered its happenings. A religion is a group of ideas having the effect of motives; it is dynamic and directs human conduct. Theology, on the other hand, is more theoretical and descriptive, and its conceptions, together with those of other departments of human thought, give the materials for the formulation of the religious beliefs which determine the attitudes of men toward all of the great universe in which they play their part and whose mysteries they attempt to solve.

Defined and distinguished in these ways, these two departments of higher human life present themselves for comparative study and historic explanation. They differ much among the varied races of mankind, so much, indeed, that an investigator who approaches their study with a knowledge only of Christian religion and theology finds it difficult at first to recognize that the same fundamental ideas, although of far cruder nature, enter into the conceptions of an idol-worshiping fanatic living in the heart of Africa. But, nevertheless, beliefs that fall within the scope of the definitions adopted above are to be found among all men, and they must be examined so that their agreements and differences may be demonstrated, and their common elements may be explained as the natural products of a process of evolution.