Herbert Spencer

by J. Arthur Thomson

It is to be feared that Spencer deluded himself as to the success of his tour de force. For he did not show that there is in inanimate nature anything corresponding to the struggle for existence, nor did he give any instances where the degree of effectiveness of response is of critical value in determining the survival of competing inanimate systems.

After pointing out that the various factors in organic evolution must be thought of as co-operating, Spencer considered their respective shares in producing the total result. Briefly stated, his conclusions were the following:—

At first, the direct action of the physical environment was the only cause of change. "But as, through the diffusion of organisms and consequent differential actions of inorganic forces, there arose unlikenesses among them, producing varieties, species, genera, orders, classes, the actions of organisms on one another became new sources of organic modifications." The mutual actions of organisms became more and more influential, and eventually became the chief factors.

"Always there must have been, and always there must continue to be, a survival of the fittest: natural selection must have been in operation at the outset, and can never cease to operate! While organisms had small abilities of co-ordinating their actions and actively adjusting themselves, natural selection worked almost alone in moulding and remoulding organisms into fitness for their changing environments, but as activity increased and brains grew, the power of varying actions to fit varying requirements became considerable." "As fast as essential faculties multiply, and as fast as the number of organs which co-operate in any given function increases, indirect equilibration through natural selection becomes less and less capable of producing specific adaptations; and remains capable only of maintaining the general fitness of constitution to conditions. The production of adaptations by direct equilibration then takes the first place: indirect equilibration serving to facilitate it. Until at length, among the civilised human races, the equilibration becomes mainly direct: the action of natural selection being limited to the destruction of those who are too feeble to live, even with external aid."

Returning to our scheme of Originative and Directive Factors, let us inquire into Spencer's views regarding Variation and Selection.

Spencer recognised three causes of variation. First there is heterogeneity among progenitors which "generates new deviations by composition of forces"; in other words new patterns arise from the mingling of diverse hereditary contributions in fertilisation. Secondly, functional variation in the parents produces unlikeness in the offspring; those begotten under different constitutional states are different. In other words, fluctuations of nutrition in the parental body may cause variations in the germ-plasm. [In mammals there are also modifications produced during the pre-natal life of the offspring which are congenital in the sense that they are present at birth in latent or patent form, which do not, however, really affect the germ-plasm since they disappear in the third generation.] Thirdly, an organism exposed to a marked change of external conditions, may have its equilibrium altered, and the offspring may be influenced. "The larger functional variations produced by greater external changes, are the initiators of those structural variations which, when once commenced in a species, lead by their combinations and antagonisms to multiform results. Whether they are or are not the direct initiators, they must still be the indirect initiators."

But Spencer admitted that there were numerous minor so-called "spontaneous" variations, which could not be referred to the causes noticed above. He attributed these to the fact that no two ova, no two spermatozoa, can be identical, since the process of nutrition cannot be absolutely alike. Minute initial differences in the proportions of the physiological units will lead, during development, to a continual multiplication of differences. "The insensible divergence at the outset will generate sensible divergences at the conclusion." This is not different from the general idea that nutritive fluctuations in the body provoke variations in the complex germ-plasm, "still it may be fairly objected that however the attributes of the two parents are variously mingled in their offspring, they must in all of them fall between the extremes displayed in the parents. In no characteristic could one of the young exceed both parents, were there no cause of "spontaneous variation" but the one alleged. Evidently, then, there is a cause yet unfound."

Spencer's further answer was that the sperm-cells or egg-cells which any organism produces will differ from each other not quantitatively only but qualitatively, because inheritance is multiple. In some the paternal units, in another the maternal units, in another the grand-paternal or the grand-maternal units will give the impress. "Here, then, we have a clue to the multiplied variations, and sometimes extreme variations, that arise in races which have once begun to vary. Amid countless different combinations of units derived from parents, and through them from ancestors, immediate and remote—and the various conflicts in their slightly different organic polarities, opposing and conspiring with one another in all ways and degrees, there will from time to time arise special proportions causing special deviations. From the general law of probabilities it may be concluded that while these involved influences, derived from many progenitors, must, on the average of cases, obscure and partially neutralise one another; there must occasionally result such combinations of them as will produce considerable divergences from average structures; and at rare intervals, such combinations as will produce very marked divergences. There is thus a correspondence between the inferable results and the results as habitually witnessed."

In conclusion, after his wonted manner, Spencer pointed out that Variation, like everything else, is necessitated by the Persistence of Force. "The members of a species inhabiting any area cannot be subject to like sets of forces over the whole of that area. And if, in different parts of the area, different kinds or amounts or combinations of forces act on them, they cannot but become different in themselves and in their progeny. To say otherwise, is to say that differences in the forces will not produce differences in the effects; which is to deny the persistence of force."

Selection.—As we have seen, Spencer incorporated into his scheme the Darwinian concept of Selection, and sought to show that it could be included under the general concept of Evolution as "a continuous redistribution of matter and motion." "That natural selection is, and always has been, operative is incontestable.... The survival of the fittest is a necessity, its negation is incontestable."