I have reserved to the close that biological principle which has been most often and most seriously misapplied in sociology and politics—the struggle for existence. Never was the proverb about the Devil’s quoting Scripture better exemplified than in this matter. This fundamental idea of Darwin’s has been used as justification for three totally different and indeed incompatible political doctrines. In England, it has served chiefly to bolster up laissez-faire individualism and free competition. In Germany in the years immediately succeeding the publication of the Origin of Species, it was seized upon by the Socialists as implying equal opportunity for all as against feudalism or hereditary aristocracy. Later in the same country (and to a certain extent elsewhere) it was abundantly employed as a theoretical support for militarism.
As a matter of fact, the use of it as sole principle governing the interrelation of biological units is wholly unjustified. As has been shown by a number of writers, among whom may especially be mentioned Darwin himself, Ritchie in his Darwinism and Politics, and Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid, the struggle for existence is only one of two possibilities in this relationship: the other is that of co-operation, of mutual aid, which is especially well marked in the building up of higher-grade units from a multiplicity of smaller lower-grade ones. Two of the most important steps in the whole evolutionary process have been based on the co-operation of units—the origin of multicellular from unicellular organisms, and the development of true man, with his social life, from his pre-human ancestor. It is also prominent in the lives of many species of the highest groups—insects, mammals, and birds: witness the ants and bees, the rook, the wild dog, the elephant, the baboon. In fact, once the bodily specialization of units has reached a certain pitch, progress, as we have seen, is only possible through mental development, and this in the great majority of cases brings about aggregation into some sort of community, held together by mental bonds.
Besides aggregation of similar units, there has frequently been co-operation between units of unlike character and origin—witness symbiosis, as in lichens; the relation between many insects and flowers; the formation of flocks consisting of two or more species, as with jackdaws and rooks, and many other cases.
Competition and co-operation both occur throughout the whole of evolution: but co-operation comes to play an ever more considerable part in higher forms. In lower organisms enormous overproduction is of no great consequence; their organization is simple, and, given favourable conditions, they can turn inorganic matter into their own specific substance at a great rate. But higher forms are more complex, more delicately balanced, and longer lived. Accordingly, waste of life is of greater consequence to them, and methods by which a struggle on the grand scale can be minimized tend to be more and more adopted. We find regularly, for instance, a reduction of the number of offspring in higher groups together with greater parental care.
Thus co-operation, for still fresh reasons, is biologically important for the higher groups. The problem is becoming increasingly pressing for the human race, since the time is in sight when the whole habitable area of the globe will be colonized, up to a certain level of density and efficiency, by members of the more advanced races. Biologically speaking, it is perfectly clear that some co-operative system, involving federation in one form or another, is the proper system to adopt; and that the “world-state”—not necessarily organized after the plan of our present highly specialized nationalist-industrialist states, which appear happily to represent only a temporary phase of evolution, but none the less an organic reality, a co-operative unit—that the “world-state” is not merely a figment of unpractical dreamers, but an obviously desirable aim for humanity. Kant, a century and a half ago even, had seen clearly enough that some universal society was a necessity for the unfolding of human possibility; and had gone further and pointed out that there were indications of a movement of civilization in that direction. In our time, this movement has been retarded by the extraordinary and mushroom growth of Nationalism, in which to the average man his “Country” (really Nation) has become his most real God. In the last hundred years, Nationalism has usurped the place of Religion as the most important super-individual interest of individuals—has indeed in some sense become a religion. It is leading the world into an impasse, as do all incomplete and partial conceptions; but, in the Hague Court and the League of Nations, has already generated the seeds of what will in time devour it.[23]
To sum up, we may say that the crude application to human affairs of the doctrine of the struggle for existence, torn from its biological context, isolated and over-emphasized, is wholly unwarranted. On the other hand, a struggle does continue, both of the direct and indirect type defined by Darwin: and there is no prospect of it ceasing to play an important part in human biology. Co-operation is not, any more than competition, to be taken as the sole desirable principle. Panaceas of this sort do not exist, except to make bubble reputations and quack fortunes. Even within such a highly organized co-operative unit as the mammalian body a struggle continues—the different tissues are in competition with each other for food, and if the available supply diminishes below the necessary level, some tissues will be drawn upon by other more successful competitors, and the struggle will lead to an end-result in which the proportion of the various kinds of cells comes to be very different from what they were in the normal well-nourished body.[24] That is a purely biological example. In man, since the unification of the community is of a low order, it is inevitable that individuals and sections will continue in some form of competition with each other: not only this, however, but the additional fact that man’s mental organization reacts strongly to the stimulus of competition make it probable that a “struggle” of some sort will not only be inevitable but up to a point beneficial in any form of society. What is more, once co-operation exists, competition between the co-operative units is necessary to bring out the full efficiency of their combination.
All that the biologist can do is to point out that neither the one-sided application of the principle of struggle nor of that of co-operation is biologically sound. But, as everywhere else in human conduct, after the broad principles have been grasped, success lies always in a delicate, continuous adjustment of conflicting claims, in what one may call a personal conscious effort. Struggle is universal: but by itself it can only lead to a certain stage of evolutionary progress.
The half-baked moralist may lay down the law about right and wrong with the most positive assurance; but, by not paying attention to the necessity for sweet reasonableness, give-and-take, unselfishness, for thought about the thousand and one details of daily conduct, he may be making himself and his wife thoroughly unhappy, ruining his family’s chances, and, as a matter of fact, be thoroughly immoral without once suspecting it.
It is in a very similar way that the militarist, for instance, fortifying himself in the doctrine of the struggle for existence with what he regards as an impregnable sanction for his theories, is in reality acting immorally because not attempting to envisage the whole problem.
There is one very interesting evolutionary point which well illustrates the difference between pure biology and pure sociology, and yet emphasizes the natural connection between the two. Once again it has a connection with the greater flexibility of human mind. As we have seen, in the lowest animals behaviour is for the most part unvarying, hereditarily determined: the organism is capable of a number of definite reactions, and if these do not suffice to extricate it from difficulties, it perishes. The first step towards gaining is the power of learning. “Once bitten, twice shy” is applicable to all higher vertebrates; and it is not only the burnt child who dreads the fire (although a study of moths and candles will convince us that “Lepidopteran” cannot be substituted as subject of the proverb).