A further difficulty has to be met by the theory of the development of morality, which is in a sense complementary of the initial difficulty encountered in differentiating the moral from the non-moral. This further difficulty awaits it at a subsequent stage of development when the extension and refinement of moral feeling seem to have gone on in circumstances where there is no room for natural selection to work. Thus it has been admitted that the feeling of sympathy, and the habitual exercise of mutual good offices among members of a community, strengthen that society, and make it fit to prevail in the struggle for existence over other similar societies, the members of which are not so much at one amongst themselves in feeling and in act.
But as benevolence and sympathy widen, and become less closely connected with a definite association of individuals, such as the family or tribe, and there ceases to be a particular body to the welfare of which these social feelings contribute, the operation of the law of natural selection becomes less certain. This law only tends to conserve and perfect the feelings in question, in virtue of the fact that the associations to whose good they lead are successful in the struggle for life over other associations the members of which are not animated by like feelings. The one association lives and expands, while the others are unable to maintain themselves against the encroachments of their neighbours, and thus fall to pieces. The law of natural selection, therefore, comes into play only when there are competing organisms struggling against one another for the means of subsistence and development. Not only is it the case, therefore, that the sympathy which aids the weak who are unable to take care of themselves, does not seem to be of the kind that would contribute to success in the struggle for existence; but the more general and catholic our sympathies are, the less will the law of evolution help to preserve and develop them—because the less will they tend to promote the welfare of one rival association rather than that of another. Thus the growth of really unrestricted sympathy with men as men cannot have been promoted in this way. The "enthusiasm of humanity" which animated the early Christians, the self-renouncing brotherhood of Buddha, the φιλανθρωπία (~philanthrôpia~) attributed to men like Xenocrates[111] who had freed themselves from the aristocratic prejudices of Athens, the "caritas generis humani" of the Stoics,—such feelings as these could not have been encouraged, any more than they could have been produced, by the operation of natural selection. For, however much they tend to elevate the human character, and to promote human happiness, they do not advance the welfare of one body of men to the exclusion of some other competitor in the struggle for existence.[112]
But, although the law of natural evolution cannot account, by survival of the fittest, for any progress made by universal benevolence, yet it may explain the value ascribed to the feeling of benevolence, when its object is the family or the community. Besides—as has already been pointed out—natural selection always implies an initiative got from elsewhere: it does not itself produce modifications; it only chooses out favourable ones and adds them together when produced. It always implies an independent modification of the organism; its part is to select the modifications best fitted to promote life. Hence the mere fact of benevolence being universalised is not in itself an anomaly on the theory of natural selection, any more than is the fact of its being extended from the family to the tribe. Only, the latter extension is one which it perpetuates, the former is not. No aspect of the theory of evolution seems able to account for an extension of the feeling of universal benevolence among different people or throughout different societies. This feeling has neither tended to promote the welfare of the race animated by it to the exclusion of other competing races—for there are no competing races whom it could affect—nor can it be shown that it makes the individuals possessing it fitter to wage successful war against opposing forces, than other individuals.[113]
Its result: shows the social nature of the individual.
Apart from such special difficulties, however, comparative psychology has shed a new light on the mental structure of the individual. The facts it brings forward show that the nature of the individual man cannot be explained without taking into account the relations in which he stands to society by birth, education, and business. He is, from the first, surrounded by, and dependent upon, other individuals, and by a set of established usages and institutions which modify his life; and he is connected with these in such a way that it is impossible to consider him as merely acted upon by them and influencing them in turn. He has been produced by, and has become a part of them. His physical and mental structure bears the marks of the same influences as those by which his so-called environment has been formed. He is cell in the "tissue" of which the body social is composed. This was partly recognised, it is true, before the theory of evolution had been elaborated. But the organic nature of the social union is confirmed by that theory, and erected into a scientific view of human life.
(b) Development of society.
Now the various sentiments which bring one man into mental union with others act with greatest facility when men are connected with one another by some definite mutual bond such as that which forms the family, the clan, or the nation. The individual's feeling of sympathy with his neighbours both promotes this social union and depends upon it. But it is characteristic of the theory of evolution to put the external aspect first—the social customs and institutions—and to evolve from them the corresponding sentiments and ideas. Not word or thought or power, it holds, is to be regarded as the origin of morality: "Im Anfang war die That." The whole composed of these units bound together by reciprocity of feeling and function is termed the "social organism"; and what has been called moral sociology shows the way in which the outward forms which express and embody morality have grown up and become part of it.
In this connection, the theory of natural evolution traces the process by which, from the rudimentary beginnings of society, the members composing it have gradually become more coherent amongst one another, related in definite ways instead of merely by chance, and more differentiated in function. Certain rudimentary forms—such as the family (in its rudest structure)—and the corresponding instincts are presupposed. And from this basis the origin of institutions and customs, political, religious, and industrial, is traced. In developing these various customs and institutions, along with the corresponding sentiments, the course of social evolution has had the effect of gradually bringing out and cultivating those feelings and tendencies in the individual which promote the welfare of the organism, while other individual tendencies, hostile to social welfare, have been repressed. Not sympathy and benevolence only, but honesty, temperance, justice, and all the ordinary social and personal virtues, may have their natural history traced in this way—by showing how they have contributed to the life of the individual, or of the society, or of both.[114] Through the operation of purely natural laws, the wicked are "cut off from the earth," while the "perfect remain in it" and leave their possessions to their children. This is an obvious result of natural selection. For those communities are always fittest to survive in which each member, in feeling and in act, is most at one with the whole. The tendency of evolution seems to be to produce not merely an ideal but an actual identification of individual and social interests, in which each man finds his own good in that of the state.