Civilisation, then, tends from the first to put an end to that elimination of the less fit individuals by the severities of Nature which we call natural selection; and, as soon as it has passed beyond its earliest stages, it brings to an end also the mortal conflicts of social groups and the consequent group selection, which was in all probability a main factor of racial progress in the prehistoric period. It abolishes also at an early stage the improving influence of sexual selection, which was probably the third principal condition of the development of the higher powers of mankind.
Civilisation replaces these modes of selection, which make for improvement of the racial qualities of peoples, by a number of modes of social selection, nearly all of which must have been, so far as we can see, negative or reversed selections—that is, selections making for deterioration of the mental qualities of the civilised peoples. In place of natural selection, group selection, and sexual selection, we have had at work, within each people in increasing degrees, various forms of social selection—military selection, selection by the towns, selection by the church, political selection with its exiles and its colonial system, and lastly economic selection, which has become exceedingly influential in recent years among ourselves. And all these, so far as can be seen, have operated mainly, among some peoples and in some ages very powerfully, to diminish the fertility of the best elements of the population and so to produce actual retrogression of the average intellectual capacity of peoples, and especially to deprive them of eugenic stocks, the stocks which were most fertile in individuals of exceptional capacity on whom the progress of civilisation and the relative power of nations chiefly depend.
M. de Lapouge’s investigations of the matter have led him to a very melancholy conclusion. He attaches especial importance to urban selection, as he calls it, in weeding out the best stocks. He writes—“There is no more agonising question than that of the exhaustion of our intellectual reserves by the influence of city-life. The public and our statesmen do not suspect it. But nevertheless it is the great danger of modern societies and especially of France. Of all the devastating influences which we have called social selections, selection by the town makes most powerfully for deterioration of peoples. Our towns are destroying all of the intelligent and energetic that have been spared us by the long centuries of disastrous selections. France has lost in the past almost all her dolicho-blond elements, and now are disappearing those of mixed stock and the best of the short-headed type. In all the continent of Europe the hour is at hand when there will remain only the inert and used up débris of our dead nations, pitiable remnants who will be the prey of unknown conquerors. Thus perished the Hellenic world, thus will perish the whole of our civilisation, if man does not make application of his knowledge of the principles of heredity, that tremendous power which to-day is bringing death and stagnation, but by the control of which science will enable us to secure safety and national vigour[138].”
It is possible that this conclusion gives too dark a picture of the tendencies of social selection in the civilised nations; but it does seem probable that with the advance of civilisation the tendency to reversed selection becomes strong[139]. We are at any rate compelled to conclude that it is impossible to discover evidence of any influences that can have made at all strongly for progressive evolution of intellectual capacity during the historic period; whereas a number of forms of selection seem to have worked against it and must at least have counterbalanced any factors making for improvement, and that therefore no advance has taken place in intellectual capacity but more probably some deterioration has already occurred.
The conclusion thus reached deductively is well borne out by the small amount of inductive evidence that is available. Such comparison as we can make between the leading modern nations and the civilised nations of antiquity tends rather to show that both as regards the average man, and as regards the intellectual endowment of exceptional men and the proportion of such men produced, the advantage lies with the ancient peoples. And the comparison of skull capacity or size of brain decidedly supports this conclusion. It has been found by a number of anthropologists that the average skull capacity of men of the late Stone Age in Europe was equal to, or greater than, that of modern Europeans. And in the main, on the large average, intellectual capacity varies with the size of the brain.
Our seeming intellectual superiority is a superiority of the traditional store of intellectual gains, a superiority of knowledge and of the instruments of the intellect, of language, and of the methods of mental operation by which knowledge is obtained, especially the mathematical and scientific methods in general[140]. Consider a single example frequently quoted to show the intellectual inferiority of the modern savage. It is said—Here is a poor savage who cannot count above ten without the help of his fingers and toes or other tallies; and we generally forget that we also should be incapable of counting above ten, had not our ancestors slowly devised the system of enumeration or verbal counting, and that, given such a system, the poor savage would be able to count as well as any of us.
The reader may be prepared to accept this conclusion as regards the intellectual capacities of mankind, and yet may be inclined to say—Surely the civilised peoples have progressed as regards their moral qualities throughout the historic period! Let us, therefore, consider this point separately for a moment.
Is there reason to believe that there has been progress of the innate moral disposition during the historic period? Here we are on still more difficult ground than when we considered the question of the progress of innate intellectual capacity.
The essence of the higher morality is the predominance of the altruistic motives over the egoistic, in the deliberately reasoned control of conduct. But morality in this sense is relatively rare in every age, and the great mass of moral conduct of men in general is the issue of mental processes of a simpler kind; it consists in doing what one believes to be right, in acting according to what one believes to be one’s duty; no matter how that belief may have been arrived at. The tendency to do what one believes to be right, which for the vast majority of men has always been simply the tendency to conform to the code of morals accepted by his society, has an innate basis which may properly be called the social or moral disposition. At present I am not concerned to define the elements of our nature which make up the moral disposition[141]. The morality of a people, objectively considered, is the outcome of the interaction between their moral disposition, on the one hand, and the moral environment of the individuals, on the other; and the latter consists of two parts: (1) the traditional system of precepts, customs, laws, in short the code: (2) the traditional system of sanctions by which the code is upheld and enforced.
If we compare, in respect to this moral nature, the members of primitive societies with those of highly civilised societies, applying simply the criterion of conformity of conduct to the accepted code, we shall be impelled to the conclusion that the former, the savages and barbarians, have in general the moral nature much more highly developed than the members of civilised societies; for they conform on the whole very much more strictly to their moral codes. But such a conclusion would be hardly fair to the civilised peoples; first, because their social environment is more complex, so that the bearing of their moral code is less simple and direct; it is less easily obeyed, because its teachings are more generalised in form and do not provide clear irresistible rulings for all or any large proportion of the much greater variety of situations with which individuals find themselves confronted. Secondly, because the code is a higher one and makes greater demands upon the self-control of individuals. Thirdly, because not only is the code less clear and direct, but also the sanctions of conduct, civil and religious, are generally less obvious and immediate; and the effectiveness of both code and sanctions is weakened by the co-existence, within complex civilised societies, of more or less rival codes and systems of sanctions, which inevitably weaken the authority of one another; whereas the code and sanctions of the savage or barbarous society reign absolutely and without rivalry, so that men are not led to question their authority.