Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 5/The Lessons of History and Evolution
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY AND EVOLUTION.
By T. W. Davenport.
We can say with probable truth that whatever promotes the comfort, competence, and happiness of man, in a word his well being, must be considered in the direct line of progress and the proper object of human endeavor, but when we come to examine his environment we find him beset, within and without, by enemies that compel him to expend a great part of his time and energy in fighting for the privilege of existence; and examining further we are forced to the conclusion that much of his remaining time and force is expended in useless labor or for the procurement of things which are positively harmful. In a large view and contemplating an ideal career of enlightenment, peace, prosperity, and moral excellence, his history appears to be a perpetual repetition and jumble of inconsistencies whereof no intelligence can see the trend or outcome. And of all his foes, himself is the worst, the most inveterate. That wise and noble woman, Frances E. Willard, condensed the question of progression when she said, "Our problem consists in saving man from himself." That has ever been the problem whether undertaken designedly by such superior characters as Miss Willard or the spontaneous operation of the postulated forces of evolution.
That every human being, from the cradle to the grave, is struggling for the betterment of his condition, as he sees it, (couched in Pope's language, "Oh happiness! our beings end and aim,") and that he follows the line of least resistance to obtain it, may be assumed as an axiom in human affairs, but that any or all philosophers can, from the heterogeneous mass of human history, lay bare the chain of causation from age to age and demonstrate an upward movement, is so far merely an aspiration. One form of government follows another; republics succeed monarchies and monarchies succeed republics; nations rise and fall, civilizations wax and wane, and along the whole course from the earliest dawn of recorded history to the present, the individual man has shown the same or equivalent characteristics and powers, the ancient as competent physically, intellectually, and morally as the modern; as great in his capacities and achievements in all departments of human endeavor, language, sculpture, painting, poetry, oratory, devotion of self to altruistic aims or to war, in all as forceful if not superior to the man of to-day. And where is the fitness of human institutions and the measure of progress to be found anyway, except in the individual? In him is the fruition, sum, and substance of it all. In him cultivated, competent, fraternal, industrious in all works helpful, is the acme of all schemes of salvation.
So, the question now, after all the centuries of toil, turmoil, anguish, and destruction, is, What form of government or society is best suited to and most promotive of general individual improvement and excellence? And as the individual can advance only by the volitional exercise of all his faculties in normal proportion, the answer is self-evident, that it must be one in which the freedom of the individual is limited only by the equal freedom of others. That is, a government wherein justice is established upon the predicate of equal natural rights—in a word, the right of progression; but that such a government is deducible from the lessons of history, is one of perpetual doubt and debate, for the reason that the data are too voluminous, too uncertain, too much omitted, for even the wisest and best to agree. Witness the battle between those intellectual giants, Macaulay and John Stuart Mill, after which the forces of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy stood as before. Indeed, the general residuum of such contests inclines to the dictum that the form of government best adapted to a people is to be found by experiment, which to a conservative means the one in which they are at any time placed. And this does not militate against the doctrine of evolution, for every state of society is merely a point in the path of development, to be left when the evolutionary forces compel an onward movement. The materialistic school of evolutionists of which Herbert Spencer is the head, does not admit of a spiritual or rational principle in the cosmos, but that every manifestation of life and organization is the result of the blind interaction of matter and motion and of course without design or purpose. Their essential and controlling principle that the fittest survive, is alike applicable to human and to brute, and being a law of nature is a sufficient warrant for anything that takes place. With such fatalistic people, what ought or ought not to be, is only an academic question; as a stimulus to action for the removal of obstacles in the upward path, is irrelevant; whatever is, is right; at least it is irremediable. Is it not enough to say that the tendency of such teaching is to deter human effort and therefore bring on inertia which by a law of nature produces decay? Of course the fittest survive. Who does n't know that that is a bald truism? and that the crucial question is, How to become fit? Is it by lying supinely and muttering ': Do what we may, the mills of the gods grind on regardless either of our aid or our hindrance?" That seemed to be the predicament of Edward L. Youmans, the ablest and most active promoter of Spencerianism in America, as related by Henry George in his "Perplexed Philosopher."
Mr. George writes: Talking one day with the late E. L. Youmans, the great popularizer of Spencerianism in the United States, a man of warm and generous sympathies, whose philosophy seemed to me like an ill fitting coat he had accidentally picked up and put on, he fell into speaking with much warmth of the political corruption of New York, of the utter carelessness and selfishness of the rich, and of their readiness to submit to it, or to promote it whenever it served their money-getting purposes to do so. He became so indignant as he went on that he raised his voice till he almost shouted.
Alluding to a conversation some time before, in which I had affirmed and he had denied the duty of taking part in politics, I said to him, "What do you intend to do about it?" Of a sudden his manner and tone completely changed, as remembering his Spencerianism, he threw himself back and replied, with something like a sigh, "Nothing! you and I can do nothing at all. It is all a matter of evolution. We can only wait for evolution. Perhaps in four or five thousand years evolution may have carried men beyond this state of things. But we can do nothing."
Evidently Professor Youmans had only a partial view of the synthetic philosophy, for to be synthetic it must include everything that is, not only man but his works, and such was the task Mr. Spencer had set for himself, of accounting for all that is knowable concerning human beings in their ascent from protoplasm, via monkeydom, to "beings of large discourse that look before and after."
He nowhere says that man's faculties and volition, though derived from the evolutionary grind, are not assisting factors in the continuous development.
The law of heredity is an incident of evolution and he finds the genesis of it in the registered experiences of the race. Conscience was evolved from the fear of punishment transmitted through the nervous system. And it would not do to admit that evolution had produced an organ for which there was no use, and thus bring causation to an untimely and inglorious end. As well say that an eye was not made to see, or a leg to walk, and that the use of them did not contribute to fit their possessor for adaptation to his environment.
Mr. Spencer was too good a logician to be caught in a trap like this. On the other hand, he finds use for the full developed conscience, and shows that malefactors are unfit and will not survive the ordeal of the social compact. Whether Mr. Spencer has been successful in following the order of nature and pointing out how things came to be, is a matter about which speculators will differ, but there is one consolation for those who are not content to sit down and wait for the Spencerian evolution to correct social aberrations, he could not make man different from what he is whatever his ancestry or the genesis of his being. We know that man's volition and consequent action can, and does, influence and determine conditions favorable and unfavorable to his welfare. He can go up or go down with respect to his normal, physical, or mental constitution. He can be happy or he can be miserable in conformity to the doctrine of evolution and without violating a single law of his nature. This may seem to some to involve a paradox, but we should bear in mind that natural laws can not be violated; that what is termed a violation is merely passing from the operation of one law to that of another.
A person basks in the morning sun and feels an invigorating and agreeable warmth, while the vertical rays at noon diminish his strength and give him pain, both states being in harmony with natural laws, though the latter produces abnormal conditions. Without gravitation our present material existence would be unthinkable; without a proper observance of it, destruction surely awaits us. This, no doubt, is one of the mills of the gods, but whether it grinds for us or against us depends upon ourselves. And passing from the purely physical to vital phenomena, the laws are no less imperative and the consequences no less certain, if not so immediately disastrous, in case of a departure from normal relations. There is no moment of man's existence when he is not subject to the law of causation, but this may not imply the kind of fatality that discouraged Professor Youmans.
Granting the Spencerian view, that he is an organized aggregate of consequences, the result of natural selection operating through all preceding environments, and thus an heir of all the past, still he has risen from the beast and become what he is, a volitional, intellectual, social, moral being, whose acquired faculties are not useless but are assisting factors in continuous development.
And granting that the exercise of them is within the domain of law and a resultant, everything is in motion; the world is full of promptings to congruous action by rational beings. The fall of rain or snow is a sufficient inducement to seek shelter or the falling tree to stand from under. The life within and without, the consequences of individual and collective actions, the experiences of pleasure and pain, furnish abundant incentives to orderly conduct. Hut man misperceives, misunderstands, and misadventures; all men more or less; some so wayward and eccentric as to encroach upon the rights of others, and therefore requiring restraint. Hence the need of government and the resulting questions, of what kind shall it be, how much, how administered, and where applied?
And although history and evolution are incompetent to answer the whole of them, there are partial answers in both. History can say positively, not the "eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth" principle; not the vendetta, not anarchy, not theocratic inquisition, not autocracy or absolutism. The lessons of history condemn them all. But as government arose out of individual transgression, ought it to stop with the punishment of the transgressor? That was no doubt the primitive idea, since negatived by the lessons of experience, but toward which the materialists have a strong leaning. Herbert Spencer was opposed to the free school system or education of children by the State, as he thought their education was a duty belonging to the parents, and therefore a private function which ought not to be saddled on the public. He looked with alarm upon all sorts of so-called paternalistic legislation, and published an essay entitled, "The Coming Slavery?" That it is the duty of every person to be self-regulating, selfsupporting, to fulfil all his obligations to his family and to society, and to take all proper means for accomplishing those ends, is more than a Spencerian maxim; it is of general acceptation. But he should have seen, as no doubt, he did see, that especially defective individuals whether incompetent or perverse, involve the general welfare and therefore become a matter of general concern, and in default of proper correctives by private means, of collective control.
Mr. Spencer would not deny that an enlightened social state is more promotive of orderly conduct than one half civilized and that repressive measures would be in less demand, wherefore the education of children and the general diffusion of knowledge is more than a private affair and becomes a matter of general concern.
But all experience proves that individuals and parents neglect or are incompetent to fulfil their obligations in this respect, and the question immediately arises as to whether those charged with governmental functions should be alike remiss and rely solely upon repressive measures for the protection of society? If reason is to be the guide, the answer is not difficult and must be in the negative. And while, as has been said, there is no observable difference between the historical ancient and the modern, as to strength and virility of mind and body, the latter stands higher in the social scale by reason of the accumulations of the centuries between.
Invention, discovery, experience in all the ways of life, scientific research, etc., all have lifted him into a serener and more reflecting atmosphere than his brother of the dim and cloudy past, enjoyed. He has outgrown the swaddling clothes of race-childhood; the genetic myths which held him enthralled have lost their potency; evil is no longer the work of the devil, but excesses in his own nature and of qualities in themselves useful and essential. And out of it all has grown the unalterable conviction that man's actions are not chance products, but the legitimate consequences of congenital conditions as affected by the physical and social environment, and the no weaker conviction that without a modification in some of these antecedents no reformation can take place.
Certainly, if the hereditary organization, the individual, the man, acts out of harmony with the society in which he is placed, there must be a change of something to bring him into conformity therewith or else reason has no place in human affairs. Modification, change, yes but how, where? These are the questions which society has been trying to answer from the first. Not, however, by a patient and methodical examination of all the elements of the problem, but in a spontaneous and impulsive sort of way, and upon the assumption that it is the duty of the individual to conform to whatever social environment, without any assistance other than the law and its penalties.
For thousands of years the chief business of government has been lawmaking and law enforcement, with their concomitants, pains, and privations, the lash and thumbscrew, the dungeon, fagot, and gibbet, all based upon the undoubted belief that the human will is free and that a sufficient punishment will turn it. This is one aspect of the case, that of considering society and its organ, government, as a homogeneous compact actuated by a desire for the public good. But the major truth of history concerning government, whatever its manifestoes, is, that it is now and has been for all time an ever-varying resultant of the contending impulses, passions, sentiments, and aspirations of mankind; an establishment whereby the dominant forces or classes in society control and exploit the rest. Looking at it with an optimistic eye," we think there are signs of improvement, of evolution if you wish, by which the masses are gradually emerging from the ancient thraldom of ignorance and superstition and asserting their equal and inalienable rights. Not that human beings are any more inclined to relinquish the possession of power and privilege than formerly; not that they are more shocked at the sight of cruelty, rapine, and war, but that they have a clearer and larger view of social and governmental relations and a more extensive worldfraternity or cosmopolitanism. Some have asserted a general and large increase of altruistic feeling to account for the liberalizing tendency of governments and peoples, but this is unproven. Now, as of old, there are philanthropists and moral philosophers who point and lead the way to justice, but the conflicts of selfishness urge in the same direction. As Lincoln said of politics that "it is an aggregation of meannesses for the public good," so we can say with equal cynicism and truth that governments in general are the representative heads of privileges, operating in the name of the State and yielding upon compulsion to the demands of those who have been despoiled. The English people have a liberal and, in many respects, a grand government, as compared with other monarchies, but viewing it under the lime light of history, it easily falls within the last definition. In England the conservatives call this popular appeal for justice "the ugly rush," and not strange at all to say, it is the great reformatory force in the British Empire.
Justin McCarthy, in his History of Our Own .Times, Vol. 2, page 149, writes: "Parliament rarely bends to the mere claims of reason and justice. Some pressure is almost always to be put on it to induce it to see the right. Its tendency is always to act exactly as Mr. Saloman did in this case; to yield when sufficient pressure has been put on to signify coercion. Catholic emancipation was carried by such a pressure. The promoters of the Sunday Trading Bill yield to a riot in Hyde Park. A Tory government turn reformers in obedience to a crowd who pull down the railing of the same enclosure. A Chancellor of the Exchequer modifies his budget in deference to a demonstration of match-selling boys and girls. In all these instances it was right to make the concession; but the concession was not made because it was right." Reforms in the United States come pretty much in the same way; by the remonstrances and disorderly demonstrations of those who feel the pinch of injustice, and of those who not feeling it themselves, sympathize with those who do and look with alarm at the encroachments of privilege in the guise of law. Keeping away from present politics, we can say that Shay's rebellion in Massachusetts brought about a repeal of the summary and heartless laws for the collection of debts, and Dorr's rebellion in Rhode Island brought an extension of the suffrage to persons not having the previous property qualifications, though Dorr himself was imprisoned for lawlessness. To say that all perversions in the name of government should be patiently borne and conformed to until removed by the powers and tendencies which brought them to pass, means simply that they would be perpetual, for the beneficiaries of wrong do not surrender except upon compulsion. We flatter ourselves that in this country the people rule and that the government is a ready reflex of the popular needs, but alack and alas! it is the same perpetual conflict known in all other countries and in all other times; let us hope a diminishing conflict indicative of the time when the establishment of justice shall be the earnest purpose of all men.
Silverton, February 19, 1905.