III.—The Progress of Civilisation

In tracing the progress of man from a simple animal condition to one of high intellectual power or civilisation, two methods of inquiry are available; firstly, such historical record as is afforded by writings and monuments, together with what pre-historic evidence we may gather from fossil bones or implements, or other evidences of man; and, secondly, such knowledge as we may deduce from the conditions and characteristics of existing uncivilised races. To my mind the evidence resultant from the comparison of present existing conditions is less open to difference of opinion than the historic or pre-historic source. It is on this account that I have preferred to exemplify the development theory by reference to now existing types and conditions from the lowest organisms up to man, and by showing a power and action of development in those which infer a previous course of development ere reaching their present condition, rather than to base my position more specially on fossil forms and types which indubitably establish such development, according to some observers, whilst others dispute the conclusions thus arrived at. In man, however, with both these sources of inquiry at our command we may adduce evidence of development which it is impossible to controvert, and I think we may further prove that such progressive development has been incessant, and will, under given circumstances, continue to be so.

In considering man and the higher organisms by comparison with the lower and primitive types, we may take the greatest acquired difference as that of sex. And for this diversity of sex the Materialist may find a ready and natural explanation. In the lowest types of life, as we have already seen, the beings have the powers and functions of both sexes (i.e., impregnation and conception) united in one body, and these functions may presently be exercised either independently of another being, or reciprocally with another being. page 25 Now, it is a natural fact, and resultant from obvious reasons, that liability to conception may and does exist before the power of impregnation is existent. For impregnation can only be effected by an animal already arrived at puberty, while the capacity for reception and retention of the sperm cells exists, and may come into operation before the actual capacity for conception, which is also an attribute of puberty.

If, therefore, we presume a double-sexed animal at just this stage of its existence taking part with, or being forced to submit to an older and fully developed animal in what should virtually be a reciprocal act, we shall find as the result that the immature animal will receive and retain sperm cells with which its germ cells will in due time be vivified, while the mature animal will have received no sperm cells from its partner, and its own germ cells will, therefore, remain unimpregnated and unvivified. In plain words the first animal will have found exercise for its female organs alone, and the second for its male organs alone. And, supposing no further intercourse or exercise of the organs to take place, it is evident that the one animal will have fulfilled the function of a mother only, and the other that of a father only. It will also be seen, and I call special attention to this fact, that an animal might be forced or coaxed into the position of maternity before its own impulses or capabilities would have prompted any such responsibility.

Another singular natural feature now comes into play. Where an act is susceptible of repetition, the use of the necessary organ has a tendency to cause an increased ability of that organ; and the disuse of an organ has a corresponding tendency to produce debility or atrophy of that organ. So that in the next acts of intercourse of the two individuals we have presumed, there will be a tendency to the unisexual function alone being exercised. Taught by experience, too, the older individual may have learnt that by being careful always to select young and scarcely mature individuals it may secure what amount of gratification is afforded by the sexual act, without any resultant burden or incommodity of maternity to itself. It might, in fact, readily act as a male being, with the tendency to masculinity continually increasing throughout its life. And some of its progeny would inherit this tendency to be of the male sex only; as also others of the progeny would, from the mothers induced habit, have a corresponding tendency to be of the female sex only. With these tendencies once developed into page 26 fixed habits, and they certainly will so develop, the fact of division into separate sexes is accomplished.

Upon the incidents mentioned in the earlier part of the preceding paragraph two others follow almost as corollaries; firstly, that with the idea of the evasion of the incommodity of maternity once conceded, it would need the exercise or development of but a very slight amount of cunning or instinct to lead an experienced mature animal to evade the maternal function when trafficking with even a matured animal of less experience; and, secondly, that in addition to the induced femininity of the younger animal, there would be developed and perpetuated a sort of habit of juvenility which might explain the seeming secondariness of development or immatury in some aspects of females generally; and further, the general earlier capacity of parentage on the part of the female than of the male which is now existent.

And I think it may easily be shown that maternity is an incommodity sufficiently great to prompt to its evasion in the manner I have suggested. For in even the lowest organisms the fact of the organism being gravid, or heavy with young, will necessarily restrain its liberty of action or locomotion, and yet will entail on it a necessity for increased action in order to find the extra food for the formation of its coming progeny.

The habit of unisexuality on the part of either male or female, would be further established by the fact that with many of the lower types, both of animals and vegetables, the act of fructification once fulfilled the being dies. Those of my readers who have kept silkworms may have noticed how the male moth will live even for several days, should not a female moth be present, but that the sexual act once accomplished the male forthwith dies. And the fact of the female receiving and retaining the male secretion may be well seen in the female moth who does not begin laying eggs till two or three days afterwards, and who has within her body, in common with many other insects, a special cavity, called the spermotheca, for the storing up till time of need of the secretion received from the male. In the ant also, the instant death of the male after the sexual act, and the long-continued impregnation of the female, is a prominent example of this phenomenon.

I instance these things to show that I am not drawing on hypothesis alone, but also on facts and parallels for the theory as to origin of sex. I hope, at least, to have shown page 27 that there may be a perfectly intelligible and natural way of accounting for difference in sex, and of refuting the super-natural fiction that "male and female created he them." It is but one contradiction the more of the fable of creation that primitive and even some advanced forms of animal life are not of divided sex.

Among the evidences that can be adduced in proof of the some time general hermaphroditism of the progenitors of animals that are now of clearly defined sexes, is the fact that the rudiments or survivals of the organs and characteristics of either sex are found in animals of the opposite sex; rudiments of specially male organs or characteristics being traceable in every woman, as are likewise rudiments of the female organs in every man. Man, with other male mammals, has nipples, and there are known cases in which a perfectly developed man has given milk in sufficient quantity to suckle a child. It would even seem from recent observations in Germany that this faculty and power may be somewhat readily called into activity. In women, when the specially female functions have lapsed through age, the male characteristics more or less assert themselves; there is a distinct tendency to a more masculine type in feature, voice, &c., and not unfrequently some appearance of hair on the lips or chin. In the domestic fowl, a hen past laying will acquire spurs and comb like the male, and the habit of crowing. Again in the human being, if accidentally or purposely the specially sexual organs are removed, there is an instant and persistent tendency to the development of the surviving organs and characteristics of the opposite sex (as though these organs had only been kept in a state of dormancy by the predominances of the previous set); thus male eunuchs are beardless, their muscles less firm in texture, and their breasts grow and soften; and, conversely, in women from whom the ovaries have been removed, the breasts shrink and disappear, and masculinity of voice and bearing supervene.

A still stronger exemplification of this survival of double sexuality remains. As it is in the generative organs that the main departure from the stage of hermaphroditism has been made, so also is it there that we must be prepared to furnish crucial proofs if we would maintain a still existing identity of being in male and female; such an identity, I mean, as should do away with all distinctions other than those really existing in Nature. And it is precisely in those organs page 28 that survival can most clearly be evidenced, most celebrated anatomists and physiologists asserting that precise analogues or rudiments of every portion of the female economy are to be found in the man, and vice versâ.

I am calling attention at this length to the present and real identities and differences of male and female, because in the case of the human being the natural difference has been very much over-rated, and, as I have already said, man has based a series of artificial and arbitrary and unjust distinctions on that difference. I wish it to be clearly understood that I am but relating what seems to me a very probable history of the origin of sex. Whether my theory be altogether correct or not, we shall undoubtedly, by searching, eventually find out that division of sex has been as simply and naturally induced as any other phenomenon which was at one time a mystery, but is now clear. Such a mode of natural action as I have suggested would go far to account for all the good and evil of existing civilisation. For the difference of sex is certainly at the very base of civilisation as far as man is concerned: from this difference (as I shall endeavour to show) have arisen all the conditions of social and political life, all the working of men together for mutual and common interests, all the good that has been engendered by reciprocity of action and sharing of benefits, and all the social evil from which the world still groans, and which is but the resultant of selfishness or non-reciprocity.

For I take civilisation to mean the banding of many together to do that which could not be done by one, and the more entirely mutual and reciprocal the benefits received from such union are, the higher and truer is the civilisation. It is the custom to credit man alone with being civilised, but it will be seen that under the definition I have adopted many other animals may be included, some sorts of ants, bees and wasps among insects, while perhaps the beaver is the only other among mammals. It will be seen that intelligence alone does not imply civilisation, for though the elephant, the dog, and other animals have a high degree of intelligence, yet the cases are rare in which they seem to combine for a general good. And when such instances do occur, they seem but temporary and transitory conditions, whereas, in the beaver and the insects named the union is a permanent one, insomuch that fixed habitations are erected for the general welfare of the community. Indeed the word civis page 29 means a denizen of a city or State, and in all the animals I have classed as civilised the construction of cities or common wealths is an essential feature. Yet the art of building alone does not constitute civilisation: birds, squirrels, and sticklebacks build nests, though generally only for temporary purposes; moles dig passages and chambers, spiders make webs, and catapillars spin cocoons.

It is in the fact of community that we find civilisation; it is in what tends to and ensures the general benefit of that community that we find the good of civilisation: it is where the personal acts or interests of an individual are selfish, and, therefore, irrelevant or inimical to the general well-being that we have evil resultant. I know it is asserted by some sophists that all actions of man spring from a selfish motive, but we need not trouble much about such a definition; it will be sufficient for our purpose to distinguish between the acts in which a man may believe that his own well-being or happiness will be an eventual result of benefitting others, and the acts in which he seeks a personal advantage utterly irrespective of any evil consequences of such acts to others. Few of my readers will hesitate to call the former acts good and unselfish, and the latter selfish and evil.

Now, it would seem that the class of actions confined to self-interest alone had their origin as a natural consequence of the primitive unisexual and self-sufficient condition, and that the wider class of feelings and actions have been the eventual outcome of separation into sex—i.e., of the rendering each individual reciprocally helpful to, and more or less dependent on, the well-being and full life of some other.

For in looking for the primitive origin of man's power of feeling, passion, idea, thought, and reason, we must be ready to recognize and accept beginnings utterly small and infinitesimal as compared with his present powers; we must he prepared to find that the love of a mother for her child had as rudimentary and material an origin as the breast and the milk with which she suckles the babe. As we may already ascribe back the wondrous delicacy of finger of a Benvenuto Cellini or a Michael Angelo to slow development from such power as lies in the vague changes of form of the amoeba, so may we look for the birthplace of all the passions that a Shakespeare pourtrays, of all the wisdom with which a Socrates and a Bacon enrich the world, in the cravings of hunger and the sensations of heat and cold on page 30 the unisexual being, and then, with wonderfully increased impetus, in the fresh set of feelings evolved when quest for love was added to the quest for food. For many of the capabilities evolved and developed in either quest would become of avail in the other, the mutual action and reaction giving to the organs an acceleration and extent of development which they might not otherwise have attained.

In speaking of sensations of heat, cold, and hunger in the lowest organisms, no further intellectual action is implied on their part than is involved in the simple chemical, or even mechanical, effects of heat and cold, moisture and dryness;. some such action, for instance, as is seen in the rotifer, a fairly advanced organism, which, in the absence of moisture, dries up, and will lie, to all intents and purposes, as dead matter, even for years, but will instantly revive and resume full activity with the advent of a few drops of water.

A distinct tendency of animated matter is to accept such conditions as are favourable to animation, the distinguishing power of locomotion being developed and constantly exerted to this end. Nor can it be doubted that constantly recurring experiences of things inimical to the organism's well-being will cause even a mechanical tendency to the avoidance of such evil things, and will develop a provision from the remembrances of experiences, which is the stepping-stone to an intellect. We see the pimpernel flower close itself when rain is coming, that its pollen may not be injured by the moisture. Doubtless the mechanical cause of this is that some condition of the atmosphere previous to rain causes a relaxation, and therefore a closing, as in sleep, of the flower. We see men and women, when rain is coming, take an umbrella, that their clothes or their health may not be injured. They are warned by some evidence of their senses: a dark cloud in the sky causes a mechanical relaxation in the retina of their eye analogous to the relaxation of the corolla of the pimpernel, or they see a change in that further mechanical contrivance, the barometer. Why are we to call the carrying of an umbrella an intellectual act, and the closing of a flower a mechanical act? Men only use a further developed set of experiences and remembrances and mechanisms; the base of the action and the resultant are essentially the same, the avoidance of a condition hurtful to the well-being of the organism. Man's intellectual chain may be longer than that of the pimpernel, but the links are forged, of the same metal.

The fact is that every experience of an organism is in some way duly registered in the organism, just as truly as every touch of a sculptor's chisel has its effect in the image he produces. One result of this law—a result that will at some time be as clear to our understanding as it is now in many instances to our vision—is that the accretion of experiences produces, as might be expected, some definite change or growth in the organism itself, such change being, in point of fact, an organ; and so truly is this the case that it is by examining the organs of any living thing that we arrive at the knowledge of the conditions and experiences of its life. Indeed, we should not greatly err in calling organs materialized experiences. In such a way we may not only clearly explain the necessarily slow progress of development, but we may also show the very how and why of its existence.

And so the varied necessities of food and love induced the gradual evolution and development of the organs and faculties of touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, locomotion, prehension, speech; and from the experiences and remembrances attendant on their continual use arose by similar slow evolution all the powers that we call intelligence, or mind, or soul. For we may find a fully sufficient basis for mind and all its phenomena in such experiences and remembrances, such impressions, inherited or acquired—impressions inherited from countless ages of progenitors as unconsciously, but just as tangibly, as our limbs are inherited—impressions from our own smaller experiences—impressions which we acquire from others by living converse, or by bookly intercourse with the mighty dead.

It is the quest for food and the quest for love that are at the bottom of the two laws so clearly enunciated by Charles Darwin—Sexual Selection and the Survival of the Fittest. It must be borne in mind that this survival of the fittest simply means the survival of the types or animals best capable of living under certain conditions and contingencies; it does not mean the survival of the animals which man might have considered the most fitting denizens of the earth as far as his ideas were concerned. For further consideration as to these two laws, I must refer the reader to the works of the author just mentioned. I simply wish here to note that the quest for food, coincident with the survival of the fittest, and the quest for love, which evolved the principle of sexual selection, opened out two separate and widely varying vistas of impulse and action.

As already estimated, the quest of food involved feelings mainly concerning the self of the organism, and affecting only the inward personality of the individual; while from the quest for love, for intercourse and companionship with fellow-beings, have arisen the feelings concerning the larger world outside the individual—the feelings which have their outcome in parental affection, social relations, and civilisation. And in the commingling and interaction of these inward and outer interests we may find the source of all intellectual action. For, indeed, the reaction of these two sets of feelings on each other has been so incessant and so multitudinous that it is difficult, if not impossible, now to classify some of the many varied passions of man according to their original incentive. And the organs naturally bear evidence to this intermingling of causes and events, for the gentle murmuring of words of love is as delicious to the lips and tongue as is the most delicate fruit, and "the warmth of hand in hand" is more tender and delightful than the sunniest glow of summer skies.

In man, as in the male of many other animals, this inter-changeability of usage of the organs has been temporarily used to evil ends, for the organs of prehension acquired in the quest for food have been in some instances developed by the quest for love into instruments of outrage; so that, as already said, the young of the opposite sex have continually had enforced on them the function of maternity before their own strength or inclination would have suggested any such burden or responsibility. In looking at the means of prehension used for amatory purposes by male animals generally, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the maternal office has been a matter of compulsion rather than of equal and voluntary acceptance. In some beetles, the cruel-looking specially-developed organs of prehension are repulsively suggestive of the idea that conquest and not endearment is their purpose, and that it must have been a great repugnance on the part of the female which has necessitated such implements of brute force in the male.

It is true that in the course of time a habit of tolerance, or even of perfect acquiescence, has been acquired by some females, yet the habit is far from universal, and, perhaps, never will be so, so long as the female remains exposed to the capacity of having maternity forced upon her despite her own will, while the male is incapable of having the office of paternity enforced by outrage on him.

In the primitive and savage condition of mankind we have such evidence of the abominable treatment and outrage of the young females as to leave us without wonder that the result has been to make woman of a generally more feeble type than man, and to have induced in her an utterly abnormal and unnatural phenomenon from which men and even female animals are exempt. At the first glance it is pitiful to reflect that man's vaunted superiority over the brute, the greater activity of his brain, and the subtler cunning of his hand have for so long lent themselves to the oppression that has resulted in such pernicious consequences and in the still existent slavery, social and physical, of the female of his own species. The function of child-bearing has been exaggerated to an utterly disproportionate degree in her life; it has been made her almost sole claim to existence. Yet it is not the true purpose of any intellectual organism to live solely to give birth to succeeding organisms; its duty is also to live for its own happiness and well-being. Indeed, in so doing, it will be acting in one of the most certain ways to ensure that faculty and possession of happiness that it aims to secure for its progeny. But up to the present woman has scarcely been treated as an intellectual being. In earlier history her fate was entirely subordinated to the passions of man, nor has our civilization yet sufficiently advanced to leave her to choose her own life, or to develop the powers, the inclinations, or the individuality which lie within her nature; and in our still feeble intellectual powers, in our narrow sympathies, and in our stunted capacities, we men are reaping the natural consequences of our blindness and injustice.

Truly the tale of man's ignorant injustice will be a bitter one when unfolded; yet there is the bright hope and confidence that to know the wrong will be to redress it. And it is by intelligent materialistic research that we can alone assure such knowledge, and by the destruction of all religions and priestcrafts. For a main basis and element in the constitution of these is the subjugation of woman, enunciated in tacit and open assumptions and assertions of her inferiority and secondariness to man, or in hideous and insulting fables proclamatory of her innate baseness, and exculpatory of the condition to which the wrong and selfishness of man has alone reduced her.

Further and very conclusive evidence in favour of development by interaction of these sets of motives and quests is page 34 offered by the nervous system in organised beings. This system comprises the organs of intellect and of action, and divides into two main conditions having these specific functions. In the lowest organisms little evidence of nervous structure is presented beyond disjected filaments, but with organisms of more experiences (and, therefore, development) the nervous system becomes an apparatus of filaments combined with knots or ganglia. And with division into sets we have the accession of a cephalic ganglion or brain, at any rate in the more advanced organisms. The minuteness of many intelligent organisms (such as ants, bees, wasps, beetles, &c.) throws greater difficulty in the way of obtaining precise statistics concerning their nervous structure, but in the vertebrata we have greater facilities. That the brain seems to be a special outcome of wider experiences and motives is evidenced by its greater bulk in proportion to

Average Proportion of Weight of Brain to Body:

Fishes	1	to	5568
Reptiles	1	to	1321
Birds	1	to	212
Mammals	1	to	186
Man	1	to	35

This proportion of brain or mental power to spinal or active power shall be noted with the coincident sexual, parental, and social conditions, as follows:—

Fishes.—In general there is no approach of the sexes, and no indication of parental feeling, except in very rare instances.

Reptiles.—Approach of the sexes, and sometimes (as in the viper) fairly developed parental care.

Birds.—In general a greatly increased degree of parental care, with, in some cases, a steady companionship of two individuals of opposite sex, which may even endure throughout life.

Mammals.—Parental, or rather maternal, care has here evolved a special organ, affording food to the young; the degrees and conditions of parentage, and of sexual affection and companionship, vary greatly. In many birds and mammals a power of affection, outside sexual or parental feeling, has been developed. In animals which have been much cared for by man, and become domesticated, this affection may be so prominent as sometimes to override both the quest for food and sexual or parental affection. Instances are not rare of the dog or the horse who willingly refuses a meal in order to be with his master, or who will leave puppy or colt at the sound of the same dear voice.

Man.—The office and issues of parentage have been ex-tended through simple paternal brute force, with subjugation of wife and child; patriarchism, with attendant slavery; autocracy, with attendant servitude; limited monarchy, with attendant subjection; to Republicanism, with recognition of equality of individual right. And from some phase of these have arisen the vast majority of the existent relations between man and man. These form the subject of the further science of materialism called Sociology, and to that branch of the subject we must leave them, as also the wider discussion of the development of love in man to its grand phases of conjugal love, parental and filial affection, patriotism, and general humanity.

I need only draw attention to one further incident before bringing these papers to a close; the fact that the superiority of man's primitive culture over that of animals is mainly evidenced in three things—agriculture, the use of tools, and the use of fire, each of these having contributed its quota to the development of man's intellect. Agriculture would seem to be an outcome of the habit, common to many animals, of hiding a superfluity of food till a time of need, though there is, of course, a vast distance between the simple hiding of food and the sowing of seeds and the preparing of land for the purpose, yet it is not difficult to imagine that the accidental growth of a store of nuts or roots hidden in the ground gave to man the idea of providing for food in that manner.

Evidence of the origin of the use of tools is to be found in the habit of some birds in carrying to a height and dropping shell-fish which they have not the strength to break or open; monkeys, too, are known to break cocoa-nuts by dropping them. In these cases the earth itself is used as page 36 a hammer, and the unintentional dropping of a shell or a cocoa-nut offers an easy solution for the origin of the habit, which would readily spread by imitation and inheritance. The next step in the scale of mechanical progress is evidenced in some monkeys, who use a stone as a hammer, or a stick as a lever. Then follows man, with the adaptation of the lever (or handle) to the stone, and the use of sharp-edged stones (knives and axes), and with the advent of fire and the smelting of metals we gradually arrive at the whole series of tools and machines that may be found in an international exhibition.

There seems no glimpse of any approach to the creation of fire in any animal but man, though many animals willingly accept its artificial warmth, and prefer the food that is cooked by its aid. In primitive times the chipping of his flint implements must have afforded man many instances of sparks of fire, and possibly of undesigned conflagration, with attendant flame and heat. The observation of this may well have led some thoughtful man to turn the unexpected discovery to profit and to imitate it; and the evolution by friction of a heat similar to that caused by fire might suggest to him or to others the continuance and increase of that friction till flame would be the reward of their curiosity and perseverance. And all this would be the consequence of as clear and simple a train of reasoning as that which led Columbus to discover land to the west of the Atlantic, or James Watt to foresee that the force which could raise the lid of a teakettle could also drive mighty engines.

We do not now dignify either of these men with the title of gods, or suppose that they stole their knowledge from heaven, our times are already too materialistic for that; yet in a preceding age we have the invention of fire attributed to such agency, and the shrewd and patient woman who evolved the primitive art of the culture of corn and fruit figured as a goddess, whose name we still use when speaking of our cereal productions.

Yet, though we no longer dream of referring such inventions or knowledge to supernatural power, though we no longer place faith in fictions of the divinity of the inventors, we, as a majority, present the pitiable spectacle of still accepting such primitive and infantile explanations of all the phenomena that man's intellect has not yet had the per-severance or the opportunity to solve. The inquisitiveness and habit of research evolved in man's natural quests have page 37 led him to continually inquire into the origin and sequence of all the circumstances that he sees around him, and, where want of true knowledge has supervened there have not been wanting those who have offered all sorts of fictitious and baneful explanations. It is the evil of all religions, from that of Confucius to that of Comte, that they are, in the main, a compound of unverified assertions concerning man's physical and social condition, together with a series of self-styled moral aphorisms deduced from such assertions. It is only when the spirit of materialistic inquiry shall be carried into the region of ethics, when every action and idea and sequence of man's intellect and mind shall be accredited solely on the same terms as any other physical fact, that we shall arrive at any true morality, at any assured knowledge of living to the best for ourselves and for each other. Proceeding in this way we shall find that man's intellect will have power to find the solution of all that that intellect can suggest, and to speak of anything further is simply to speak of what is for man non-existent.

It has been my purpose to indicate somewhat of the line and method of thought which may be available in this further research, but each man must be left to travel by himself along that road. Sect and name-following can find no place there; open eyes for Nature's facts, open hearts for Nature's love, these will be our unerring guides to the ever-increasing knowledge, the ever-growing happiness, the ever-higher potentiality of life, and love, and humanity. Farewell.