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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24a

Lecture

page break

Lecture.

"Are [man] and nature thus at strife,
That nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear."

Tennyson's In Memoriam, Liv,

"This surely means that she intends—
Though fifty times we fail to find
The hidden meaning of her mind—
The next time to reveal her ends."

New Song.

It is now nearly thirty years since I was at Wangaratta, and it is with but few of its inhabitants that I can pretend to any acquaintance. I will not presume to say whether they know more or less of me than I of them. But some explanation may be due to you of my appearance here, because I am really no lecturer. I never delivered a bona fide lecture in my life, and I possess no special knowledge to warrant my presuming to instruct others. But I have something to say in sober earnest, in calling attention to conditions of present society, which strike me as being of grave importance, and at the same time generally overlooked. I shall propose remedies for evils, the existence of which," I conceive, has only to be indicated to be admitted; and if my proposals do not meet with your approval, I shall still be satisfied if I succeed in awakening interest in topics fitly described in the saying—what is everyone's business is nobody's business. I may be the nobody—but the business is not only yours, but emphatically everybody's. That it is transcendently important is even less my reason for venturing to ask your attention to it than that it is so generally disregarded. There are many far more competent than I am to treat of such matters, and if they would only teach, I would gladly listen and learn. Their silence, however, renders it my duty to speak.

I hope to be able to say what I have to say in less time than a lecture usually occupies. If you should not like my paper, its shortness will, therefore, be at least one redeeming point in it. But I do not think you can like it, unless you do more than hear it. It will be necessary for you to recognise the great importance of the subject, and the need of some remedial action; as well as to weigh and judge my suggestions to that end. I should therefore be much gratified if some discussion were to follow my paper; in fact I, never read one except page 3 upon that condition. I should consider it an act of colossal presumption to stand here to propound my own views without inviting question, criticism, and reply upon the spot; and I am convinced that no lecture, not even an exposition of physical fact or scientific method, can have a tithe of the value or benefit to any auditory, unless questions be raised and answered on the spot upon obscure points—to remove misunderstanding, not only of what has been said, but what may be supposed to have been implied or involved. Let me also plead for my own advantage. I wish to correct my own views; which I have never failed to do, more or less, by a discussion on a paper of my own. If it should turn out—which I do not expect—that we agree in everything, it would, perhaps, be very agreeable; but I am satisfied that much more benefit would accrue to us all by the discovery and comparison of differences, and the selection of resultant accordances—reciprocal ratiocination, in fact. It is thus in discussion of ideas—as in the struggle of species for existence—that natural selection and competition ensure the survival of the fittest.

Another reason for mentioning that I have never lectured except when the subject was to be debated on the spot, is, that I may have acquired a somewhat dogmatic style of expression, which among strangers may appear to require apology; I therefore make mine at once, though for my part I prefer a dogmatic tone. A man who has opinions of his own—pronounced opinions—is entitled to any hearing he can get, and society is fully entitled to hear them, be they good or bad. If good, to select them at once for their intrinsic value; if bad, that they may be refuted and extirpated as soon as possible; and that either may be done to the best advantage, it is best that they be exposed in the most frank and unmistakable language that speech affords. Dogmatism, when it consists in plain speaking simply, is, I think, a virtue. It becomes a vice only when offence is taken, or impatience betrayed at equally free criticism, and the expression of diverse views.

It is now many years since Darwin first unfolded the great principle of Natural Selection. I say unfolded, not discovered. For Darwin only told us what we mainly knew before. Everybody knew before that in a race the swiftest as a rule win; that the weak have to give way to the strong; that, as a rule, qualities are transmitted hereditarily; and that, in certain circumstances, species of plants, insects, or animals, flourish at the expense of others less fitted to encounter them. This, experience and observation had amply proved. What then was there peculiar in Darwin's teaching? How is it that, if he told us mere details beyond what we ourselves did know, there can have been any contention respecting it, or any opposition to his doctrine? Simply this—that he put it in a scientific form, and showed that what all had observed in isolated instances, is true universally and without exception. This is what constitutes the difference between scientific knowledge and knowledge falsely so called. Science is simply knowledge reduced to rule. Doubtless knowledge has been reduced to rule for thousands of years, and the rules, even now, it is constantly found necessary to supersede and change. For the first rules were necessarily crude and tentative generalisations; and the progress of science has since mainly consisted of the gradual elimination of supposed exceptional cases, and the consequent qualification or alteration of the rules. In ancient times no durable classification could be established, for observations were too limited, and there were no adequate records of others to make system possible, and therefore the old records of observations—such as those of Hippocrates, Aristotle, Hipparchus, and Pliny—have hitherto proved of far greater value that the theoretical page 4 works of systematizes like Pythagoras, Democritus, and Plato, or even Aristotle himself. This was so, in spite of the fact that the intellectual capacity of many of those ancient philosophers was—as I cannot but imagine—superior to that of any that have arisen since. Duly considering the previous state of science, I venture to doubt whether the intellectual equals of Euclid and Aristotle have since appeared. The subsequent progress of science has transparently been due far less to the transcendent genius of individuals like Newton, Cuvier, &c., than to the careful, patient labor of almost unknown men, who, not even dreaming of the ultimate particular value of their observations, were so thoroughly possessed by the genuine scientific spirit of confidence in general principles, that they allowed no single important observation, made within their knowledge, to pass unrecorded. Professor Huxley thus expounds the same idea in his lecture on the "Physical Basis of Life":—"Anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress has in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity." He asks "what is the difference between the conception of life as the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an Archaeus, governing and directing blind matter within each living body, except this—that here as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action." The selection of rules for understanding the various relations of matter and law, is now determined upon a really scientific basis; namely, upon that of the widest range of exact observations, and the greatest possible multiplication of instances. This is why Darwin is unanswerable. He affirms nothing which he does not support—not only by a multitude of his own observations of unrivalled minuteness, but also by an enormous mass of the observations of others; and he patiently weaves the whole into a web of proof that is absolutely impregnable.

But the age produced Darwin. Had Darwin appeared before humanity had arrived at a condition in which appreciation of general principles was possible, his doctrine would not have met with wide acceptance. Darwin did not create—though he has helped to confirm—the capacity to recognise and admit general principles. It had "growed" like Topsy. Darwin took advantage of it and fed it, but he only partially satisfied the demand. The present age will produce hosts of Darwins who will meet with due and increasing appreciation. Everyone has insensibly imbibed, more or less, of this spirit of confidence in general principles, or Darwin would not be appreciated as he is. This spirit now permeates all society, and no one is exempt from its absorbing influence; no—not even Darwin's most strenuous and bitter opponents. For I do not forget that Darwin meets with detraction and opposition. That was to be expected. The intellects of men are as various as their conditions, and many seem to have been born but to struggle impotently against the current which sweeps them away. Huxley says of them, "The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. page 5 The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom." The great shadow will soon pass, and their fear and alarm prove bat idle superstition. They must await the return of light, whether patiently or not, and they, or their successors, will at last discern that man's moral nature has only passed through a necessary phase of the process of evolution, and that in so far as they have vainly endeavored to obstruct its free exercise and development, so far they have wasted their own energies and demonstrated the futility of their opposition. Have we not already learned to perceive how fact extinguishes fable? and that the imputation to our innocent parents—as faults—of the errors by which alone the knowledge of good and evil could be achieved for us, is but a relic of the primitive ignorance which was inseparable from their condition? The inexhaustible fruit of the allegorical tree of paradise is ever before us, and in the interest of our children and our grandchildren it is demanded of us that we pluck all within our reach; and defraud them not of any of their inheritance in the ever-ripening harvest. Thus—I rather invert the tenor of the old story of Eden, but surely we have now arrived at a stage of moral perception where we cannot hesitate to decide that our highest ideal of goodness could not prohibit the knowledge of good and evil to man; or impute sin to those who, wanting that knowledge, could not know—and certainly could not do—better than seize upon it; we feel that the spirit of truth could not foretell a result which did not follow;* we now know also that it could not be any representative of evil that helped man to that invaluable and indispensable knowledge, and that accurately foretold the absoute truth respecting the results.* Could man ever have become a moral being? without the knowledge of good and evil? It cannot be but that the characters or their acts in the old fable are entirely transposed, my enquiry may yet throw some light upon the reason.

Darwin, however, has conclusively explained the universality of the law of natural selection just as Newton expounded the law of gravitation. I do not propose to dwell upon the doctrine of natural selection, further than may be desirable for exhibiting in relief or contrast the distinctive characteristics of artificial selection. For this purpose a short statement of the former is necessary.

1st. Variation of progeny from the parental type is a certain rule without any exception whatever. Whether in a state of nature or of civilization, no progeny is the exact copy of the parent, nor are any two off-pring of the same parents exactly alike. Hence, necessary—though minute—variation. The duplication of parentage, and the diversity of their characteristics, ensure this certain perpetual variation, which is the broad basis of the doctrine of natural selection; and as this variation, however slight, occurs in every generation, the ultimate amount of it must be simply a question of time,

* Gen. ii., 17.

* Gen. iii., 4 5, 22.

Note.—This interpretation accords best with the rational view that the Serpent was recognised as the superior benevolent deity when the story was first written, and that that story was subsequently embellished or distorted to suit after innovations. The Bible plainly tells us that the Jews worshipped the Serpent (which was the emblem of cunning as well as eternity) from moses time (Numbers xxx., 9.) till H sekiab's. (2 Kings, xviii., 4.) Would a good being malevolently prohibit the knowledge of good and evil; impotently curse man and the serpent, and long after send deadly serpents among the people? No! The success, the truthfulness (Gen., iii., 4 5, and iv., 22.) and beneficence of the Serpent of Gene-is justify this conclusion; the defeat, the falsehood, (Gen., ii. 17) and the malevolenee attributed to the Deity, forbid the contrary ordinary, but impious interpretation.

page 6 of which past eternity furnishes half an infinity. The question thus becomes simply one of arithmetic. As one is to infinity so is the variation of one child from its parent to the aggregate variations or differences in the whole organic kingdom.

2nd. All species are enormously prolific, far beyond their necessities for per-petuation, though throughout Nature one kind of organism preys upon another, and in fact many kinds form the staple sustenance of others. The proportion of seeds which germinate is almost infinitely small; of those which do germinate, a vast proportion never attain maturity; while enormous quantities exist but to be devoured. Yet the production is more than ample. Natural selection simply determines which individuals among these enormous masses of beings or plants are best fitted to survive and which to be obliterated; and by such plain processes as these. The swiftest and most agile escape pursuit; the slowest are exterminated. The strongest secure the most and best food; the most hardy atone survive privation, and beget offspring like themselves. It is plain also that when any species increases largely in number, its means of sustenance must become less in proportion. In the consequent competition for a share, the weakest are starved out, and the species is continued by those only which are the strongest and best suited to survive. By this the species is benefited in competition with others, and this constitutes Natural Selection. In fact variation is so universally the rule, that the wonder would rather be that species are so persistent, but—that like can bat produce like; and that also, in spite of constant divergence, there is also a constant tendency towards mediocrity and the original type.

For as every offspring proceeds from two parents slightly differing from each other, the tendency of their conjunction is to produce a mean in all points of difference, and to exaggerate only those of mutual resemblance. Such of those points of resemblance of two parents as are exaggerated beyond the typical average, and conduce to the greater prosperity and multiplication of the specks,—become more exaggerated in their posterity and tend in time to form varieties, of which, however, those only survive; to the existence, of which surrounding conditions are most favorable. The general tendency to a mean is of coarse calculated to perpetuate the species intact, provided surrounding conditions remain unaltered (which they never do) or favorable. Thus notwithstanding constant slight variations of individual progeny, the tendency is still towards persistence, of the normal type, and hence Natural Selection can produce distinct varieties of species, solely in very protracted periods of time. The doctrine of Natural Selection requires therefore again, nothing but the application of the simplest principles of arithmetic to the most extensively verified facts. As the one acorn—which out of all that fall from an oak in a season, fructifies and becomes a tree,—is to the millions which perish, so is a successful, naturally selected variation to the millions exterminated by inherent inferiority or unfavorable conditions. If the whole theory of evolution is also involved in these established premises, it behoves those whom it offends to accept it or show cause for their opposition. It seems to me that they might as well dispute that they themselves hive passed—like every other organism—through all the gradations of form and growth between a simple cell and a human moral being.

The practice by man of artificial selection adds experimental demonstration to historical and arithmetical proof, and hastens the results enormously—by restricting propagation to parents—selected as exhibiting the same desired points of resemblance, and preventing reversion of page 7 their progeny to the original type, by discarding in successive generations all those individuals who do not inherit them in sufficient exaggeration, and also by maintaining such general surrounding conditions as favor the development of the selected variation. But the actual process of variation cannot be hastened. The moment this is attempted, sterility or hybridity prevents too sudden a variation. The development, in time, of each individual organism passes through stages microcosmically representative of the slow gradual changes through which the race has come through cosmical ages, exhibiting a brief epitome of its past history; and how could two distint histories be represented by one individual? Only—as we see it—by a collapse. Mr Darwin says, "on my theory unity of type is explained by unity of descent." (Nat. Sel. p. 247.)

I am less concerned, however, to defend or expound the theory of natural selection, than to make an application of it to human sociology. Natural selection has done its work, for probably many millions of years, in human development. Races have been produced, have flourished, and been exterminated. There is, however, strong reason for believing that some races have in pre-historic intervals; attained to a civilisation very much superior to subsequent conditions of society, if not in some respects even to our own; and we know that in historic time the progress of civilisation has been intermittent. We know that the intellectual condition of Europe in the middle ages was for inferior to that under the Roman Empire, and to that of Greece, in the days of Pericles and Plato; and that the builders of the great pyramid must have possessed some scientific knowledge, at least equal, perhaps superior to our own. If the Chinese have not retrograded much, they certainly have not advanced, while in India decadence is but too apparent. Its architecture is a thing of the past, and its astronomy is not only almost forgotten, but presents indications of belonging to a higher latitude, where it is now altogether unknown. We know little of the great mound-builders and copperworkers of North America, and of the early civilised people of Mexico, beyond the fact that they gave way before inferior races. The disinterred cities of the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates bear as heavy witness to the complete annihilation of their ancient civilisations as that which history furnishes in the case of Europe, where the millenium, which succeeded the advent of Christianity, may be fairly described as the age of social monstrosity and intellectual abortion. No phœnix arose from the ashes of former glories. In each case selection seemed to favor savagery, ignorance, and stupidity; and if brutal wars bad not tended to maintain some physical efficiency, the productions of the dark ages would seem to have been ummitigatedly evil. To the Moors we probably owe the materials of after progress. If something more substantial seems now to have been retrieved, that is, apparently, due to the vast accumulation rather of materials and data than of the knowledge of their use; to the almost accidental discovery of one little material advantage here and another there; each infinitesimal inventor adding his puny quota, and merely assisting to prepare and dispose things for the little further contributions of his successors, who added their mites to the aggregation of knowledge and its results, while really only struggling for their own existence. And it is plain that the greatest existing means towards ultimate general progress consist in the material facilities for recording all the minute steps in discovery, so as to make them at once the common property of the race, that no progress now made may be lost. The first great step, of course, was the invention of writing; but from what we now know, we may rest satisfied that ages intervened between many first page 8 attempts, and before any such thing as an alphabet was even thought of. The invention of printing, which has consolidated and established knowledge, was not altogether a sudden leap, though the results accumulated rapidly. The perpetuation of an idea by a physical record saves everyone the task of re-discovering for himself all that has been previously learned, and the general dissemination of the power of deciphering the records, now prevents the loss, from lack of means, of any inventive power to spread its little achievements. If one loses an opportunity, another takes it, and many a one loses by slowness what another, incapable of inventing, takes by mere quickness. Knowledge is thus now the property of the race, and the individual is almost suppressed. It is the work of nature, "So careful of the race she seems, so careless of the single life." It is as if she had work to perform and used individual men merely as instruments, and those as if of the smallest value too. One Babbage's difference engine, not only does more intellectual difficult work in an hour than an expert computer could in a month, but does it with a certainty, an ease, and still more, a guarantee against error which no human calculator could possibly give or possess. One steam engine is worth several hundreds of laborers, and is far more reliable.

So nature now may be regarded as discouraging war, not from care for men, but because it checks civilisation and wastes energy. Men are of no consequence in the march of progress, and almost as many valuable (or valueless) workers are drowned in rotten ships, killed by factory explosions, smothered in mines, starved by poverty, emasculated by wealth, or exterminated by special disease, as were formerly wasted in national murder. Death itself proves that men are not the peculiar care of nature. She discards effete material of human kind like any other, and substitutes more effective tools in utter indifference provided that her unceasing work be done.

Is not this the universal law? Nature everywhere teems with life, the function of its possessor being—to subsist upon, or become the food of others. One kind is preyed upon by another, that other forms only sustenance for a third, and that third for a fourth. Animals and birds prey upon each other and upon whatever else is adapted to their digestion. Insects feed upon plants—upon each other—and upon us—and Dr Hooker has just shown the motives, as he says, of some plants that deliberately decoy, seize, devour, and digest, insects in return, and are fully as capable as man of discriminating and selecting appropriate aliment.* Man preys upon more than all the rest; but it is really in self-defence, or rather instinctively, in him as in all beings. Existence depends upon it. For ages his wild struggle was with the beasts of the forest, his fellow-men among the number. In civilisation, where he has so far mastered other objects, the struggle is mainly with mankind. The pressure of human population is the great antagonist, and a man's foes are emphatically they of his own household, more than ever at the very time that he has learnt the complete identity of his own interest with theirs. This is the problem of the age. To put the ultimate case: a man's children are so necessary to him that he actually creates them, yet for them he has to struggle harder and more painfully than for himself. All his social relations involve the same difficulty in greater or less degrees. It may be unfelt by those whose means are proportioned to their liabilities, but I believe that a large majority are in a very different position. Thousands in Europe, and particularly in England, are now daily overcome in the struggle. The solution of this difficulty lies rather in

* See Dr Hooker's address "On Carnivorous Plants" before the British Association at Belfast, 21st August, 1874.

page 9 the anticipation of artificial selection than in its exercise, and is, therefore, hot in-directly connected with my subject. But the remedy happens to be the same as one which I propose for other difficulties—namely, the general spread of knowledge particularly of physiology, and the complete abolition of monopolies and restrictions upon its universal study.

I have mentioned, as the most conclusive demonstration of the doctrine of natural (election, the fact that it has been put to experimental proof by man in artificial selection. Those who have actually and systematically tried the experiment are surely the best witnesses; "and they," says Mr Darwin (Nat. Sel., p. 82), "habitually speak of an animal's organisation as something quite plastic, which they can model almost as they please." They hold that the agriculturist (p. 83) is, by natural selection, enabled "not only to modify the character of his flock, but to change it altogether. It is the magicians wand, by means of which he may summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases.." Sir J. Sebright said of pigeons, he "would produce any given feather in three years, but it would take him six years to obtain head and beak." Mr Darwin adduces an argument of an undeniably practical kind, when he says (ib.), "What English breeders have actually effected, is proved by the enormous prices given for animals with a good pedigree; and these have been exported to almost every quarter of the world."

For precision's sake, I will just restate here the principle of artificial selection as I apprehend it. If a breeder desire to perpetuate any particular bodily or mental characteristic, he selects two parents exhibiting that characteristic; and if they both possess it in any degree above the ordinary average—below the maximum perhaps—of their kind, that characteristic will infallibly appear in some offspring in an exaggerated degree. Of these he then selects those which exhibit it most prominently to propagate his variation, and discards the others. It suffices in subsequent crosses to select a fresh parent with an average degree of the same characteristic, but of course the effect will be largely increased and accelerated by the Selection of parents possessing the maximum development of the special, desired characteristic. This is, of course, in strict accordance with i he arithmetical principle, that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other, and that if uneqnals be added to equals, the whole will be unequal, &c. I may add a common observation with regard to mankind that corroborates what I before stated, to the effect that in reproduction by pairs, there is always a tendency to a mean—that mean being of course a variation—in the progeny. That is, that in general, opposites attract one another; and we are often amused at seeing what appear at the first glance incongruous, but are really natural, associations of tall with short, dark with fair, fibrous with lympathic, clever with foolish, medium with medium, and good with bad. Thus the mean is preserved even more closely than it would be by unions without any such directly compensating tendency. The color of half-castes is an ample illustration of the tendency towards a mean; and Frederick the Great's success in producing tall guardsmen sufficiently proves variation, and the general amenity of human kind to the law of selection artificially applied.

The question I now raise is this. Does natural selection operate, as it otherwise universally does to the advantage of species, in furthering man's civilisation—his moral and intellectual improvement? I have already shewn that his progress in civilisation is at least unequal, intermittent, and even sometimes retrogressive. Is this from a failure of the principle of natural selection? Does it arise entirely or in part page 10 from its misapplication by man in the form of injudicious artificial selection? or—civilisation being the unique work of man, extra and additional to Nature—does its maintenance demand, as special an adaptation of Nature's method of natural selection—artificial selection? And is the failure a result of man's inexperience in its application, or in his neglect to apply it to his own case'? And why does he neglect this? Mr Darwin admits that a single clear case of the production, by natural selection, of a modification in any degree injurious to its possessor, would be fatal to his theory; extinction being the alternative (" Wallace's Natural Selection," p. 834; "Darwin's Origin of Species," chap. iv. and vi). And I am confident that this is true, and further that any apparent failure of selection to produce unalloyed benefit in the development of man is solely due to man's interference with that law—in artificial misapplication of it to his particular case. The result of man's artificial selection in the case of plants, birds, and animals, have proved a decided and brilliant success. The horses, the cattle, the sheep, the dogs, the rabbits, the fowls, the pigeons, the canaries, the plants of every description—produced by artificial selection, and the extent to which such of their qualities as are useful to man, have been expanded, and undesired ones suppressed —by careful selection, amply prove to my mind that the defect is not in any radical inadequacy of human intellect to discover the means proper to secure its own social and intellectual improvement, but is simply in the failure to apply to that object the same principles which have proved so strikingly efficacious when directed to the modification—for his own advantage—of other organised beings. My object therefore is to point out how this occurs, and how it may be remedied. The means I propose are certain and simple, and I am satisfied that their adoption will be a mere question of time.

It is an important but much neglected question, whether modern civilisation exhibits signs of stability as compared with more ancient ones which proved evanescent? The condition of greatest prosperity of an organism, is that in which it exhibits the most thorough adaptability by natural selection to its surrounding conditions. Those conditions are ever changing, and immobility or intractability in accommodating itself to those changes, means—that a point in its history has arrived at which natural selection is no longer competent to modify it so as to bring it into appropropriate relations with its natural conditions; and that it is therefore on the road to extinction. It may be as well for me to repeat, here that I think that civilisation—being artificial—requires artificial selection to perpetuate it, and that the cause of the failure of various civilisations was the neglect of man to apply to his own case what he found to succeed so well in that of animals. We can only account in this way for the evident relapses, into semi-savage conditions, from those of apparently flourishing civilisation, that have constantly taken place in various parts of the world in post times. Now one of the most striking features in modern civilisation is its apparent viability. Inferior races vanish before the wealth accumulating, and machinery employing European, as the light of the stars is extinguished by that of the sun. It presents no immediate signs of approaching extinction. At the same time its mobility seems scarcely equal to the demands' of its rapidly changing conditions. It seems to owe its vigour mainly to its unprecedented employment of material, tools, and machinery by which its working power is so enormously multiplied; to the fact that the invention of printing has secured the means of establishing permanently every achievement of man, whether of discovery or invention; and to the more general spread of education, which has page 11 to a much greater extent than formerly, brought those means of permanent record within the reach of every discoverer and inventor. Nevertheless the refractory constituents of our society not only impede the general march of civilisation, but they themselves live very hard, or die very hard, in the struggle.

The persistence of type is too strong for the tendency to variation. In artificial selection, which we well know requires the conduct of an expert, man has proved that he can materially assist nature by availing himself of the tendency to variation, which is his source of profit. In the production of useful varieties of plants and animals, he has reached in many instances the natural boundary to immediate variation—hybridity; but has ascertained that, as in his own personal growth he absolutely represents infinitely greater changes of ancestral structure, which it probably took millions of millions of years to accomplish, so it is impossible for him to dispense with the necessary element of time, or to lead the capacity for variation to encroach upon the limit imposed by inheritance and the persistence of type. In his social and moral development, however, he has as yet met with no such abrupt check to variation. In fact civilisation has as yet had no persistent type. Its late renovation has not extended over more than four or five centuries; a period which—judging) by previous developments, is of itself wholly inadequate to secure it against relapse. This being the case, our civilisation cannot be regarded as securely and permanently established, and it is evidently desirable to learn the causes of former collapses of civilisation, to enable us to avoid similar catastrophes in future.

I have come to the conclusion that the evanescence of former civilisations was due to two main inherent causes, irrespective of foreign aggression, which I think was of less importance. The principal one I think was the monopoly of knowledge, relics of which still exist among us, though mainly in the form of conventional restrictions upon its acquisition.

The other I think was the neglect to apply artificial selection to the human family, the natural and persistent tendency being to select the savage varieties only.

We know that the small numbers in Egypt, Chaldea, &c., for instance, who anciently possessed knowledge—guarded it as jealously as they cultivated it vigorously. They not only kept the masses ignorant, but taught them, not what was true, but only such things as they thought would make them docile, and subservient to their masters. They feared to trust the people with knowledge. It was, they thought, too precious, and so they lost it themselves. The monopolists were then, and always must be a comparatively small number, and when any circumstances led the ignorant masses to try and feel their physical strength—they used it,—knowing no better; knowing only that they had been vilely deceived and the victims of tyranny, they were unlikely to show mercy to those who bad withheld from them the knowledge of good and evil. Is not the prohibition of that knowledge in Eden an apt illustration of my point? Was not the story evidently written to deter simpletons from aspiring to break the monopoly? Does not the serpent typify a useful renegade from the monopolist's ranks? Is not the story of Prometheus a humanised edition of the same allegory? Are there not actually to-day advocates for prohibitions and restrictions upon knowledge? We know that allegory and parable were the staple form of popular instruction. When it was desired to inculcate, in the style of Æsop's fables, the changes of the seasons, the priests did so by teaching mythical stories of deified animals or heroes, who had been translated into constellations. Hence, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, into which it was found convenient to divide page 12 the annual revolution of the heavens, represent the twelve labors of Hercules, and those of Samson, the sons of Jacob, Tribes of Israel,* &c. The adventurers of Isis and Osiris, of Mithra, Bacchus, Adonis, Atys, &c., who were all born with the New Year, and died and rose again at the vernal eqninox, are relics of the devices by which the pernicious monopoly of knowledge was maintained by the mistaken protectors of it to their own destruction. The people having been taught these fables to guide them to seed time and harvest, but si ill more to intimidate them with oracles and miracles, sometimes rose in their numerical might and annihilated their oppressors. That might, however, wax merely physical, and could not free them from the tyranny of the superstition which enthralled them, and which they therefore only perpetuated; which also is now far from extinct. I am satisfied that similar circumstances have had much, if not everything, to do with every extinction or check to the progress of civilisation; and no more remarkable instance of it than the great French revolution has ever occurred. The antagonism of classes which grew till it culminated in that revolution, and which is a salient feature of the system, is slowly increasing day by day in England, and must eventually produce a revolution there, unlets means be taken to give the working class the knowledge which they want. From the destruction, with the civilisation, of its records, history cannot furnish us with particulars of all such revolutions, so that its silence is n odisproof, and the esoteric system is not yet extinct. The use of dead languages till recently, the superfluous use now of technical terms, priestly systems, freemasonry, and the subjection of women, are living relics of the evil system. The spread of education, and still mure the popularisation of science, independent thinking, and unrestricted discussion, are the great antidotes to the evil of the monopoly of knowledge.

The neglect to apply artificial selection to the human family I have named as another and the most important cause of the vicissitudes of civilisation. Natural selection makes fine savages, but therefore, by debasing the intellectual type, tends to retard civilisation. Man's civilisation is essentially his own work; and unless he practise selection, the modifications of his structure, favorable to the development of civilisation can never be effected. Plato and Aristotle were fully alive to the necessity of such selection, and wisely provided for its enforcement in their "Republic" and "Politics" respectively. The reasons for the failure in practice of Plato's "Republic" are not precisely known, but in any case it was not a failure of artificial selection in practice, but a failure—for any reasons—to put it in practice. The wider distinction now between the civilised man and the savage makes artificial selection more than ever indispensable, as without it, in spice of the great advantage of the more general education of the people, their status in civilisation rather retrogrades than otherwise. Their education certainly increases their power to contribute to the general civilisation, but quite as much also to retard it. If the poor are rendered more efficient workers, the pressure of poverty upon a large proportion of them is much greater, and it is doubtful whether their moral condition is not therefore worse. I say doubtful—but contact with civilisation multiplies ideas and promotes intelligence, without which there could be no morality. There can be no doubt whatever that the demoralising conditions to which the poor are constantly exposed, produce a generally deteriorating effect.

One great cause of this, which was unknown, I believe, to the ancients, is morbid sensibility, and consists in the undue subordination of the intellect to un-

* See Sir W. Drummond's Œdipus Judaicus.

page 13 reflective feelings. Reason is dethroned, and sentimentality usurps its place. This error is demonstrable, because it can be shown that a more expanded view of the consequences proves that the sympathetic sensibilties—if under the direction of the intellect—would realise a far larger and purer satisfaction. The wealthy classes are not exempt from the evil effects, but the poor are as usual the principal victims. To such an extent has this morbid sentimentality been carried in the last hundred years, that I think that all the advantage of the spread of education has been more than negatived. It has in any case been much restricted. It is not that the good and the bad are placed indifferently upon a level, when natural selection might maintain an average. Far from it. Our legal systems and conventional customs combine to select the worst specimens to perpetuate the race. Any exceptional success of superior specimens is effected by natural selection through individual vigor. But these are, I think, indisputably far below the average in number; so much below it as scarcely to affect the average, even if no extra protection were afforded to those below it. The main characteristics, which I think it is desirable to develop and improve, are health, vigor, self-respect, prudence, truthfulness, honesty, moral or social feeling, and intellect. But our penal administration and conventional habits both tend to protect and exaggerate the very opposite, and to encourage the consequent degeneration of posterity.

As regards health, the follies are as glaring as interminable. We lay embargoes upon progress in medical science, by prohibiting experiments upon the only suitable objects, and on the other hand the chief results accomplished are the prolongation of the agonies of death, and the preservation of those afflicted with radical defects, and dire diseases, to innoculate others while they live, and transmit them to posterity when they die. Thus shortsighted sympathy for one, results in cruelty and misery to many.

As regards prudence, self-respect, and vigor, our so-called charitable institutions offer premiums to the imprudent and the helpless, and preserve their evil qualities to posterity at the expense of the industrious and prudent, who are thereby more or less deterred from perpetuating their better qualities. Thus charity to inferior and degenerate individuals, is needlessly suffered to ensue in uncharitableness, and injury to our posterity and our race. Let the objects of charity be supported in the greatest comfort that those who sympathise most with them desire—in clover if they like. But are we right to suffer them to crowd the world with their inferior type, and double the severity of the struggle for existence, of the posterity of their superiors? Is this not a crime?

Next, as regards truthfulness, honesty, and moral feeling. The most flagrant errors of sentiment are shown in our treatment of our perjurers, forgers, thieves, outragers of persons, and murderers. But I need not test your patience now by dilating much on this, which is the strongest part of my position, and involves the most direct and disastrous effects upon the human race. I have already specially exhibited these evils in a discourse "On the Treatment of Criminals in Relation to Science," which is in your library, and to which I beg to refer. To give connection to mv present argument, I will quote from it two or three passages:*

"The present state of things is notoriously unsatisfactory, but the full extent of the mischief produced can scarcely be appehended, for it is of daily increasing proportions. A worse than foreign enemy is maintained by us in our

* Treatment of Criminals in Relation to Science. By H. K. Rusden. Melbourne, 1872, Geo. Robertson, p.p. 12-13.

page 14 midst, and favored with every advantage that oar civilisation can furnish. We endow the criminal—known or unknown—with every protection from the ministers of the law, which is accorded to the honest citizen, and actually assume that he has not done what we know he has done, until a certain complex method of proof has been fulfilled; and any loophole that a clever lawyer can find, is made effectual to save him from the legal consequences. But if, by force of circumstances, a conviction follow, the consequences tend rather to confirm him in his evil career, and perfect him in his profession. He lives, as before, at the cost of his honest neighbors, with medical, and every other attendance free; the most select of the society he prizes most; and no more work than is exactly calculated to keep him in health. He is far better fed, housed, and cared for, than many honest laborers; and he not only knows it, but proves, by returning to it as soon as possible, that he appreciates it. But this is not all. Exactly in proportion to his reward for his crime, is the discouragement to the honest laborer, who cannot but be made too well aware of the difference in their fortunes, on every fresh liberation of the protected idler, to whose support be knows he has to contribute! The only wonder is that crime is not more general than it is." These are the demoralising influences to which I before alluded. "It is characteristic of the criminal classes, that they are both unscrupulous, and improvident, and set at nought the restrictions which society imposes upon the numerical increase of morally disposed persons. An enormous impediment to the moral progress of the people would be at once removed, were convicted criminals never liberated to propagate their evil kind; the honest poor would be so far relieved from competition—at an immense disadvantage—with such as scruple not to avail themselves of means of subsistence from which honesty excludes; a part—more or less—of the burden of foundling and reformatory asylum* would be saved to society; the proportion of uneducated—or rather miseducated—children would be largely reduced; and the first direct step probably in the history of the world would have been taken to improve, or rather stay the deterioration of, the race of human beings. For it must be obvious that if those below the general average of morality and intelligence multiply—as we know they do—far more rapidly and promiscuously than those above it, the tendency must be to lower the general average. And that tendency is enormously enhanced by the consequently increased competition, against which the honest poor have to contend in living, and in educating their children. The highest authorities agree, not only that the majority of criminals are the children of criminals, but that the large majority of the children of criminals become criminals themselves. And this is only what might naturally be expected by those who believe in cause and effect. It is inevitable, by that law of the persistence of force, which is as much the explanation of habit as the cause of heredity. And for all these reasons, a criminal by habit should never be released under any circumstances." I now further say that I consider his release a crime against our children, and the human race. At page 24, I concluded by saying that "the permanent incarceration of all criminals would be a far better protection to society in every way than the current penal system; that it would tend to reduce crime to a mininum; that the cost would be much less than might be supposed, if not lets than the present expenditure;" (and experts assert that criminals cost society far more when at large than in confinement;) "and that by preventing the indiscriminate propagation of, and general contamination by criminals, a direct and certain moral improvement in the human race would be effected. Bat I page 15 have pointed out that a fatal objection to perpetual imprisonmant, and all reformatory institutions, lies in the fact that they offer a premium to the criminal and lazy, and misteach the honest poor that crime would solve all their difficulties and secure them State support. My last proposition to utilise criminals generally for scientific experiments entirely of viates this objection to, while enhancing the advantages of my first. It would offer stronger deterrents; it would reduce the cost; it would be more extensively and discrimatively humane, and wisely admonitory and it would besides secure, by the inevitable impulse to medical knowledge, incalculably beneficent effects upon the health, longevity, and morals, of the human race."

Finally, as regards intellect. The gradations between crime and lunacy are held by experts to be quite indistinguishable, and I am clearly of opinion that criminals and lunatics should receive indiscriminate treatment. We cannot—by any process—discern the particular motives of any individual; we know absolutely nothing of the strength of his temptation, or of his power of resistance. But we certainly know—as far as we can learn anything on the subject, that the acts of a criminal, as much as those of a lunatic, are the outcome of the history of his ancestry as much as of himself, and that every act of man, sane or insane, philosopher or thief, is in the last resort, simply a necessary process of adjustment of an organism to its environment. Thus the idea of punishment is as inappropriate to the case of the criminal as to that of the lunatic. But, when we are conscious that it lies in our power to condemn our posterity to contamination, and moral putrefaction, or to save them from those evil conditions, I think that to sacrifice such objects to the tender cultivation of beings without intelligence or moral sense, is simply both lunatic and criminal. Our treatment of lnnaiics is such that it often suggests to me the applicability of the household phrase, "A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind" But there is kindness and kindness. Kindness is good, if well bestowed. Kindness to one, involving unkindness to many, yields a large balance of unkindness, which is bad; and kindness to an object incapable of appreciating or feeling it, and involving unkindness and deadly injury to our childrens' children, is not only unkindness, but a crime. Must we not be half-lunatic ourselves to be blind to this? Ought not a person, once lunatic or criminal, and therefore with increased liability to become so again, to be precluded from opportunities of perpetuating his variety, and deteriorating posterity? Can we not discern our direct responsibility in the case? People shut their eyes to the fact that a human being without intelligence or moral sense, is not a human being at all—he hath no pre-eminence above a beast. I do not protest against the enormously greater and insanely extravagant expenditure upon lunatics or criminals, than is ever devoted to help struggling honesty and virtue. I protest against the moral and intellectual destruction of our children's children, and plead the cause of those who cannot plead their own.

Artificial selection may be considered in relation to individual action, or to state action. As regards individual action there can be little hope that it will be attempted, until familiarity with physiological and social science shall have conferred a larger grasp of general principles and a more expanded social feeling—than is now but rarely possible. But I have no fear of any deficiency in these respects ultimately, when the intellect shall have been sufficiently developed and restored to its due supremacy; when

To use Mr Spencer's phrase quoted by Professor Tyndall in his late address to the British Association, 19th September, 1874.

page 16 also the pernicious exaggeration of senseless sentimentality shall have subsided. For that we must wait. There can, however, be no possible doubt that the advantages to society, as well as to individuals, would be incalculable, if special modifications of mental and physical excellence could be handed down for many generations, without admixture of irrelevant tendencies. The family that first adopts and maintains the practice must soon eclipse its neighbors. As the cultivated English racehorse excels the American mustang, or the Timor pony, so, were we to practise individual artificial selection, would our mathematicians, engineers, doctors, financiers, and laborers excel all others, till they follow suit. A consummation devoutly to be wished, but not soon to be expected.

But artificial selection by the State is not only perfectly practicable now, but it is imperatively demanded for the security and preservation of society. It is not so much a question of improvement, as of prevention of rapid and disastrous deterioration. If we wait until the general spread of knowledge and individual confidence in general principles enable every one to see the necessity for it, the type will inevitably have degenerated enormously, and so much lost ground will have to be recovered.

I have myself perfect confidence that our civilisation will endure, that much ground will not be lost. Artificial selection is sure—at no very distant date—to be practised by the individual as well as by the State. No criminal or lunatic inheritances will then pollute posterity, and medical science will enjoy many more advantages than it ever entered into my imagination to conceive. But before that prosperous time arrives, conventional monopolies of all kinds must disappear, and the whole structure of moral science must be erected upon physiology as its basis. Happy he who contributes in ever so humble a degree to expedite this consummation.

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