Human evolution : an inductive study of man

Front matter

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Some ©pinione of the ipreso

“ The book is written hopefully and temperately, and it is well worthy of study as a contribution to one of the most pressing questions of the day.” — Glasgow Herald.

Preface

F all the ethical signs of the age the growth of the spirit of Altruism is probably the most marked ; it is certainly the marked feature of the la^t decade of the past century to all whose minds are neither stagnant through living for self, nor active only in the ability to amass profit and gain.

If all progress towards higher and nobler ideals of life start within the personality of men, it follows that the wish for the fulfilment of such must result in alteration of our social forms of existence ; since society has continually altered in the past it would be absurd to suppose that it will not do so in the future. The great question for the vital tenth of mankind at present is — ^what will be the constitution of the social forms that will evolve from out of our competitive commercial civilisation ? This book is one of many that attempt to answer this question.

In the writer’s opinion it is impossible for anyone to answer this question with knowledge founded upon inductive reasoning except that he has lived the life of the manual labouring classes, now no longer sunk in apathetic servility but awakening to the consciousness of their manhood power, or except

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PREFACE that he has been for some years in such close contact with them 1-^3-t 3-11 class distinction in mutual intercourse has been lost, ^the ^ationship simply being that of man and maa Then, and only then, when true friendship has been established, will their capacities, aims, objects, and aspirations be fully understood, weighed, and balanced.

To any Socialist who has undergone medical training the analogies between corporeal, psychical, and social diseases must appear most marked ; without such schooling the full understanding of pathological analogies, whether in the causation of disease or in the results thereof, must be difficult of full understanding and appreciation.

The science of modern medicine has been founded upon the study of man as revealed by all previous science bearing upon his existence, the phenomena upon which it is based being those especially laid bare by anatomical, physiological, and chemical means, as to his physical, psychical, social, and embryological phrases of life. Since social economy is founded upon the phenomena of the social life of mankind viewed through all previous knowledge, it was felt to be a natural process of thought to commence this book with the chapters bearing upon material, cosmical, social, and archaic man. These subjects are each so vast in themselves that it is impossible to do more than to refer to the salient features of each such aspect of humanity in the space relegated to them in this book ; the object being to appeal to the ordinary man who is unable to devote time for an extended and complicated study of any such question as this one here considered.

PREFACE

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It was also a natural line of thought to lead up to a cvursory study of certain economic phenomena and the question of Socialism to review our race from an historical aspect, leading up to a consideration of Commercial Britain from the wider aspect of ^^estern Feudalism which preceded it, that state of society being in its turn built up upon the still wider basis of previous Barbaric Europe. There are many excellent scientific works extant upon the present state of commercialism viewed from an economic aspect, as well as dealing with Socialism in like manner ; the final chapters in this book are merely meant to prepare the minds of those who have never considered them for a proper study thereof.

The last chapter is added to facilitate the study through tabular delineation of certain principles and statements made earlier on in the book ; it would be advisable to glance at it before reading the previous chapters, their understanding would then be rendered easier and reference more easily made when requisite for clearer appreciation of statements made. The historical chapters are chiefly founded upon Green, Hume, Freeman, and Taylor {Family History of England'). Confirmation of the facts quoted from the Fabian Tracts will be found by reference to the pamphlets in question, official or other authority being quoted therein for every statement made.

HUMAN EVOLUTION.

Chapter I. Material Man

Perceptivity, or action and re-action, the source of all knowledge — the element of human fallibility in knowledge — need of personal action and re-action to obtain true knowledge. The three great divisions of Nature — “ the naturalness of the supernatural.” “Laws of Nature ” are no entities, as more phenomena are sought out so must these laws be modified, examples in modern science. The atom — molecule — energy — formalising energy. Molecular aggregates — protoplasmic aggregates — characteristics of protoplasm— Life. Progression from simpler to more complex forms a law of nature — specialisation of cellular aggregations from lowest to highest. Mentality is potential m all protoplasm, manifestations of mind — in embryonic and immature — in higher forms. As mind develops so does the animal’s complexity, so does its power over Nature. Reasons of harmonious and disharmonical mentality — symptoms thereof. Cellular from simple cell upwards— tissue — organ — animal form. The highest animal form, Man, has an added creational principle — Humanity. Natural selection — natural election, former causes chiefly specific differences, latter generic. Functional activity precedes organisation, desire precedes function, disharmonical environment precedes desire. Organisation causes “ form.”

“Mankind was immersed, so to say, in an atmosphere — Nature — which, by contact, continually irritated the sensitive extremities of the nerves. Not merely the senses, but the entire surface of the body both e.xternal and internal, was set at work. The sensations imparted to it, bv reverberating in the brain, the marrow, and the nervous centres, there becanae transformed into tonicity, motion, and ideas ; and he (Dr. Pascal) felt convinced that good health lay in the normal fulfilment of this work : the reception of the sensations and their ejection in the form of motion and ideas — the nourishment, in fact, of the human machine by the regular play of its organs. Work thus became the great law, the regulator of the living universe.” — Zola.

HENCE am I } whither do I go .? what are the laws that govern and control my being .? to what end am I here .? chiefest of all queries, what am I .? are questions which in all ages have vexed and harassed not only the aristocracy of

B intellect, but to a lesser extent the ordinary average mind as well.

Self-knowledge tells us that the world external to ourselves is presented to our cognisance through what we call our sensations ; skilled knowledge tells us of the intricate machinery whereby we perceive, and that we so perceive, because we re-act on the outer world again. Of this reaction the characteristic beyond all others is that of change, of waste and repair ; when the percipiency of external relations is no longer met by corresponding changes in the internal relations of our personal and special being we cease to exist any more. By this action of the universe upon ourselves, by this re-action of ourselves upon the universe, we know what we do know.

The channels of knowledge being our various senses, the elaboration and utilisation of our sensations being dependent on the wholesomeness or otherwise of ourselves, the amount of sensibility being in accordance with the frequency with which the world external to ourselves acts upon us, it follows that with each of us our percipiency and knowledge of the whole universe, including the ego itself, must vary and differ according to our own integrity as an organism, and to the exposure and use we make of it.

And so we find here, at the very foundation of all knowledge, a difficulty intrinsic and insurmountable as it might appear, caused by the fact that in every statement we record of our experiences of existence there is the element of human fallibility, all men differing more or less in the three factors of percipiency enumerated above. Owing to this intrinsic variation in each person’s perceptivity we each of us possess our own automorphic standard through and by which we judge or condemn the rest of the universe. The fewer the points of tangent at which we touch the world of men and affairs, the more certain and convinced we are of our own infallibility and knowledge; the greater in number and frequency our re-actions, the more convinced are healthy or wholesome minds of their ignorance and fallibility, knowing themselves somewhat better than the former they are the more gifted in helpfulness, charity, and forbearance. We can best express this somewhat as follows, calling it the Law of little knowledge ” : the fewer the known facts the greater the dogmatism thereu-pon. All feelings or sensations are facts to the brain experiencing them, however wrongly it may misinterpret or elaborate them at times. Of all automorphs the worst to deal with is not the ignorant person, but the individual who believes himself to be educated because he reads somewhat, or comes into constant contact with a higher grade of mind or person chan those whom he considers to be of the “ lower orders.” Some of the best examples of “ cultured ignorance ” are the university man whose facts are mostly at second hand from books, not from re-acting men ; the closet-naturalist with his non-corresponding specimens ; the respectable suburban citizen with his rule-of-thumb existence ; and the charitable lady of private means with all her faculties deadened or perverted by her cotton-wool environment and her dogmatic and self-living acquaintances.

Fortunately, to all classes there are many noble and gifted exceptions, else we would have had the social revolution before now. Hence it follows that to attain to the truth in perception we must exercise all our faculties equally and as fully as we can, whether “ physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual ” ; if we do not strive in this manner we can never throw off the wrappings of the mummydom of the centuries of centuries of the slave -blood that affects us all, by which our minds have been deadened and fossilised by “ custom,” religious and civil, by which plea — " it is customary,” the slaver caste have always until now held their own, as they considered it. One result of the automorphic mind is that the better-to-do classes in civilisation consider they know all that there is desirable to understand of national affairs, hence they imagine that anyone differing from them in the knowledge of the world must do so from ignorance, more especially if he be one of their own class. This error was noted by Socrates as flagrant in his society: “ For each, because he excelled in the practice of his art, thought he was very wise in other most important matters, and this mistake of theirs obscured the wisdom that they really possessed.” This same “ one Socrates, a most pestilent fellow, who corrupts the youth ” (our present-day equivalent is — “ an ignorant agitator ”) knew well what a maze of difficulties the imperfections of the senses might lead one into, for he says just before his death : “ As long as we are encumbered with the body, and our soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to what we desire ; and this, we say, is truth.” In his day knowledge was generally in the childlike stage of granting explanations through imagination instead of reason ; after commenting upon the fluctuation in knowledge and reasoning as phenomena and sensations are sifted in controversy, he states : “ But I am well aware that arguments which draw their demonstrations from probabilities are idle ; and unless one is on one’s guard against them, they are very deceptive.” To me it seems, that if one wishes in the least to answer the questions formulated at the commencement of this chapter, that one must attempt to keep clear of the refuse collected in the seminaries of superstition and sensual logic, that one ought to reason inductively from the known to the unknown, from as wide an environment as possible, considering only as sure foundations of logic those phenomena which have been tested for ages by the average mind in their application, or agreed upon by intellects seeking after the truth for itself alone.

The three great divisions of the universe to any student are

God, Man, Nature ; this is the paramount trinity in cur

Cosmos, to the average mind : man, apparently puny and insignificant, stands judging of God by his own automorphic standard, and testing nature through his imperfect materiality. Let us trace, as far as space permits, in this chapter his relationship to the natural world ; in the next we will see as far as possible in what attitude he stands to his Creator. To judge as to what we are we must include a slight and necessarily superficial study of what constitutes the world of nature, for nothing is more sure, except all reasoning be fallacious, that man is not a being apart, but has within his own self elements, phenomena, laws, common to all nature, only altered and changed to be subservient to his special place in the universe. More than that, modern free thought is breaking down the idea, born of priestcraft and perpetuated by the slave-blood in mentality, that there are two distinct worlds, one present and natural, one future and supernatural. We are beginning to believe only in one state of existence, and that the present is merely a stage, evanescent and evolutionary, of the whole, through which run, as it were, the same lines and laws of conduct, of action and reaction. Towards the furtherance of this idea, “ the disclosure of the naturalness of the supernatural,” no one has done more recently than the late Professor Henry Drummond. He says, quoting Bacon, “ This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature, that a little natural philosophy, and the first entrance into it, doth dispose the opinion to atheism ; but, on the other side, much natural philosophy, and wading deep into it, will bring about men’s mind to religion.”

Agnosticism is the extreme of the revolt against the idea that the spiritual world is foreign and external to this material life, against the idea that everything now must give way to unproven hypotheses as to the unknown, that this life ought not to be a lovely portion of a lovelier whole. Although the study of phenomena is as old as our race, the healthy child virtually living solely for that purpose in its earliest years, it is only in comparatively recent generations that human rationality has advanced sufficiently far to be able to perceive behind all phenomena certain principles of action and reaction, modes of living as it were, which dominate the natural world. These principles, fixed relationships, or whatever you choose to call them, are what Science has termed Natural Laws ; this expression, a Law of Nature, is usually much misunderstood and misapplied by the unskilled majority. Because the many regard juridical law as a permanent something — legislators usually being careful to fix the popular gaze on the words in the Statute-book or on decisions, rather than on the only principle justifying any law, the benefit of the generality, and therefore altering in application as the generality change — they seem also to regard a “ Law of Nature ” as a fixed permanent something in its essence, something tangible and of individuality, as it were. Natural Laws are in fact no definite entities (and it has to be remembered that this term is usually applied as a cloak of ignorance, to define something we do not understand or grasp), but they merely express a definite fixed relationship between phenomena under given conditions.

Edward Carpenter, in “ Modern Science : A Criticism,” says, “ As working hypotheses, and as long as they are kept down to brief steps which can be verified, the scientific theories are very valuable — indeed we cannot do without them.” This means that natural laws are indispensable for the practical application of phenomena to use, as long as the phenomena they are based upon are perceptible, but to build up either before or behind any group of phenomena a further series and to say the same relationship will be found is simply to theorise on what human sensibility has not yet perceived. And when we do say that this or that fixed relationship does exist, that there is this or that law, we indeed gain no knowledge of why or wherefore it can be so recognised, we are no further advanced than Newton was when he said : “ In fact, the cause of gravitation remains undiscovered.”

Perhaps the first race to definitely attempt to discover “Law” were the Greeks, amongst whom, as the most prominent early investigators we find Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato, Solon, and Socrates. When the latter says, “ I was wonderfully desirous of that wisdom which they call a history of nature : for it appeared to me to be a very sublime thing to know the causes of every thing, why each thing is generated, why it perishes, and why it exists,” he clearly shows what he was seeking after, that he sought law in chaos, for, as Protogoras says : “ The whole life of man requires rhythm and harmony.” It is noteworthy that natural law, or the principles of the relationships of phenomena, only arrived to a process of orderly development when thinkers began to mutually assist one another, stimulated by the camaraderie of the wars for freedom in religious thought (or rather what they took to be such), assisted by the aid of printing ; most of all, by the ethical factors in human evolution that culminated in the intellectual revolution of the Renaissance.

It appears to be a natural fact, one at the very root of all knowledge, that every science must alter in many of its theories time after time, for a science is merely a skilled arrangement of phenomena with statements (theories or laws) of their inter-relationship one to the other under various conditions. As men reach out further and further into the eternal imknown from their little circle of perceptivity, of the action of that unknown upon themselves and their reaction thereupon, they will persistently have to revolutionise and reorganise their acquisition in knowledge ; a sensation, a phenomenon, will remain the same from the first to the last of the human race, the explanation of its relationship to the rest of the universe must alter whenever new phenomena are perceived wherewith it can be compared.

The Atomic theory in Chemistry, the Ether theory in Light, the Law of Evolution, the Law of Supply and Demand, for example, have been most beneficial under the condition of phenomena at the time each was formulated ; in each case mentioned the science they affect will be undergoing re-organisation before long ; they themselves may vanish as “ law,” their value as working hypotheses will remain. The growing antagonism between the chemist’s and physicist’s atom; the discovery of the “ new light,” although it was well known that certain rays were visible to some animals that were unknown to men by direct percipiency ; the insufficiency of the Law of the Survival of the Fittest to explain evolution in the kingdom of Life, let alone that the ordinary conception of it makes the animal state a desireless, mechanical existence ; the uprising of an educated living and militant proletariat in the economical world, in the place of a slave-class, uneducated, passive, and unpurposely irritable ; are all examples of factors entering each science affected, and go to show that as the base of the phenomena upon which each science is founded grows further backward from the observers in extent, so must the knowledge of their existence lead to a fuller analysis and rearrangement when circumstances demand it.

Formless and void, desolate and empty, we are told in one legendary narrative of the world’s earliest existence, was the state of this earth in the beginning. Copied as it probably was originally from the engraven brick tablets of ancient Accad, it seemed insufficient to the Greek intellect if I judge these two passages from the “ Phaedo ” aright, for they seem to embody the idea that from the very first a single entity could not exist by itself, rather, that the very conception of an embryonic world, even in its dimmest and scantiest state, necessitates a duality of entities at the very least. “ See now, O Cebes,” says the sage, ..." for if one class of things were not constantly given back in the place of another, revolving, as it were, in a circle, but generation were direct from one thing alone into its opposite, and did not turn round again to the other, or retrace its course, do you know tha all things would at length have the same form, be in the same state, and cease to be produced ? ” Immediately after this he says : “ And if all things were mingled together, but never separated, that doctrine of Anaxagoras would soon be verified, ‘ all things would be together.’ ”

Scientists have found it necessary, for the purpose of forming working hypotheses as to the natural world, to take for granted behind the elementary bodies of chemistry the existence of a concept which is usually termed ether, itself a duality in composition, a substance, as it were, manifesting mass and power in their most elementary forms. With increased knowledge our ideas of this primaeval materiality must alter ; we may even be able before long to judge of its existence phenomenally instead of as now by analogy and deduction alone. In calling this primitive differential ether, or whatever else you choose to call it, by the name of materiality I may appear to be wrong in so doing ; but it seems to me that to consider it an immaterial concept is too premature ; for if this material world is compounded from it, so to speak, it appears to be more right to consider it a materiality only intangible and ungrasped up to the present time.

That there is some definite entity required, and acknowledged by present-day science to exist behind known phenomena, is all we can say ; in it we have to embody our notions of primitive mass and motion, matter and energy, mass and power, or whatever else you care to call these necessary concepts upon which we build up the material sciences, but no ancient mythologies possessed wilder and more variant views of the earth’s earliest ages than do modern scientists of impalpable primitive ether. Viewing it in this light all scientists consider ether to be pervading the universe, and that from it all phenomenal substances are born, so to lO speak, the elements of the chemist being its offspring, each with their different and permanent original impress, if not in form, certainly in characteristics.

A true chemical element is a substance that by re-action and action of other substances cannot be split up into any thing different in any characteristics than to itself, that is, the re-action or internal relations of its minutest particle alway remain the same to external action ; the minutest conceivable particle chemically is the atom. The above qualified definition is given, as it may be that some bodies now treated as elementary may be proven some day to be compounded of known or unknown elements. Almost annually now are new elements being discovered by experimenters, the latest terrestrial example being that of helium. An “ atom ” of each elementary substance there must be, but the atomic theory built up, splendid in conception and revolutionary in effect as it was, may be supplanted in time by another ; at present we conceive of atoms being built up into molecules, the smallest mass we can divide matter into by physical means ; this was the old definition, and may also have to be altered for a better one day. With few exceptions the molecule of all elements is supposed to be composed of two atoms, linked together, as it were ; under definite conditions, and with fixed results, atoms of various elements break apart from one another and link with others together again to form fresh molecules, usually with totally new characteristics to what either or any had before. This is “ chemical action,” and when one atom parts company with one or more companions to take up the equivalent position with others, usually ousting one or more atoms of this other body, we say that “ chemical affinity ” of the one for the strange atom or atoms has been greater than the affinity or bond with its former companion or companions.

Concerning this “atom,” it is now an accepted dictum.

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chiefly on the authority of Herschell and Clark Maxwell, that “atoms bear the impress of being manufactured articles.” For a long time hydrogen was thought to be the primitive atom ; a fitter candidate is now found in helium as the primary protyle. When all known elements are grouped together, we find a most remarkable and significant relationship between their chief characteristics, the exceptions being no more than the necessary fallibility of human observation could account for, as if all could be said to have one common factor, of which each is a multiple, the difference between every distinct elementary atom being founded on the characteristics hereby conferred. It would almost appear, granted this necessary sub-atom, itself composed of the two primitive entities of matter and energy, mass and motion, or whatever else you call them, that the difference between the various elementary atoms is in their build, as it were, according to the fiimsiness or solidity of their structure. It is, for example, a recognised law that the densities of all the elements known in the gaseous state are identical with their atomic weights ; or what is the same thing, the atoms in the gaseous state occupy the same space.” But the two great points to recognise are that not only do the atoms , seem to be built up of smaller portions with definite fixed relationships in their mutual cohesion, but that they preserve definite relationships to one another, and always invariably the same under same conditions, that they observe definite “ Law ” one toward the other.

The ability conferred by spectrum analysis to decide as to the elements present in the celestial bodies, proves what was recently said as to “ Laws of Nature,” that they only hold good under certain definite conditions and whilst certain factors remain the same. According as the two greatest influences — heat and pressure — alter in comets, so will this or that element be sometimes found absent or present ; the change may be also from several elements until only one remains. In the hottest stars, where chemical action must be almost beyond our conceivability, we find all the spectral lines | except that of hydrogen disappear ; here we may reasonably | suppose that no compounds exist as yet. So it appears to < me that when some scientists tell us their estimate of the ■ earth’s age, pointing out to us the principle of the uniformity ; of existing causes, that we can point out now m the universe in certain wandering bodies in the very stage through which our earth is supposed to have passed, phenomena opposed i to, or rather, transcending the fixed relationships or “ Laws ” of our earth as it is now : hence their data must be valueless except they can judge of the foreign conditions of phenomena during our earth’s genesis as a laboratory, fiery and majestic, beyond all conception. The recognition now also of a fourth or ultra-gaseous state of substance beyond the classical three conditions of solid, fluid, and gaseous, has demanded new physical conceptions, and a wider basis for chemical knowledge.

Substances are usually stated to be composed of matter and energy, both indestructible, the latter changing its special form of manifestation, but never lost ; always being present as one of three active radiant forms — heat, light, or electricity ; or in one of the passive attrahent forms of gravitation, magnetism, or chemical affinity.

One of the most important of scientific conclusions has been, that as regards all natural phenomena, we can state from observation — “Nihil ex nihilo”; and the result of this has been the formulating of the law of “ Conservation of Energy,” that energy can change its form of exhibition, but can never be destroyed. At present we have to form our conceptions of active energy upon the “ clash ” and wave theories, that according to the intensity of molecular impact, the elasticity and rhythm of the molecular movements, we have these minute bodies rendered manifest to us as heat, light, or electrical power. Although we know much as to the results of what we call chemical affinity and magnetism, we are virtually as regards the causes thereof no further advanced than Newton in respect to the other passive form of energy, gravitation, when he said that its cause remained undiscovered. To explain the ordinary phenomena of matter and energy, we have the doctrine of Polarity,* practically as formulated by Zoroaster 3,000 years ago, stated as an imperative category, but to say that this explains the cause of energy seems to me to be equivalent to stating that the nature of a substance can be discovered by dividing it into two portions, and finding that if you piece them together they will equal the whole.