Societal evolution; a study of the evolutionary basis of the science of society

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

Fob many years the phraseology of evolution has been current. Scientists use it because evolution has come to be the underlying idea of several modern sciences ; and less serious writers find their vocabularies colored by what has now become a popular doctrine. Evolution is the fashion, and to aflfect evolutionary terminology is one method of lending a pseudodignity to the trivial. All this is peculiarly marked in writings having to do with sociological subjects.

Naturally the terms originally used by Darwin and his followers have suffered, in passing from hand to hand, a considerable amount of damage. Like coins that have been circulating indiscriminately, they have lost their sharpness of outline and definiteness of superscription. It is almost impossible to discover what some authors who deal with social topics — let alone the host of popular writers and orators — mean by evolution.

In the endeavor, some years ago, to dispel from my mind the vagueness of the evolutionvi PREFACE

ary terminology which had settled there as the result of reading along sociological lines, I went back to Darwin and Huxley — to the mint, as it were — and tried to get their conceptions before me. This was a most useful enterprise, and its results have been incorporated in my thinking and teaching ever since. I have come to believe that any fruitful study of the science of society must rest upon a clear understanding, even though it be but a layman's, of the Darwinian theory.

Then came the question as to the vaUdity of extending Darwinism and its terminology to the life of human society. As to this matter, I have come to believe that the Darwinian factors of variation, selection, transmission, and adaptation are active in the life of societies as in that of organisms. Selection, for example, is none the less selection — not merely like natural selection in a vague way — because it is observed in another field and is seen there to act after another mode characteristic of that field.^ And I have tried to get at the nature of these evolutionary factors as displayed in their societal mode. The outcome of this study takes form in a simple, and in

1 Cf . pp. 14-16 below.

PREFACE vii

many ways obvious arrangement of well-known facts; but because the results reached have been of use to me and to my students, in getting and keeping our bearings for the study of the science of society, I pubUsh them, at length, in the hope that some others may derive such advantage from them.

The working out of this line has resulted in an extension upon the conception of the folkways, as developed by my predecessor. Professor Sumner. This conception has always seemed to me to be the link connecting organic and societal evolution, and the extension of which I speak consists in good part in bringing out that point of view, to which Sumner himself gave no special attention.^ Regarding this essay, as I do, as an extension of Sumner's work, I have taken my quotations, so far as I could, from his writings.

When it came to putting what follows into book form, the choice was presented between accompanying the argument with numbers of cases in illustration, as one does in college lectures, or of securing brevity and compactness by reducing illustration to a minimum. The latter alternative was chosen because, as it

^ See Note at end of this volume.

viii PREFACE

seems to me, an essay generalizing about the social order in which we all live is quite likely to suggest its own cases, for or against, to any mature reader who is interested; and then, as a professional teacher, who has gotten to looking at most things from the standpoint of his vocation, I cannot ignore the fact that an expositor generally gains by using his own illustrations. Much is left, in this book, to the reader and the teacher.

I have received much and pointed criticism as I have gone on. For a number of years I have profited by the keen observation and thrusts of my undergraduate students, and by the more mature, though scarcely more helpful comments of graduate scholars. But no other single person has given me such penetrating criticism, accompanied by such sturdy support, as has my colleague in the science. Professor James E. Cutler, of Western Reserve. His attentive reading of my chapters has saved me from many omissions and commissions, especially when it was a matter of making a foray into the field of appHed sociology. I herewith recognize my obligations also to Professor Henry P. Fairchild, of Yale, and to Messrs. Charles H. Ward and Julius C. Peter, for especially enlightening

PREFACE ix

criticisms and suggestions ; and to a number of other friends for reading and passing judgment upon my manuscript.

ALBERT G. KELLER.

New Haven, January 11, 1915.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

CHAPTER

Introduction

On a number of counts, the natural scientist is fairly an object of envy to the social scientist. The former deals with things, gets verification through repeated experiment, sets aside unreasonable prejudice by definite proof, attains such certainty as to justify prediction. The latter deals with the elusive hunaan factor, may not deliberately experiment, faces what looks like impregnable prepossession and tradition at every turn, and cannot in general arrive at more than a high degree of probabihty. Furthermore, natural scientists have a way of chmbing by standing on each other's shoulders, whereas social scientists, much Uke some philosophers and historians, seem to feel that they must each begin at the bottom, and start off by discrediting their forerunners. No doubt some such unlikeness in method Ues implicit in the different nature of the two fields ;

but it is quite evident which of the two methods is the successful one, and it should be the aim of the social scientist who senses the situation to align himself as much as possible with the more promising procedure.

Such considerations start up before the mind when one is led to reflect upon what evolution means to these two types of scientific workers. To natural science the discoveries of Darwin meant new bearings, a perspective, a unifying principle — and then the inevitable renewal of confidence and burst of eager effort. The idea of evolution showed no kinship with metaphysical speculation. It was no dogma. It is a concrete, proved process, demonstrated in definite terms, and actually verified day by day in the incidents of scientific progress. It is this abundant and continuous verification, not "intuition," which has lent it the force of a major premise.^Njt is not a vague formula which aims to include everything — which is at the same time irrefutable and also useless for the further prosecution of scientific labors — but it is to the intellectually curious both a cheering evidence of the success of scientific method and a tool capable of effective use in further discovery.^xNatural scientists mean something definite and actual when they use the Darwinian terms — variation, selection, transmission, adaptation — and they are helped to get somewhere by the clearness and significance lent to their scientific terminology as the result of Dar^-in's life and labors.

It would be strange if a set of conclusions like Darwin's, drawn from such a number of instances over several branches of natural science, should prove apphcable only to the field of his special inquiry. The fact is that the doctrine of evolution has so held the interest, hostile or devoted, of the world, that its influence, or at least its terminology, has penetrated into regions quite remote from those in which Darwin labored. In a volume of essays in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the "Origin of Species," ^ notable scholars from many fields united in recognizing their indebtedness to the evolution theory. Here was acknowledged in generous terms its influence, for example, upon the science of language, upon history, and upon the study of reKgions.

^ "Darwin and Modem Science," ed. by A. C. Seward, Cambridge, 1909.

The influence of evolutionary reasoning has reached out, then, beyond the field of its nativity ; and it is undeniable that it has had its effect upon the social sciences. But no one can say that the evolutionary principle, as commonly viewed by the social scientist, be he economist, political scientist, or sociologist, affords any such orientation, perspective, unification, inspiration, and positive aid as it does in the realm of the natural sciences. It is an idea which he may accept as a sort of philosophy; it lingers in vague form about the horizon ; it is invoked, from time to time, in a general and unproductive sort of way. It is a tenet rather than an instrument for the furthering of scientific knowledge, a thing to be discussed by way of formal logic and speculation rather than proved and used over and over again as a scientific verity. It is no tool of research. If social scientists use the terms variation, selection, and so on, they mean nothing definite and actual by them; their use of these terms is vaguely analogical and does not help them to get anywhere.

Perhaps it is worth while to reflect upon the reason for this condition of affairs. The trouble is that the idea of evolution has come to the social sciences through a medium, ostensibly scientific, but really philosophical. It is not Darwinian evolution, in the majority of cases, at all. The common persuasion of the social scientists — who are generally too Uttle versed in natural science — is that evolution means Spencer. In his reading the student of the social sciences becomes acquainted with works which were written under the spell of Spencer ; authors vary in their relations with him from the glad discipleship of a Fiske on through to the incensed hostility of the orthodox, but they all unite in revering or assailing him as the exponent of evolution. In the natural sciences, on the contrary, not much is heard of Spencer, but evolution means Darwinism. This is very significant of the unlike conceptions of evolution in these two ranges of science.

I have said that social scientists know too little of natural science and its methods. This is a pity, for it is peculiarly needful in the social sciences to keep the feet firmly upon the ground — and the ground is much more likely to be there, and to be soHd, where experimentation is, where verification is more positive, substantial, and unescapable, where it is a matter of observable, objective fact rather than of the balancing of ideas. Darwin cannot be too well known to any one who aspires to the name of scientist ; and the facts about his life, character, methods, and performances should be at the finger-ends, especially of the man who aspires to apply science to the study of human society. With all his brilliance Spencer is really, for such a person, an untrustworthy guide. He has been passed upon by natural scientists, beginning with the illustrious group of his contemporaries. Huxley, and even Darwin himself, were familiar with both Spencer and his work; and each, while marvelling at his powers, virtually set him aside as a scientist. Says Darwin of Spencer :

"I feel rather mean when I read him : I could bear, and rather enjoy feeling that he was twice as ingenious and clever as myself, but when I feel that he is about a dozen times my superior, even in the master art of wriggling, I feel aggrieved. If he had trained himself to observe more, even if at the expense, by the law of balancement, of some loss of thinking power, he would have been a wonderful man." "I suspect that hereafter he wiU be looked at as by far the greatest living philosopher in England; perhaps equal to any that have lived." And, again, "I find that my mind is so fixed by the inductive method, that I cannot' appreciate deductive reasoning:

I must begin with a good body of facts and not from a principle (in which I always suspect some fallacy) and then as much deduction as you please. This may be very narrow-minded; but the result is that such parts of H. Spencer as I have read with care impress my mind with the idea of his inexhaustible wealth of suggestion, but never convince me ; and so I find it with some others. I believe the cause to lie in the frequency with which I have found first-formed theories [to be] erroneous." '

Such was the judgment of Darwin. Huxley, a close friend of Spencer, used to poke fun at his "diabolical dialectics"; his classic joke, about Spencer's idea of a tragedy being the destruction of a grand hypothesis by a refractory fact, reflects the essential truth of the matter as respects Spencer's scientific attitude. The fact of it is, that Spencerian evolution is a philosophy. The author called it that. What he sought in the "Synthetic Philosophy" was an inclusive formula. But such a universal is not the aim of science at all. This formula states that: "Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity; and during which the

1 "Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," ed. by F. Darwin, n, 239, 301, 371.

retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." 1 Who can refute this ? Yet who can use it ? It is doubtless true, yet the working scientist, impatient to be getting forward, will ask : " If true, what of it ? To what end ? " This formula, in comparison with the Darwinian factors, helps in no way toward scientific discovery ; it is not the cloud by day, nor yet the fire by night. Rather it is like the vault of an overcast sky; it covers all things, but nobody can get his directions from it and fare forth. Similarly indicative of the philosophical trend of Spencerian evolution is the title given by Fiske, Spencer's "American adherent," to his major work : " Cosmic Philosophy." Such a type of evolution must be unfettered; it includes

It would also appear that the followers of Spencer generally come to identify evolution with progress. Whatever Spencer himself said or meant, this seems to have been one of the chief residua left after immersion in his philosophy of evolution. This view is not Dar-

1 "First Principles," § 145.

winian. Darwin speaks of improvement sometimes, and also of retrogression ; but both were forms of adaptation to environment. This was the basic idea, and it was one which could be defined objectively, as progress cannot.-' Darwin was not much interested in pure inference. For instance, the idea, seized upon with avidity by those who felt the speculative spirit move, that all life came from one primordial form rather than from several — the idea of reduction of everything to a universal, again — was regarded by Darwin as a matter of little consequence. ^-He was after something that stopped far short of a grand dogma or -ism, and this he found in the idea of adaptation*; as Romanes says,^ "The theory of Darwin has to do with adaptations in all organic nature, whether they have to do with species or not." Optimism and pessimism are ahke impertinent when injected into science. But if evolution meant progress, then it was an optimistic philosophy, therein corresponding to the mores of an optimistic age of material prosperity. Hence, in part, the vogue of the Spencerians.

If the student in the social sciences is familiar

' "Darwin and After Darwin," II, 161.

only with the Spencerian idea of evolution, he has a philosophy superior, in many respects, notably clearness, to other systems, and which is not disassociated entirely from science. But he has at his service no such actually tested instrument as has the natural scientist in what he calls evolution. If the former is not circumscribed in his life interests and intellectual curiosity, he must have felt that envy of the natural scientist to which I referred at the outset. Is it possible that he too should have recourse to the same efficient instrument?

In other words, is it not possible to extend Darwinian evolution into the field of the social sciences without sacrificing the essence of its value as exhibited in that of the natural sciences? Writers in the former field have occasionally tried to develop a "Social Darwinism." Much that is useful and suggestive has been brought out as these authors have striven in different ways to show the relation of evolution as they saw it to human society and its life ; but, to say the least, the Darwinian idea did not take hold as a result of their ministrations. Haycraft,! Ritchie," Kidd,' and es-

' "Darwinism and Race Progress."

' "Darwinism and Politics." a "Social Evolution."

pecially Bagehot,^ have done service along these lines ; Chapin's ^ and Conn's ' recent essays are, in many ways, useful and admirable. But I do not see that any of these has succeeded in lending to social science anything akin to the practical benefits enjoyed by natural science as the result of the development of Darwinism. From the side of the natural scientist the efforts to extend evolution into the social field began with Darwin himself, and it was for him an unhappy project. All through the work of Darwin one meets with suggestive hints as to the attitude of an exponent of evolution toward social customs and habitudes, but when he attempted something more systematic, the result was deplorable. It is evident to the reader of the "Descent of Man" that, whatever the cause, for once in his hfe Darwin has been led to essay waters beyond his depth ; Chapters IV and V of the "Descent" do not sound at aU like Darwin. Because, in the interest of completeness, he was led to attempt the treatment of man's social qualities and institutions, or for some other reason, Darwin in these chap-

' "Physics and Politics."

' "Introduction to the Study of Social Evolution."

' "Social Heredity and Social Evolution."

ters undertook to discuss such topics as the origin of the moral sentiments. This part of the "Descent" had better have been left unwritten, for, in default of the usual mountains of data from which he was wont to draw his weighty inductions, the great scientist was led to wander hopelessly among the unfamiliar and unfathomable quicksands of the metaphysical and intuitional. In so doing he presents but a sorry aspect to his admirers.

The contributions to the subject from other natural scientists include many isolated, but extremely suggestive passages. Here was where Huxley shone above the rest. In 1900 there was an attempt on the part of three noted natural scientists. Professors Haeckel, Conrad, and Fraas, to elicit a work upon the topic : "Was lernen wir aus den Prinzipien der Descendenz-Theorie in Beziehung auf die innerpolitische Entwickelung und Gesetzgebung der Staaten?" A prize contest was constituted, the chief outcome of which was the publication of the prize essay, by a surgeon, Dr. Schallmayer, entitled, "Vererbung und Auslese im Lebenslauf der Vblker; Eine Staatswissenschaftliche Studie auf Grund der neueren Biologic." This book was better than a congenes of suggestions ; it was a real attempt to attack certain broad phases of society's life in the light of the theory of evolution as modified by a complete acceptance of Weismannism.

Further, as will be seen in some detail in a later connection, those scientists who, headed by the late veteran Francis Galton, have been studying the problems which surround the subject of eugenics, have set themselves to the solution of certain broad questions involving the whole future welfare of society. A journal of eugenics has been founded, and an Archiv fiir Rassenbiologie. The idea of applying Darwinism to the social sciences has been in the air for some time. However, I cannot see that any of these enterprises really attacks the general issue as I have tried to set it forth. The question I have asked myself is : Can the evolutionary theory, according to Darwin and his followers (I mean such followers as Weismann and De Vries), be carried over into the social domain without losing all or much of the significance it possesses as apphed in the field of natural science ? It is to this question that the present essay addresses itself.

A point of attack suggested itself some time ago while I was studying the clean-cut little chart of the evolutionary process constructed by Wallace.^ It is evident that the salient features of Darwinian evolution are variation, heredity, and selection; and that out of the operation of these three comes the fourth, which is really the result of the process — adaptation. These are the simple and concrete terms used all the time by the natural scientists. The thought then occurred to me that if they could be applied to social phenomena, we should have the evolutionary formula carried over into the social sciences. On general considerations the balance of probability would be that a generalization so broad and so universally applicable over a large part of the field of science would not be utterly inapplicable over the whole field. It should at least cast some light upon the processes going on in the rest of the field. It is clear enough that the idea of taking the issue up as it is done here — of exploring the nature of social variation, social selection, social transmission, and social adaptation — was suggested by the Darwinian system. These terms are in use in sociological writings. The analogy is obvious, and if the idea were merely

>Iii "Natural Selection and Tropical Nature" (London 1891), p. 166.

to carry it out, a book like this would be superfluous. But I do not know of any writers who go systematically behind the analogy and try to discover whether or not it covers a broad identity. I shall be charged, doubtless, with "reasoning from analogy," but I do not feel that the charge is deserved. I find a something in the social field which is variation, whether or not it may be like what is called variation in the organic field; similarly social selection is selection and not merely like it. In the social field, also, there is a means of transmission having the essential attributes of heredity in nature ; ^ and adaptation occurs in one range of phenomena as in the other. These factors have their societal ^ mode as they occur in the life of

' The fact that certain factors of organic evolution, as, for instance, heredity, are inapplicable on the social domain does not alter the evolutionary character of social phenomena, provided that effective substitutes exist to fill the places of the absent factors. The trajectory of a projectile is still a parabola, whether the motive force be air, gas, muscular reaction, or torsion.

• This adjective will be frequently used in what follows. I do not wish to apologize for it in any way, for I think an adjectival form corresponding to the noun " society," and signifying something much more definite than " social," is a present necessity in the development of a science of society. Some of the vagueness chargeable to sociological writing is undoubtedly due to the use of " socius " where " societas " is or should be the real conception in mind.

society, just as they have their organic mode when they appear in the life of organisms.

It would follow that if the salient and determinative processes of organic evolution are repeated in their essence in the life of human society, then we can say that there is such a thing as societal evolution and that we have some definite idea of what it is like.