one class. No one single typical fact marks them as the
members of a class. To them not even such a common
guiding fact as a receipt of poor relief or of charity is
applicable ; nor, for instance, is a standard of wage a suffi-
cient test. And, for observers, how poorly off are we ! To
a naturalist or a medical man the question is always one of
fact pure and simple. True, he may have a theory, but
that is but a bridge of boats thrown out from a known to
a doubtful shore. The social observer is usually pledged
to a plan, and his investigation is often but the formal
verification of a foregone conclusion. Many instances of
this could be given. In some branches of social science
the naturalist spirit is rare. Compare any social investiga-
tion of our time with the series of investigations which has
led up to our understanding how bacteria fix the nitrogen
in plants, or with Dr. Nathorst's researches, by which E.
Forbes's theory of 1846 as to Alpine flora is definitely
proved. In social science, studied without the naturaUst's
spirit, our statistics may become not error merely, but irre-
mediable error — a maze of figures, which no reader has the
clue to unravel. The observer is usually not a trained
social naturalist, or even a citizen observing his fellows
with any definite or conscious purpose. Frequently he is
a person who has in a short time to collect information,
often without any large general experience or any informal
and natural means of ascertaining and detailing the inner
lines of the social conditions which he examines. The
true social naturalist would live to watch and think, and
his proposals, if he made any, would be as much explana-
tions as proposals, and often the work of a lifetime. If,
then, our difficulties are so great, and our skill, impartiality,
and patience so much less than in other branches of
science, are we not inclined to push the statistical method
in social science too far ? Should we not substitute for
statistics description similar to that which a naturalist
might use, content to describe case after case, that so the
type may show itself? We would thus avoid the arbitrary
distinction of classes, and perhaps find a more natural
288 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xv
division in types — types to be found (to use Mr. C. Booth's
terminology), say, in classes A, B, and C, types with similar
characteristics in whatever class they may be temporarily
located. When one reads a set of cases classed layer by
layer according to their relative poverty or riches, one sees
that this horizontal division is wrong. No standard of
wage or of expenditure gives the true clue. A vertical
division by types would be truer, for the type holds good
in very different conditions of wage and possibilities of ex-
penditure. The spendthrift type and the makethrift type
(to give an example by way of illustration merely) will be
found with the same characteristics in all classes, poor or
rich, and from the point of view of social science they have
to be equally noted and accounted for wherever they may
occur. But I only throw this out as indicating one im-
portant limitation of social statistical work. My purpose
will be served if I can promote what is, in my opinion,
a more sober and scientific use of statistical data, and,
especially in some of our parliamentary returns, a more
precise, instructive, and scientific collection of them.
We want finer instruments and a finer use of instru-
ments.
XVI
SOCIALISM AND NATURAL SELECTION ^
By B. BOSANQUET
My reason for attempting a treatment of this difificult
subject is twofold. First, I am greatly impressed by what
seems like a lack of thorough patience and goodwill in
the controversy on both sides. A student of philosophy
has not the special knowledge possessed either by Mr.
Huxley or Professor Haeckel in biology, or by Mr. Karl
Pearson in mathematics, not to speak of other writers
who have entered upon this debatable land perhaps too
light-heartedly; but he ought to possess above all things the
goodwill and habit of patience which enable him to track
out common elements in different phases and processes,
and to hold together ideas which the noticeably impatient
mind of exact science or semi-political publicism pro-
nounces to be ab initio incompatible. I cannot help it if
this implication is considered insolent ; in the popular
utterances of natural and exact science nothing strikes one
so forcibly as their impatience. And secondly, it appears
to me that certain classes of facts known to those closely
occupied with administration of charity or of Poor Law
relief form at least an important contribution to the prob-
lem in question, and that, though touched upon from
time to time, they have not been treated with adequate
knowledge, and their rather ambiguous import has therefore
not been rightly read.
' A lecture given before the London IClhical Society.
U
290 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xvi
I will begin by referring to an observation of Lotze
which applies very widely to the attitude of our time.
" Our own generation, maintaining its opposition to
philosophy, endeavours to console itself for its want of
clearness in respect to general principles by a vivid exercise
of the sensuous imagination. If we come upon pile-dwell-
ings in some forgotten swamp, we piously gather together
the insignificant remains of a dreary past, supposing that
by contemplating them we shall grow wiser, and learn that
which a glance into the affairs of everyday life would teach
us with less trouble."^ Something of this kind is forcibly
suggested by the necessity which modern culture appears
to be under of attempting to designate well-recognised
phenomena of civilised society by names drawn from the
evolution of the plant and the lower animal world. We
have the struggle for existence, natural selection, and pan-
mixia, asserted and denied to be conditions of human
progress, and the absurdity culminates when Mr. Herbert
Spencer, in an ethical treatise,- speaks of a human society
as "a local variety of the species." But where a con-
tinuous evolution is concerned, mere difference and mere
sameness are more than usually inadequate instruments to
express the relation between its stages ; what is really
needed is very patient and very careful interpretation and
analysis directed to tracking the true strand of continuity.
For the sake of clearness, I will at once briefly indicate
my conclusion. I believe in the reality of the general will,
and in the consequent right and duty of civilised society to
exercise initiative through the State with a view to the
fullest development of the life of its members. But I am
also absolutely convinced that the application of this initia-
tive to guarantee without protest the existence of all
individuals brought into being, instead of leaving the
responsibility to the uttermost possible extent on the
parents and the individuals themselves, is an abuse fatal
to character and ultimately destructive of social life. The
abolition of the struggle for existence, in the sense in which
^ Lotze, Metaphysics, English tr. , p. 417.
^ Principle of Ethics, vol. ii. p. 329.
XVI SOCIALISM AND NATURAL SELECTION 291
alone that term applies to human societies, means, so far
as I can see, the divorce of existence from human qualities;
and to favour the existence of human beings without
human qualities is the ultimate inferno to which any
society can descend. This view, it will be seen, is practic-
ally that of Mr. Kidd in his work on Social Evolution. In
no critical question has patience been more necessary and
more wanting than in forming an estimate of that remark-
able popular treatise. It is easy to show that Mr. Kidd is
neither a scholar nor a philosopher ; his estimate of social
conditions is, in my judgment, misleading, and it does not
appear probable that he is a master of natural science.
But all this is no proof that on a particular issue he has
failed to hit the nail on the head, and mere candour com-
pels me to say that, in the essential distinction on which
his attitude to Socialism is founded, I am fully in agree-
ment with him. I refer to the distinction which he
chooses to call that between true Socialism, which aims
at arresting competition and guarantees existence with-
out protest to all individuals, and State Socialism, which
regulates the competitive struggle while enhancing the
efficiency of competition.
Now let us remind ourselves what is the fundamental
meaning of the Struggle for Existence as conditioning
natural selection in the world of plants, and of animals
below man. "I should premise," Mr. Darwin writes,
" that I use this term (Struggle for Existence) in a large
and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one
being on another, and including what is more important,
not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving
progeny."^ The examples which follow explain that not
only may two dogs, when food is scarce, be said to struggle
for food ; but a plant on the edge of a desert struggles
against drought — that is, is dependent upon moisture,
though there is in this case no competition with other
plants at all ; a plant may again be said to struggle with
other plants for the means of disseminating its seed, or, I may
venture to add, for the chance of fertilisation by insects, in
' Origin of Species, cd. 6, p. 50.
292 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xvi
which two cases its individual life is in no way or degree
necessarily risked in the struggle. That is to say, the
organism which wins in the struggle for existence, from the
very beginning, is that so adapted to surrounding influences
and objects that it not only arrives at maturity, but leaves
offspring, to a relatively large extent, under such conditions
that they also are likely to arrive at maturity. The " exist-
ence " depends upon definite qualities which may no
doubt be noxious, or, again, may be beneficial to the ob-
jects and creatures in contact with them.
When the struggle for existence is regarded with refer-
ence to selection, then in the plants and lower animals a
further consideration enters in. The natural resources on
which they depend cannot by their action be artificially
supplemented, and prudential restraints from leaving pro-
geny cannot exist. This being so, more individuals are
produced than can possibly be maintained, and those of
the surplus which are not destroyed by other agencies must
perish of starvation. Natural selection determines accord-
ing to their qualities which individuals shall survive and
which shall not, and also which individuals shall leave pro-
geny and which shall not. It is thus untrue even of
plants and the lower animals to say that natural selection
operates exclusively through destruction of individuals. In
the main, moreover, artificial selection, of which sexual
selection is the elementary form, and which need not act
at all through extermination of individuals, does not differ
in principle from natural selection, so long as it proceeds
with a view to qualities which have power to set in motion
the selecting agency by means which may be called
natural — that is, otherwise than through a sheer conscious
desire on its part to guarantee support to all existent
individuals as such. For this reason, I suppose, the term
natural selection is, and fairly may be, used to cover the
processes of competition in society (although in them
selection is conscious), so long as in these processes exist-
ence, except under protest, is determined by definite
qualities which naturally set in motion the selective agency.
The true line of demarcation at which the whole principle
XVI SOCIALISM AND NATURAL SELECTION 293
underlying natural selection is abandoned, must be where
selection ceases to be selective — that is, where any agency
guarantees to individuals existence without protest,^ irre-
spective of human qualities. Natural selection in the
wider sense suggested by this contrast plainly does not
operate by starvation, but by varied forms of acceptance,
rejection, and discouragement ; and, at least, by abstin-
ence from anti-selective action, i.e. from retrogressive or
negative selection.
Natural selection, then, is the process by which the
struggle for existence determines the perpetuation of those
stocks or family strains which have qualities most enabling
them to conquer or to use their surroundings, especi-
ally so as to obtain success in the rearing of offspring.
Now, further, the absence of what has been called " select-
ive value " in any quality — that is, its inability to exercise
determining influence on the success or non-success of its
possessor — withdraws it from the influence of selection, and
there is no reason to expect that such a quality will be
maintained in efificiency. "Variations" which have no
selective value "must disappear again."- This result,
which Spencer finds in Darwin and himself fully accepts (/^r.
«"/.), appears to me — speaking with great diffidence — to
contain all that is really important in the disputed principle
of " Panmixia," which he rejects. But for our purpose, the
transmission of qualities as modified by use and disuse
would serve the same purpose. Qualities which are not
^ I use the term "existence under" or "without protest," because in
human society it is impossible forcibly to prevent the production of in-
dividuals destitute of co-operative qualities, or to starve them when pro-
duced. All that can be done is to express a protest by want of encourage-
ment, or by penalty directed against any visibly in fault, whether parents
or individuals themselves.
2 Herbert Spencer, Inadequacy of Natural Selection, pp. 11, 12.
Herbert Spencer speaks of " a variation " and of " a faculty." The same
rule must surely apply to an organ (cf. Principle of Ethics, vol. ii. p. 429).
.Spencer does not seem to contend that his principle of the transmission
of acquired qualities would prevent the destruction of social characteristics
by retrogressive selection, and, in fact, the same conditions of environment
which would destroy the selective value of these qualities must also ensure
their disuse.
294 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xvi
imperatively demanded by society will not be maintained
either by natural selection or by exercise.
We are now prepared to consider the case of social
animals and of human communities. In proportion as
exchange of services by division of labour within a group
takes the place of competition of all against all, the group
itself becomes the primary unit in the struggle for existence.
Now, selection as between competing groups can only
make adaptations in them by transforming the individuals
of which they are composed, and this it is found to do with
astounding thoroughness and variety. According to Weis-
mann's recent contention, which seems likely to be justified,
selection as between groups has power in the case of social
insects to modify even the sterile members of the com-
munity by selecting the stocks or families from which sterile
members with socially useful qualities are destined to pro-
ceed. How then does group selection affect the relations
of the members of the community to each other ? Plainly,
I think, in this way, that the competition of communities
without operates by means of the competition of individuals
within. By the necessities of the community certain con-
ditions are imposed on life within the community, and the
" existence " struggled for, which even at first, as we saw,
included the successful rearing of progeny, now includes
the conditions, be they less or more, which attach to one
or another form of co-operative living.^ The struggle for
existence has, in short, become a struggle for a place in the
community; and these places are reserved for the individuals
which in the highest degree possess the co-operative quali-
ties demanded by circumstances. The bee or ant has been
precisely moulded to every detail of its work by this form
of natural selection ; and I take it that that community
has always been victorious in which a place has been denied
to those individuals in whom the co-operative qualities were
absent. Where, however, as in the case of the bee, there
are no competing stocks within the community, the absence
or destruction of useless individuals is a consequence of
group-modification and essential to its full effect, but is
^ Frequently, of course, in the social insects, involving sterility.
XVI SOCIALISM AND NATURAL SELECTION 295
hardly in its turn a perpetuating cause of such modifi-
cation.
If we now turn to human society, we find that the so-
called "existence," which is the aim of the so-called
" struggle," has received a yet further accretion of qualities.
Although it would be obviously a blunder to say that every
human individual aims at the common good — for if so,
every one would be moral — yet it is true that the existence
which any human beings regard as tolerable is made what it
is by ideas which depend on a social conception — in short,
by a standard of life. Further, it is very noticeable and very
natural that, owing to the freedom allowed by an aim presented
to intelligence, the conflict of stocks within the group revives
in human society as not only an effect but a cause of group-
modification, seeing that some stocks perish and others sur-
vive within the group, by reason of their respective qualities.
Now, at this point, I must recur to the subject of my
opening remarks. We have gained but little by applying
inadequate conceptions, drawn from the life of plants and
of lower animals, to the life of man. The struggle for
existence, and the process of natural selection, especially
when understood by popular science and publicism in a
way far more crude and less pregnant than that indicated
by Darwin himself, are terms which do not adequately
designate the phenomena of human adaptation. But the
worst evil which has come from applying these, as Lotze
says of other conceptions, without so much as a glance at
the affairs of everyday life, has not been of the most obvious
kind. It is bad enough that a fundamental truth should
be crudely and rudely formulated and misapplied, because
people think it modern and up to date to use conceptions
drawn from anything else rather than from our experience
of the matter in hand. For this evil we have largely to
thank Mr. Herbert Spencer, and in spite of his great
abilities and untiring industry, or rather because of them
and their abuse, I think that a Dante of philosophers ought
to grant him the distinction of the lowest circle in the
inferno. But the more terrible evil, a natural consequence
of the former, is that the fundamental truth, having got
296 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xvi
into low company, is repudiated as a disreputable acquaint-
ance by the impatient purist among social reformers, and
things which were known 2000 years ago, and which
are obvious, as I am forced to believe, to those who
look straight at the facts in question, are disputed because
of the new-fangled analogies which are meant to support,
but which really disguise, them.
Unquestionably, in human society, instincts and ten-
dencies are modified by ideas. A human community does
not aim at mere survival, but at a certain kind of survival ;
and rather than survive on certain terms, a decent society
would choose destruction. A human individual, again,
does not aim at mere survival, but at a certain kind of
survival ; and although, in the general interests of humanity,
it is considered right to cling even to bare existence, yet in
spite of this scruple, a being with full human qualities will
readily forfeit such existence in preference to endangering
these qualities in itself or in others. This we see in the
phrase, "All that makes life worth living." It is, therefore,
I submit, a fatal misconception by which Mr. Huxley tells
us ^ that in human society the struggle is not for existence
but for enjoyment ; rather, the struggle is for a certain
kind of existence, and failure to secure this entails, on the
whole, immediate or rapid extinction of the particular
stock which fails. Under a similar misconception, it is
alleged that survival of the fittest is nothing more than
survival of the fittest to survive. No one can deny that
there are eddies and back currents in the river of life ; but
a complete discontinuity between the principles of nature
and of humanity is extremely improbable, especially if we
consider that the latter has come into being by the processes
of the former. And this improbability is intensified to
impossibility when we examine from the logical side the
nature of those victorious ideas which have imposed them-
selves as moral upon the human race, for they are seen
to be marked throughout by organic quality — by the power
of arranging life and dealing with circumstance ; and it is
precisely this quahty, however caricatured in some phases
^ Evolution and Ethics, p. 40.
XVI SOCIALISM AND NATURAL SELECTION 297
of its growth, which forms the essential strand in the develop-
ment of living things. Those may sneer at strength who
do not believe that reason is the ultimate power, but those
who hold a different conviction cannot but judge that the
survival of the most vigorous in the struggle for the exist-
ence which is aimed at, is, on the whole, the survival of
the most reasonable. I repeat emphatically, " in the
struggle for the existence which is aimed at," for vigour is
a term relative to circumstances ; and the most vigorous
in a struggle determined by one standard of life is the
weaker in that determined by another. We have to con-
sider, then, not only the bare fact of survival, but the nature
of the struggle in which survival has to be sought. " It is
for us to struggle," said Aristeides to Themistocles, "both
now and ever, which of us shall perform the greatest services
to his country." But, emphatically, the development is
continuous ; the struggle of Aristeides is an arduous struggle
still, and competition is not less but more strenuous in
proportion as its purpose is more complexly determined.
Does any one seriously doubt that there are in every society
worse and better varieties, always remembering that the
minimum test of excellence, by success in the struggle for
existence, involves /re;;/ ///^/rj-/ capacity to give the progeny
a good chance of maturity — in short, to furnish what we
call good birth and breeding ?
And, once more, the conception of panmixia in the
general import, in which, as I think, Spencer hifnself affirms
it, applies by analogy to human society. If selection for
certain qualities ceases, the qualities in respect of which it
ceases cannot maintain themselves ; and if worse varieties —
those of bad birth and breeding — are encouraged to per-
petuate themselves, does any one doubt (what Plato already
knew) that society must deteriorate ?
But, it is asked of us, can there be the same cosmic
process in society as in lower nature, when in society you
can in some degree restrict the reproduction of individuals
so as not to exceed the food-supply, and in nature there
is perpetual excess of multiplication over the means of
subsistence ? Does the pressure on which the struggle
298 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xvi
depends exist at all in society ? Mr. Huxley is inclined to
say that this is so to a very small extent/ and that there-
fore the processes are not the same in kind. But first, as
the supply of necessaries for civilised life is wholly pro-
duced by labour, every individual born is prima facie in
excess until he justifies his existence by definite qualities.
For if not, why should some one else work that he may
eat ? This is at once a powerful pressure in the way of
producing selection, and a source of resistance to all
multiplication. Secondly, if multiplication is restricted,
the restriction must be either selective or non-selective. If
non-selective, it is not restriction for our purpose, for it may
well chance to diminish the supply of necessaries, which is
wholly artificial, more than it diminishes the population.
If selective, it is not opposed to the cosmic process^ but itself
effects the same end in a presumably less painful though
analogous way. This argument from the apparent absence
of severe pressure in civilised communities really shows
that if society is to prosper, the cosmic process of selection
by definite qualities is, and must be, continued in them
perhaps under the naine of restriction. And this Mr. Huxley