SOCIAL OARWINISM, OLO ANO NEW

PATRICK ROMANELL

Those biologi ts at the present rnornent who, with some justification, arebeginning to express concern over the "declining fortunes of biology" e) as anautonomous field oí inquiry due to the spectacular rise oí biophysics and bio-chemistry in their own midst, may take cornfort at least in the historical factthat since 1859, Year One oí the Darwinian Era, there has grown a considerablebody of literature on the ethical significance oí evolution for man and humansociety. Much has been written since then for or against the Ethics oí Evolution,hut to our knowledge nothing comparable has appeared about either the Ethicsoí Gravitation or the Ethics oí Combustion o And lest we be accusecl oí soundingfacetious or frivolous, let us quickly adcl that the point we wish to emphasizehere is that the history of the literature on the subject demonstrate., clearly that"evolution" as a biological category has a decided advantage over physical orchernical categories, especially when it comes to matters oí moral s . Proof ofthis the topic itself of the present paper, which presupposes that the Darwiniantheory oí evolution has both implications for the moral side oí man's life andapplications to his social problems o

Now then, of all the implications of the Darwinian concept oí evolution,the most telling for hurnan history is that change is just as natural in the realmoí ideas and ideals as it is in the realm of plants ancl animals. In a word, biolo-gical ancl cultural evolution go together. Ironically enough, this natural fate ofthings is exemplified beautifully by Darwinism itself as a theory, whether takenin its original biological context or in its derivative social context. For Evolu-tion, like Kronos, devours its own children, literally and figuratively, and thisi_ the reason of course why it is possible for us to discuss at all the old socialDarwinism and the new. Without evolution, there would be nothing new underthe sun, and hence nothing old either o

However, before showing briefly in what major respect the earlier andlater forms of social Darwini m differ we should say something in passing asto where they agree o What unifies all the contributors to social Darwinism,from Herbert Spencer (who was in a way a Darwinian in ethics and social philo-sophy even before .Charles Darwin himself) to C. H. Waddington (author ofthe latest book on the subject e), is their appeal to the method oí the factual.sciences as the sole method of solving problems oí hurnan conduct. Despite thefact that social Darwinians have diííered among themselves in their positivisticconception of scientific method itself (Spencer's conception, for example, beingunderstandably less empirical than Darwin's), all of them have shared the same

(1) BARRY COMMONER, "In Defense of Biology", Science,. Vol. 133, j une 1961.p. 1748.

(2) C. H. WADDINGTON, The Ethical Animal (London, Allen and Unwin, 1960).

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rnethodological faith, to wit, that ethics is not only usceptible of scientifictreatment, but that its possibility oí becoming a science depends exclusively onthe extension to the moral field of those methods of inquiry which have provedso successful in dealing with matters of fact. Inasmuch as 1 have discussedelsewhere (3) at length the methodological issues involved in the argument fora scientific ethic founded on evolution and kindred concepts, we hall refrainfrom further comment on that aspect of the subject ancl concéntrate instead onthe chief difference between the social Darwinians in the late nineteenth centuryand their counterparts in the early twentieth .

It goes without saying that, since the difference between the two groups-of social Darwinians is not one which concerns the method of ethics, it íollowsthat their difference has to do with its subject matter. Moreover, what we find-on comparing the two Darwinian evolutionist group is that the fundamental dif-ference between them in social philosophy stems directIy from their respectivetheories of nature, but ultimately from their respective theories of culture. Thereason for this ultimate connection is that social theories are either a reflectionor a rejection of certain cultural values in force, and that such is the case isabundantly evident from an examination of the difference between the two prin-cipal groups forming the Darwinian school of social thought .

Whereas the majority of the original group of social Darwinism (withone important exception, Prince Kropotkin) were content to interpret the.available facts of evolution in com-petitiue terms, the members oí the contemporarygroup have been inclined to interpret them, on the other hand, in cooperaiiueterms. By so doing, the social neo-Darwinians have in effect attempted to resolvethe great dilemma inherited from one of their own fellow-evolutionists, norteother than the greatest apostle of Darwin in the Victorian period, Thomas H.Huxley, who in his famous lecture of 1893 011 "Evolution and Ethics" firstmakes a radical distinction between biological and moral processes, and thenboldly repudiates on ethical grounds the Darwinian view of nature, describing1t colorfully as "the gladiatorial theory of existence". (4)

As to the reason for the dilema confronting social Darwinism in itsinitial and once popular form, it should be quite obvious from Huxley's un-expected repudiation oí the ethic of evolution, which to him at least representsthe "ethics of Hercules". For the very principIe basic to Darwinian biology andconstituting in its system the mainspring of evolutionary progress, "the struggleIor existence," turns out to be on analysis a poor foundation for ethics. So muchso that the way out of the predicament open to a Darwinian moralist should bejust as obvious as the reason for the existence of the logical difficulty in thefirst place, namely, to deny the original concept of "mutual struggle" as thepredominant factor of natural evolution and aífirm the importance of the com-plementary concept of "mutual aid". (5) At any rate, this is precise1y the re-solution of the dilema proposed by Prince Kropotkin near the turn of the century,and what the present day social Darwinians have done since then is to incor-

(3) PATRICK ROMANELL AND CHAUNCEY D. LEAKE, Can We Agree AScientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics (Austin, University of TexasPress, 1950).Also, P. Romanell, Toward a Critical NaturaJism (New York, Macrnillan, 1958).

(4) THOMAS H. HUXLEY, Evolution and Ethics (London, Macmillan, 1893), p. 33.(5) PRI CE KROPOTKII , Ethics: Origin and Development (New York, Dial Press,

1924), pp. 13-14.

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porate his argument for "mutual aid" as a factor of evolution into their systernsof thought, reinforcing it from three different angles - historical, sociological,and logical.

To begin with, the contemporary representatives of the school underconsideration have cal1ed íor a return to Darwin, insisting that such a returnto the master himself will convince us how one-sided many of his immediatedisciples were in putting the whole emphasis solely on the factor oí cornpetitionin the evolution of the species, to the utter neglect of the important factor ofcooperation. Secondly, as one of the most cautious and circum .pect membersof the new group has explained sociologically the reason íor the original popu-larity of the ethical position of his predecessors, "such tooth-and-c1aw ethicssuited the book of Victorian laissez faire capitalism and, also, with only rathersuperficial rcmodeling, of its opposing ideology in Marxist socialism". (6)Thirdly and lastly, this is how another member has put his finger on the fallacyoí his predecessors: "Omitting important facts and basing their arguments onfalse premises the tough Darwinians could only arrive at false conc1usions". (1)As a result, so ends the argument, they failecl to realize the moral of the wholestory of evolution, which is: "To love thy neighbor as thyself is not simply goodtext for Sunc1ay morning sermons, but perfectly souncl biology". (8)

It is incleed comforting to hear from one of the latest followers oí Darwinthat the Christian commanclment of neighborly love not only meets the require-ment of a good religion, but gets the bles ings of the last word in biology. Yetthe new conc1usions of those whom we may call "the soít Darwinians", whosegeneral view of nature can, in contradistinction to "the glac1iatorial theory". bechristened "the boy scout theory", prove too much, and suffer from a fallacyopposite to that of "the tough Darwinians". While the latter committed thefallacy of fa/se premise, the former commit the fallacy of t me prernise .

Resting their case for evolutionary ethics on the existence of a coopera-tive factor in the organic world, such as manifest in a beehive or anthill, manyof those belonging to the new group of social Darwinism not only argue froma dubious analogy. But, what is worse, they argue themselves out of the fieldof ethics altogether, without apparently knowing that they are doing so. Why ?If "the ethical conception of love" as cooperation is "grounded in the biologicalstructure of man as a functioning organism", (9) then it íollows that all moraleffort on his part is absolutely superfluous. As the agnostic Huxley made themistake of thinking of N ature as inherently evil, so the soft Darwinians havebeen making the worse mistake of thinking of her as inherently gooel. Worsebecause, as Aristotle pointed out many centuries ago, a bacl law is better thanno law at al1.

Turning next to the problem involved whenever an analogy is attemptedhetween the behavior of the so-called "social insects" ancl human concluct, itmust be recognized, after all, that bees and ants are accorded the rank of social

(6) GEORGE G. SIMPSON, The Meaning of Evolutíoa (New Haven, Yale Univer sity-Press, 1949), p. 298.

(7) M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU, "The Origin and Nature oí Social Liíe and the Bio-logical Basis oí Cooperation", Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 29, May 1949"p. 274.

(8) Ibídem, p. 281.(9) 1bídem, p. 280.

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animals by courtesy of man alone, inasmuch as whatever cooperative behaviorthey actually exhibit is due wholly to their possessions of marvelous instincts,the operations oí which, however nece sary to urvival, i no more subject tobeing judged good or bad in the moral en se, than is the rain which fall equalIy-on the just and the unjust. Consequently, the existence of the factor of coo-peration in nature at large, to which contemporary social Darwinians calI specialattention, is no more morally significant than is the opposite factor of competition,because any behavior which i purely instinctive in character i thereby disqua-lified. strictly speaking, from having moral significance.

What is meant by cooperation in the moral context. and how does itdiffer from an instinctive operation oí the antlike variety? What is meant by it1 not simply a factor having to do with "natural selection" or urvival, but anideal that men choose to follow and are willing to commit them e1ve to evenat the risk oE survival if necessary - a choice and a cornrnitment which, inciden-tally, ants and company are not obliged to make at any time. Like the rest ofus poor mortals, ants and bees have their problems of survival, to be sure, butthey do not have the peculiarly human problem of eleciding whether survival isalways hetter than non-survival . 0\\1, evolutionary hiology can certainly teachus which pattern of hehavior. cooperative or otherwise. are helPful to urvival,but it is normative ethics alone that can guiele u as to which oí them are noorth»oí survival . And to indicate how much more complex ethical consielerations arethan hiological ones. it should he aeldeel in thi connection that cooperation :-1.5

such i not always morally gooel. nor for that matter i competition always bad.The gan~ world illustrates the truth of the first proposition, the sports worldthat oí the econd.

AlI oí which signifies that the Darwinian theory of evolution. contraryto the hopes of its elefender , olel ancl new, provides no royal road to ethics.

Teverthele . its accent on the principIe of urvival cannot be di counted or dis-mi sed in ethical theory, simply on the ground that survival is only a measureof efficiency in life. For although efficiency. being essentially an instrumentalvalue, cannot be the ultimate ideal of man, without it nothing of intrinsic valuecan ever be attained. Even the martyr or the suicide mu t be efficient enoughto carry out hi project to completion, and to the extent that this is o theDarwinian eloctrine of evolution furni hes a missing link in the ca e for a rea-li tic anel naturalistic ethics. In short, efficiency i the prerequisite to a good life,ancl idealist in ethics are barking IIp the wrong tree if they forget for a minutethat men are no angels. but animals living in a precarious world filled with allsorts of risk , natural and cultural.

Finally, it is highly instructive as well as amusing to note before closingthat our soft Darwinians in recent years have been committing the same cultu-ralistic fallacy as their counterpart in the late 19th century, except that they havebeen committing it in rever e. Whereas the tough Darwinians (the Spenceriansin general and Nietzsche in particular) used to read one set oí moral categoriesout vf the theory of evolution, many of their contemporaries are reading anotherand apposite set into it. This new reading of the book of liíe is doubtless ver)'ignificant from the standpoint of cultural relativity, reflecting as it does a shift

in values - from the rugged individuali 111 of the nineteenth century to the equallyrugged collectivism of the twentieth-but the whole phenomenon has hardly.anything to do with biological evolution itself. For it should be pretty plain that

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Nature's face and the behavior of the species themselves have not changed muchin the last hundred years, ancl that therefore whatever eviclence of cooperativeactivity biologists find now in the animal kingelom was accessible to their coIlea-gues a century ago. So the change then in perspective from the olcl social Dar-winism to the new must be attributecl, at bottom, 110t reaIly to a reassessmentof the biological evielence at hanel, but primarily to the moral growth of thatrare species taxonomically labeleel homo sapiens -man himself- who is begin-ning to realize at long last that mutual cooperation among free men and respon-sible nations is the only sensible alternative to mutual annihilation in a nuclearworlel, let alone the only hope for a united front against the enemies of freeclomeverywhere .