In the last chapter we had evidence enough that in human societies, just as in the animal world, a very keen struggle is going on. This struggle is seen on a colossal scale when whole races enter into combat with each other, and success attends the one which is superior in some quality of mind or body, or that is rich in the possession of some machine of war. We have the spectacle of the Eastern king using a captive nation for the construction of irrigation works, or for the building of a temple or a pyramid; or, coming to more modern times, we see the Mexican civilisation destroyed by the Spaniards, or the wholesale extermination of savage races by the British. So, likewise, amongst the individual members of any given community very much the same struggle may be seen, in which the poor are the conquered ones, and the rich the vanquishers in the fight.
Does the Race show Increased Brain Capacity?
This competition of individuals in our own community has always been one in which brain power has been pitted against brain power, rather than muscle volume against muscle volume, and it is interesting to investigate whether or no, as a result of this struggle, our race has increased its innate intellectual capacity during the historic period, and, furthermore, what changes are likely to take place in the future.
Before we can venture to proceed with this investigation, it is necessary at once to separate from each other the question of our innate intellectual activity, and that of our intellectual property. We, in this nineteenth century, are the inheritors of a vast fund of accumulated knowledge—an intellectual property—which is infinitely greater than that possessed by the Greeks at the time of Socrates and Plato, yet I do not think that anyone would venture to assert that an average Englishman of to-day has better brain tissue and corresponding intellectual activity than that which was possessed by an average ancient Greek; indeed, some with Galton would say that the Englishman’s brain power is very inferior. We have always to bear in mind that, owing to our possession of the faculty of language spoken and written, our intellectual property, like our material property in houses, land, etc., has been, and is being, transmitted to us from generation to generation, and that we at the present time are recipients of the accumulations amassed by the restless intellectual activity of our direct and indirect ancestors. We cannot, therefore, determine whether we are increasing in our intellectual activity by the amount of knowledge we possess, and we must seek some other evidence.
Equally valueless would be a comparison between the intellectual activity of the Greeks or Romans and ourselves, taking as a test say the number of distinguished writers per million of population; for the Greek and Roman people are not related to us in direct line of descent, but are remote cousins. We can, however, obtain information which is of the greatest value as to the intellectual power of our direct forefathers at dates which may be counted back by thousands of years. Although they have left no written records behind them—for writing, even at the later part of the period referred to, was a rough implement, and placed in the hands of very few—yet they have left behind them, buried in their sepulchral mounds, their skulls, silent witnesses of the power and activity of the minds that once inhabited them.
The Neolithic compared with the Modern English Skulls.
The skull is the bony covering to the brain and the great organs of sense placed in the head; it develops with them, and is adapted with them as these organs during growth assume their proper racial and family characteristics. By an exhaustive examination and comparison of the skulls of different individuals of different races, the anthropometrist is able with certainty to affirm regarding the skulls of unknown persons their race and their general position in the scale of intellectual development. In a race where brain power is great, the brain pan is large and capacious, to accommodate the organ within it; it is a large-brain-small-jaw skull. In a race in which the brain power is limited, we have the small-brain-big-jaw skull. In races on much the same intellectual level, but who differ from each other in special physical and mental characters, the skull is generally a recognisable feature, and one can pick out at once the long skull of an Aryan from the broader skull of a Finn or Magyar.
Many of the sepulchral mounds just alluded to have been opened, notably by General Pitt-Rivers and Canon Greenwell, and the remains of well-preserved skulls have in several hundreds of instances been found. These go back to very remote antiquity, in many instances to the Stone Age, which we may place at least before the Christian era. When these skulls are examined, they are found to be similar to many of our own. When we look at them, we feel that there is no reason to assume that they are of a lower type than our own, or that the men and women of whom they are the remains would not, were they possessed of our advantages of education, etc., take an equal status in society with us. Some of them, especially those removed from the Vikings’ graves, must have belonged to magnificent specimens of humanity.
Abeyance of Brain Development since Neolithic Times.
The evidence, and it is of a most substantial kind, would seem to point strongly to the practical abeyance of organic intellectual development from the time mankind first formed simple communities for purposes of self-defence and mutual aid up to the present time. It would follow, therefore, that although we have been accumulating intellectual property, we have not necessarily become more intellectually active.
Social Communities do not permit of the Destruction of the Less Intellectually Capable.
But it may not unnaturally be asked, How is this state of things compatible with our views regarding selection? for we have seen that struggle and competition between brain and brain has incessantly been going on, and it seems to be a natural sequence that the brains of the community must be improved by selection.
We come here, however, to an outstanding difference between the results of the competition of one animal and another, and with that of one member of a community with another. In the animal world, the sickly, or the feeble, or deficient, have always tended towards destruction, their more capable fellows having as a rule an interest in their destruction. A sickly fowl or pigeon has not only to compete at great disadvantage with its fellows for its food, but it has to face a pitiless instinct which leads the healthy ones to destroy it as soon as its weakness is apparent. In the animal world, competition is to the death; it is competition without compromise, in which the conqueror alone remains to continue the race.
But man has become a social animal and lives in communities, and the very existence of a social community implies that the members of it have already acquired a certain regard for the well-being of their fellows, for the end and aim of society even in its most primitive form is advantage to the many. It is true that in a human community everyone does the best for himself, yet even amongst the so-called outcasts of society there are social bonds not to be found in the animal world, which link man to man often with strange tenacity. We regard our own interests as by far the most important, yet we have some regard for the interests of others, and the most savage man is capable of that very human virtue called friendship. Hence it is that although we may pursue our own ends and aims in life, we are not always entirely regardless of others. We are content to become rich and influential while our neighbour remains poor; and so strong are our instincts of self-love, that it wounds us sorely for him to overtake or outstrip us in the race for wealth, though, in spite of this, we shrink from doing him actual injury.
Human Brain Power results merely in Wealth Accumulation.
The struggle between members of the same community is not therefore so much a struggle for existence as a struggle for a superfluity of the good things obtainable. It is a struggle for property, and not therefore necessarily a struggle in which the most successful will be the largest race producer. While the young lion is killed by his stronger rival, and while the rat with an injured limb is at once attacked, killed and eaten by its fellows, men compete with each other for power and position, and for the means of gratifying whims and obtaining pleasure. It may truly be called a race for greed in which, in the nature of things, all cannot come in first. The well-to-do tradesman has more meat and wine than he can consume, more books than he can read, more works of art than he can understand, and yet he is not satisfied; but there is one thing sweeter to him than anything else, and that is to pass his neighbours in the race of life, and in his turn to be equal with those who once ran before him, and who at one time looked back at him with scorn. The brute unconsciously struggles to survive through instinct of the dire necessity of self-preservation, but man’s struggle in too many cases is a pastime that is sweet to him, and one which he will pursue through his whole life-time, and will follow eagerly with the tottering steps of extreme old age, although he thereby dwarfs what is noblest and best in his humanity.
While society has been unable, until lately, to do much towards the active preservation of the sickly, who have in consequence tended to fall a prey to disease and hardship, yet the foolish and mentally incapable, while they have suffered in the race for wealth, have not to any great extent been permitted to undergo extreme privation, and it remains to be seen whether they have contributed their share of progeny, for if they have done so it is easy to understand how little advance in organic mental activity can have taken place. And this is indeed indicated by a comparison between our skulls and those taken from sepulchral barrows since early neolithic times.
Further Study of Individual Competition.
Before, however, we attempt to arrive at a conclusion as to whether or not a man, unsuccessful in the world’s competition, as a rule contributes more or less progeny than one who has been more fortunate, let us examine more closely the details of this competition, with a view to the better comprehension of those conditions under which it takes place.
Let us take a familiar illustration. In an ordinary foot-race the best man gets in first, provided he is in his proper form, and the race is looked upon as a test of merit. In order to encourage competitors who otherwise would be without a chance of winning, it is usual to handicap some of these races, giving points of advantage to all except the very best man who is termed “scratch.” The result of such a race is no proper test of merit, and the winner is often the worst of limb and wind in the whole competing team; he wins it because of the handicap he has received. Now while the wild beast and very primitive savage are all “scratch” and no “handicap” is given, on the other hand civilised communities, as soon as they have become firmly established, introduce the system of handicapping, which does not necessarily give the advantage to those most needing it, but which all the same causes the struggle or race to cease to be so true and efficient a test of pure merit as it was before.
Those Competing are Handicapped by Property.[26]
This is brought about in many ways, but by none more effectively than by the amassing and transmission of property. Instead of living a hand-to-mouth existence, all communities have very naturally instituted what is known as personal property; they have permitted individuals to acquire and transmit large quantities of food or clothing, etc., or that which can be converted into this, namely money. By lending this property to those who are in need of it, and by exacting a percentage increase in payment of this loan, wealth may yield in perpetuity a sufficiency to support without further expenditure of labour. By the earning, with physical or mental labour, of wealth, and by the increments produced by the loan of wealth, this wealth has accumulated in certain families and in certain classes, and this power is handed down from generation to generation. In order to obtain wealth in any quantity, great physical skill or mental training is, as a rule, required, and this is only to be obtained for a child by the expenditure of wealth on the parent’s part. The wealthier families in a community have therefore either sufficient wealth to support their children in idleness, or, at any rate, they can put them in such positions as will enable them to produce wealth for themselves. The children of those families who possess little wealth are from the first at a disadvantage, and only those with very exceptional powers can possibly succeed in a struggle against their more fortunate neighbours.
Property is not always acquired by the Most Capable.
But if riches and power had always remained in the hands of the most capable, and if these had always married women of capacity, then riches and power would be where they would be of most advantage; but this has certainly not been the case. As already remarked, the awards of land and wealth at the time of the conquest were given to those of the conquering side who had showed most prowess in war and intrigue, at the expense of equally capable men amongst the vanquished. England thus received a nobility who were practically on an equality with her common people, but who, on account of previous contact with the wonderfully organising power of the Romish Church, and with the more civilised communities of the South, had acquired the art of organised warfare, and thereby the necessary subordination of the many to the few, lessons that the races living in England had not had the chance of learning. In more recent times wealth and consequent power, acquired by manufacture and trade, have likewise fallen to the share of the incapable as well as to the capable, to the exclusion of the greater number of individuals belonging to both classes. Those who lived on the seacoast where to the south and east the construction of harbourage was possible, profited by the development of the trade which at one time arose in those districts; while later on, and after the establishment of colonies to the west, in the States and Canada, those who lived in the coast district to the west profited in their turn by western trade. Individuals holding land of value to the agriculturist alone, and in its turn yielding great return, have found themselves penniless on account of the importation, at low prices, of agricultural produce. Others holding land containing certain mineral wealth have found themselves greatly increased in riches, and everyone in the district has profited by the find. It does not follow, therefore, that because A has acquired wealth and B has not, that A is even a better acquirer of wealth than B, let alone other qualities in which B may have an advantage. It might follow, and would follow in most cases, that A and B would determine their equality or inequality, were they placed under similar conditions. But as we have seen, their conditions seldom are similar; indeed, to a great extent, wealth acquisition is a lottery. While it cannot be granted that every man who acquires wealth is clever at acquiring it, it must at the same time be admitted that a fair proportion of those who succeed are above the average intelligence.
Property Holders Less Capable than Property Acquirers.
But the chances that the children of such a man will also be clever in acquiring wealth are again diminished by the chances that his wife will be deficient in that very quality. We do not know exactly what part the father, or what part the mother contributes to the making of the progeny, and this very fact indicates strongly that they each give much alike; were there any marked differences between their contributions these would have been observed, for we have so many chances in everyday life for the study of such problems. We may conclude, therefore, that an average child depends for its faculties as much upon the mother as upon the father. Now, even if we put on one side the probabilities of the choice of a mate having rather opposing qualities than otherwise—for we are attracted in marriage to our unlikes rather than to our likes—the chances are that the wife of the man who has acquired wealth will not have more than average capacity. According to this view, the children born of the marriage will, on an average, have less than the father’s capacity, supposing him to be a capable man.
We see, then, that the chances of finding capable men and women—innate capacity is, of course, referred to—among families inheriting wealth and position, are less than the chances of finding these qualities among those who have themselves acquired wealth, and also that it is indeed probable that the average capacity of wealth-holders is only slightly above that of the average of the whole community. That there is a slight difference we must allow, for capacity has its own value, and the ranks of the rich are continually being recruited by capables, while at the same time the ranks of the poor are being recruited by incapables.
While this is the case the sifting referred to is very incomplete, and we find in every class every range of intellectual capacity, from that of the idiot to the man capable of giving a permanent impulse to thought and action.
The Poor Child is scratched against the Rich Child.
The riches of the well-to-do give their children—who, as we have seen, are not necessarily the most capable—an immense pull in life’s competition with the sons of the poor, with the result that, certainly in the great majority of cases, the poor man’s child is beaten. Putting on one side the question of the father’s personal influence in the way of obtaining advantageous positions for his children, who generally have an opening in his profession or line of business, the rich man is able to equip them with an expensive education which is essential to their getting on in the world. A vigorous personality always counts for much, but training is essential, and training has until quite recently only been obtainable by the well-to-do classes. The English universities and public schools had until lately become the monopoly of the upper and professional classes, to the exclusion, even among these classes, of many who differed in creed from the majority of the community. The doors of every profession were barred except to those who possessed capital, and the children of the poor were frequently unable to obtain even the elements of book knowledge, except in Scotland, where primary education had the start of England by three hundred years. The fact that as many as 41 per cent. of persons married in 1839 were unable to write their own names, illustrates how enormously a large mass of the community must have been handicapped by their want of training.
Not only have the richer classes been able to start their children with capital and a better training than their poorer neighbours, but the poorer classes have—and this, too, in comparatively recent times—been actively repressed. We can in this connection recall the fact that before the sixteenth century, English labourers were compelled to receive wages fixed in some cases by law, and in other cases by justices, who were often themselves employers of labour. Their wages were determined chiefly by the price of provisions, and in order to prevent migration with a view to the bettering of their wages, they were confined to the place of their birth by the imposition of very serious punishment, if they left their native places to work elsewhere. It is not sought in any way in these pages to adduce these instances of what we should now call unfair dealing with a view to bringing discredit upon the holders of wealth. We have no reason to suppose that our forefathers were consciously unfair, and there is little doubt that many usages current at the present day will be viewed by our descendants as gross outrages upon the principles of justice as understood by them.
Each generation acts according to its own lights, and if our public conscience is sharpening, and our ideas of right and wrong are becoming clearer and are ruling our actions more emphatically, we must remember that this moral advance is a heritage which, like our intellectual and material possessions, we owe to our ancestors, and we may humbly endeavour that this, the most worthy of all possessions, shall not be lessened as it passes through our hands.
The point that is desired to be emphasised is the want, in civilised communities, of advantages equally distributed to every child born within the community. Without this condition the united effort of the community can never reach its maximum, for much individual power is suppressed, and much incompetency is bolstered up in quite an artificial manner, and competition fails in great measure to bring forward the most capable competitors.
Modern Democratic Attempts to equalise the Struggle.
While this is an undoubted fact, it seems pretty certain that latterly a change has come about in the direction which gives more scope for individual attainments irrespective of birth and wealth.
Organised efforts are being made to connect the Board Schools with the universities, so that the children of the poor may, if capable enough, climb at once into the professional classes. In the interests of intellectual effort this is very desirable, for the universities will then draw their students from a larger area, and men possessing brain power will be rescued from mere mechanical pursuits. One can hardly explain, on the assumption of race superiority alone, the wonderful potentiality of the Scottish Lowlands, the birthplace of so many who have been distinguished for personal attainments, for the East Coast Englishman is of the same blood as the Lowlander, and the division between England and Scotland is by no means an ethnological one, it is rather a political division of the old kingdom of Northumberland.
But it may more reasonably be explained by the excellent primary education throughout Scotland, and the link that has long ago been formed between the universities and almost every parish in the country. The best education the country can produce has for many years been within the reach of every thrifty farmer, who, if he has a clever son, can pay the relatively small cost of his education.
England has been hitherto a laggard in her educational system, but education is now at last being brought to the door of the poor as well as of the rich. Primary education has been recast, and the universities and colleges in the great centres of population, and suited to the wants of, and within the means of, the poorer classes, are now being established, and an altogether different set of students are being equipped for the intellectual battle of life, students that are drawn not alone from the ranks of the English gentry, but also from the lower middle and artisan class.
By the institution, amongst other means, of technical schools and colleges, the mechanical arts can now be learnt at little or no expense by the children of the poor, and organised public bounty is replacing occasional private patronage.
Thus not only have the poor an increasing chance of rising into the upper ranks of life, but the upper classes are beginning to regard occupations, at one time beneath their notice, as, after all, most suited to the less bright and capable of their children, so that there is a greater passing up and passing down of the ladder of life than was the case some fifty years ago. The surgeon and medical practitioner were at one time looked down upon and classed with the shopkeepers, and trade in all its branches was viewed as a necessary occupation, but only to be undertaken by the uneducated and unrefined. But nowadays parents are taking what appears to be a more commonsense view of the question. Their sons cannot all of them be landed proprietors, clergymen, lawyers, or soldiers, and they are, therefore, sent to banks and offices and breweries, or may be they are exported to grow oranges or to mind sheep in one of the colonies. Positions in life once looked down upon are now thought better of, for men and women do not speak ill of the positions which may be occupied by their children or by their near relatives.
But while it would appear that we are beginning to give fuller play to individual power and industry, no one would be prepared for a moment to assert that these qualities have as yet free scope for their action. Still the tendency has recently been in the direction of a breaking up of the more artificially imposed barriers between class and class, so that wealth and power is more readily accessible to those who were once debarred from all hope of it by birth; while the children of the well-to-do can take up positions which were at one time thought to be quite unworthy of them. This, then, seems to be the tendency of modern democratic effort, but it is very questionable whether the result eventually achievable is one which, if understood, will be very acceptable to the democracy. Class distinctions of a very artificial kind are, undoubtedly, being rapidly destroyed, but only by the reconstruction of others of a most enduring character. The advantages which the future holds out are, as they always have been, to the few and not to the many, for the struggle and competition is still there, and all cannot come in abreast. By a more complete and thorough sifting from all classes of the capable and intelligent, we are forming, and shall continue rapidly to form an aristocracy of real worth and distinction, separated more and more sharply from the masses, as each generation goes by.
We can hardly doubt that the more capable will always have at their disposal more to satisfy their wants than the relatively incapable masses will have, for society will always continue to expend upon the musical composer or upon the skilful engineer a care which would be thrown away upon a man capable of only a limited development, since the resources of a community, nay of the whole earth itself, are strictly limited, and a due proportion only of these resources must be utilised as necessity dictates. It is quite possible that the present standard of comfort of the labouring classes may be in the future greatly raised, and their horizon widened; still, relatively to others, they will always be poor. If everyone is able to dress in silk and to eat lamb and green peas, then this privilege will cease to be valued, for we set store not on what we possess, but on what we do not possess. The field and town labourers to-day eat better food, dress better, and have far greater advantages than had their fathers, yet relatively to other classes they remain what their fathers were. They are “poor men,” they pity themselves, and the more ambitious strive for what they see others in possession of. At the present time the poor man may, with some show of reason and hope of succeeding in greater things, be discontented with his lot, and wish for other pursuits and other advantages, for which he may feel himself to be, and in many cases is, most aptly fitted; but if the present tendencies continue, whereby the best amongst them rise to higher things as the necessary consequence of their ambition, there will not be found amongst the labourers of the future any considerable number left who will have sufficient innate capacity to undertake pursuits requiring much mental effort and bodily skill. Class will then be separate from class by real organic differences, and the idea of social equality, ridiculous enough as it now appears to most of us, will then have become a demonstrated absurdity, as having contained the impossible idea that things that are unlike can be at the same time alike.
Those who Succeed are Not Always the Best.
We cannot leave this question of the struggle between one individual and another without noticing a point of great interest and importance. We have seen that society is giving to the capable of all classes increased facilities to acquire wealth and position, and is tending to form of this capable section an upper class.
Now, unfortunately, this selection is carried out only on certain lines, and it does not follow that this upper class will invoke our entire sympathy and approbation. In biological works we frequently hear of the “survival of the fittest,” and the expression is used by biologists in quite a special and technical sense. It does not mean of necessity that the most active or intelligent always survive; indeed, this is far from being a rule of universal application. Often the most fit are inactive and mentally inert, as when the tame duck with useless wings and the mole with useless eyes is preserved while others die off. In these cases the wings and eyes are useless, and, although the animals looked at by themselves would appear to have become less excellent, yet in view of their surroundings they have a better chance than would be the case were their endowments of a higher order. Biologists use then the term “fit,” simply in the sense of “fit to get on in the world,” and often intrinsically inferior animals and men are “fit” in this sense of the term.
Now, those who are to form this upper class, or classes, of which we have been speaking, will be fit in the technical meaning of the word, for they will have been able best to conform to the conditions necessary for their advancement laid down by society at large. Whether or not these fit will form an aristocracy of high merit will depend upon the kind of conditions with which they have to comply, in fact it will depend upon the selection that society makes.
Does it not appear that the present tendency is rather to give an advantage to the man who is capable, pushing and diplomatic; are we not selecting men with qualities of value in a struggle, qualities which savour still rather of talons and claws, while we are careless of qualities which we have learned already to value as those of a higher order? In following out a train of reasoning like this, where there are no means of obtaining definite evidence, one can only go upon the general impressions of life which it has been in our power to obtain. Do not these impressions force us to believe that the man who most invariably gets on best is he who untiringly follows out his own advantage, who has one end and aim in life, which he pursues regardless of everything else; and that a course of life like this necessarily implies selfishness and want of regard for the well-being of others? We see so many men around us of the greatest capacity, unselfish and unblemished at the same time, and yet they do not get on, but are passed by men who, in most ways their inferiors, possess instinctively the power to follow out in detail that course which leads quickest to success. How often do we not hear of the generosity of the poor, and of the way in which they assist each other in need and sickness? Do we ever ask ourselves if it could not more truly be said that the generous are the poor, that generosity almost of necessity implies a temperament unsuited to the neck to neck struggle which society is increasingly imposing upon those of her citizens who aspire to be rich?
Therefore, although we may be thoroughly in sympathy with the democratic changes just alluded to, and may view these as necessarily preludes to a better condition of things, we must not shut our eyes to their dangers, and must not be deceived into looking upon them as capable of achieving by themselves very desirable or final results.
FOOTNOTE
