UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES / L~ ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION ' To promote the increase of natural knowledge, and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.' THOMAS HBNBY HUXLEY: Autobiography. ' Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious certainly the least creditable is the modern soi- disant science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection.' JOHN BGSKIN : Unto This Last. ' . . . . that which is surely coming, the new co-operative art of life.'- WILLIAM MORRIS : The Arts and Crafts of To-day. ASPECTS OP SOCIAL EVOLUTION FIRST SERIES TEMPERAMENTS BY J. LIONEL TAYLER, M.R.C.S. WITH TEN ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1904 (AH rights reserved] GKENEBAL PEEFACE As society grows more complex, it inevitably must leave behind the simplicity of primitive life with which it, in its early period, is associated. But this simplicity of individual relation in the social group has a correspondingly simple moral code. This, with the departure of the conditions which gave birth to and supported it, falls by its inapplicability to newer surroundings. As a consequence in all evolving aggregates there is a constant need for displacement of old primitive ideals by others newer and more advanced, lest, when the old forms fail, a period of anti-social laxity result until the difficulty experienced in realising in one aim what is socially valuable in the State, and what is morally desirable in the individual, is overcome. Changing conditions of life necessitate alterations in the limits which every national growth imposes on its citizen members, and individual freedom is as necessarily curtailed in some directions as it is ex- panded in others. New kinds of subordination are required genera- tion by generation, and it is the duty of each indi- vidual to adapt himself or herself loyally to them. 208177 vi ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION Moreover, in these forms and ceremonies philo- sophic rales and abstract generalisations true for any one man or woman living independently do not apply. The individual gain ought never to be per- mitted at the social loss. The right of the one must at times be overridden to prevent the many suffering, and the one ought to be willing to sacrifice in some degree minor individual advantages to the major social ends looming forth on the horizon. If any- one is not willing to sacrifice so much for the common good, he should be compelled. Not less emphatically has collective life certain imperative obligations. For the State to expect, or, what is infinitely worse, to force, individuals to sub- ordinate themselves to a class, or classes, holding by persistence of obsolete customs or parasitic existence, or more often on account of both, powers to which they are not entitled, is equivalent to raising under advanced conditions an ideal of irresponsible class Nihilism similar to that of early savage life without the justification that the cruder method of existence affords. In fact, such practice is social stultification, because it places low-class before high communal standards, and is therefore incapable of rational or moral justification. Yet such failure of the State to enforce only those laws which serve common ends, and which actively check privilege, is the marked characteristic of modern civilisation. Mob rule is dangerous because it assumes equal fitness in all individuals, and takes little heed of the widely divergent physical and mental capacity in different men and women. But for a precisely GENERAL PREFACE Vll similar reason any scum control, independent of any selective test, is certainly not less prejudicial. The refuse of social activity exists in the upper- as well as the lower-most layers of civilisation, and floats to the top as frequently as it tends to sink. In every trade, in every profession, the loafer abounds, and is characterised not by marks of poverty, but by lack of purpose, generally by in- efficiency, and almost invariably by moral imbecility, as well as criminal disregard of social well-being. These are platitudes, of course, stale platitudes that have been preached for generations with an ever-growing consensus of opinion of wisdom and justice against folly and arrogance, but they are nevertheless disregarded to-day as if such truths had never been recognised, or if recognised not felt. With the specialisation of industry groups of men and women in different industrial classes are increasingly losing touch with each other are meeting only in the common highways of life, and know only by hearsay what other human beings are doing in that one transcendently important part of each person's life, the home. To a large extent this tendency, being a necessary one in social evolution, is unavoidable, but it must not be allowed to make us careless of the responsibility that we all owe, as citizens of one State, of one race, and one wider brotherhood, to each other. Think of the poverty, the wretchedness, the vulgarity, coarseness, and brutality, the arrogance, and worse than all the utter indifference, manifested in the lives of the people to-day. Past evils were viii ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION terrible, and other countries may be even worse in many respects than our own. But to share abuses with others does not make them less. This is now our atmosphere, and we, the living citizens of a living nation and empire, are, in large part, directly responsible for it. What do we do ? How do we act? We know that our industry depends on others ; that, therefore, a spirit of co-operation rather than antagonism ought to be fostered; we know that physical conditions that favour degenerate half- starved animals in deformed human forms are irrational, and, what is worse, immoral ; yet we allow individuals to oppress other individuals, make little effort to check sweating in trades, overcrowding, public-house monopolies, and scum supremacy. We know that to be mothers of a healthy race our womanhood must be healthily environed, and that both parents must be moral, temperate, and intelligent, yet we permit women to be foully under- paid, inviting them to choose between vice and com- fort, and virtue and the barest, meanest, and most sordid existence. While, by allowing unjust privi- lege to monopolise the gains of labour, difficulties, well nigh insurmountable, are placed in the way of marriage, and we understand all the while that by so doing true love, the foundation of collective life, is destroyed, and mere lust, the blight that has fallen on and disorganised nation after nation, is favoured. Think of the lives that are daily ground down GENEBAL PREFACE IX and debased by our social system. Has the State no responsibility ? There is scarcely a home, how- ever debased, even in the lowest of the dreg classes, that does not bear some testimony of some effort, slight though it often is, for a higher and more beautiful life. A few little ornaments, very often of the crudest design, or a coloured print in a gaudy frame nevertheless, these mark incontest- ably the fact that at one time in their lives some- thing more than an eating and drinking house was, in some degree, desired. How has Society treated this little human spark in an otherwise brutal nature? It has allowed landlords to charge rents for single rooms, for two rooms, for three rooms, that many a wealthy man would decline to pay for an equal accommodation. It has allowed citizens to be paid a starvation wage, and then invited them to drink away their miserable pittance by fostering public-house licences. It says to them, in language plainer than any tongue can speak, ' Your higher life is nought to me,' and it stifles it, remorselessly, devilishly. Society has duties, and it must perform them, before it takes the Anarchist to task for neglecting his. The teaching of evolution has proved beyond doubt that the higher the social life the more the need is felt for combined effort and combined help. We all know and feel this to be the true spirit which helps a nation forward, even without scientific knowledge. Yet we are coldly indifferent to all around us. liuskin was right, by fact as well as X ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION morally, when he urged that love is the basis of all collective life. It is 'otherdom,' more than ' selfdom,' that makes for social development. From the mother's sacrifice and love, out of which family and manly and womanly love has become possible and grown strong, from the unselfish reformer's patriotism and the persecuted pioneer's faith, from these great feelings that are slowly welding all the higher tendencies into an ordered whole the power of the modern State has sprung. The stockbroker with his ill-gotten millions, the fraudulent tradesman, are so much dust that time sweeps aside. We as a nation shall survive and grow strong, or become deadened and diseased, in proportion as we value or despise love for the great things in life. Some day, perhaps, future ages may answer that old question, ' Am I my brother's keeper? ' with another ' Am I his seducer? ' The crying need of the times is for clear mental vision controlled by scientific method and illuminated and directed by the widest and most intense human sympathies. There are too many sycophants, too many charlatans, too many common-sense ' philo- sophers,' and too few men and women who, loving humanity, truth, and progressive life, are willing to give, patiently, consistently, and intelligently, as far as lies in their power, their quota of knowledge, skill, or honest labour to their country and the world; determined to resist to their utmost power any assumption of superiority in those naturally their inferiors, in so far, and only so far, as thej r are inferior, whatever their social position may be ; GENERAL PREFACE XI accepting willingly subordination to those naturally capable and more moral. At the present time, the world, and perhaps the English-speaking part of it most of all, is saturated with the dead weight of custom. We are progressive, and yet strangely loth to drop, not only what was noble for this is understandable but also that which is hideous and evil. No one seriously doubts, who has even the least knowledge of the laws of progress, the advantages of stability in social develop- ment, but it is none the less true that its excess means as a first step stagnation, and as a final one retrogression. Our danger in this respect is far from imaginary. To see clearly our position is, therefore, the first need of our times ; the second, that of acting humanely and checking brute rule, substituting for it the dominion of what is essentially manly and womanly. To act in the darkness which present and past conditions have produced, by roofing us in with false habits which have obscured the natural light of advancement, without realising that we are so confined, is to court failure. We must discover our true whereabouts, and then proceed to destroy what is valueless or harmful, and help in build- ing up a social structure suitable for ever-growing and extending needs. We must know life as it is ; we must be undeceived by what is merely outwardly beneficial, but in real aim and intent pernicious. We must be dissatisfied with every representation of what is going on around us that is not rigidly truthful. And, in order to do this, it is necessary Xll ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION to picture life realistically, in terms of higher and lower, impersonally and without prejudice. This is the first step towards right understanding and, ultimately, towards right acting. With this idea of excluding the falseness to which habit has accustomed us as a fundamental basis on which any after-structure must rest, we may begin to re-examine the different aspects of social life. Before everything, it is absolutely imperative rightly to classify and label that which we see around us. The House of Lords is clearly mainly a barbaric survival of a barbaric age, a persistent feudal institution having a social value propor- tionate to the feudal element still remaining in the population, and beyond this of insignificant im- portance, except for certain parasitic qualities which it has acquired. The House of Commons, since a monetary qualification is the most important essential of membership, is largely representative of wealthy interests in the nation, and in no sense fit to discuss authoritatively those greater life questions which require greater mental powers to adequately appre- ciate them. It is, therefore, mainly a commercial institution tainted with the lower morality and the superficiality of commercialism and uncontrolled by greater life ideals. It must be understood that this is largely their present value. Their past has been bound up with the greatest chapters in our national histor) r , but they have both ceased to represent higher life in GENERAL PREFACE xiii proportion as monetary standards have persisted and feudal customs now harmful have not been repealed. The Catholic and Protestant religious organisa- tions are to an even greater degree little more than survivals. No great artistic movement is now bound up with them, no musical life comparable with what they once could honestly be proud of. Their religion is dead, and a new one fitted for our greater needs must spring up before these bodies can ever be national again and inspire creative emotional life to fresh effort. While science and philosophy have been in the main antagonistic to their dogmas for centuries, this ought not to be, for truth ought to be worshipped and not apathetic priestcraft. It is necessary, therefore, to look to the great leaders outside these recognised institutions, to the intellectual and emotional forms of genius which appeal to the cultured and independent middle-class portion of the nation ; to those, in fact, who are the acknowledged inspirers of men and women, who are neither enervated and corrupted by wealth nor made coarse or despondent by privation. It would have been better if those who actually do lead the progressive part of the community had frankly and fearlessly, while not interfering with honest lower effort and amusement, definitely classed it as inferior and subordinate to higher ends. There would then have been less chance of the merely wealthy asserting themselves and interfering in spheres for which they have neither natural ability nor worthy interest. Aptitude and honest aim xiv ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION ought to be the sole determining factors in all cases. At present, owing to the relatively unfit occupy- ing posts of importance in the State, views too crude to merit serious treatment are discussed and tolerated, and the general public have become so bewildered that they either look upon all as experts or believe all to be alike valueless, for position does not signify capacity. The tendency manifest among the richest and poorest classes to pass judgment on the most diverse and technical subjects with little or no previous study is a disgrace to modern methods of life. Some unscrupulous shrewd stockbroker, whose sense of morality is little, if at all, higher than some less in- tellectual criminal sentenced in our law courts, may express his views on justice without the least fear of public opinion. A cabinet minister, holding his position mainly on account of the possession of great wealth and unjust class influence, without even any proof of talent in his own field, may freely criticise some great naturalist of giant powers and immense patience in observation without running the smallest risk of losing his unearned reputation ; nay, worse, ignorant people may seriously think that his statements have some weight. As in thought, so in emotional power, the vulgarian, whether rich or poor, should not be per- mitted to stand among cultured high-feeling people on an equal footing. It should be quite impossible for those who are incapable of valuing what is beautiful to intrude their lower standard upon those GENERAL PREFACE XV who can. Good music, good art, is debased by being placed in a lower atmosphere, and lower people must first be raised to a higher level before they have a right to claim that the nobler aspects of life should be free to them. In the great temple of humanity there are chambers which are in the one true and only sense consecrated, and it is sacrilege to allow them to be opened by impious hands. Amusements and educational work for the commoner coarser minds there must always be. It is inconceivable that grades and various classes for various individuals will disappear from human life. The science of evolution teaches, in fact, the contrary; but it teaches also, and this in unmistakable manner, that they must be natural, and that the inferior must be subordinated to the superior. We ought to know what is actually beautiful, noble, intellectual, even where, as in most cases, it is not possible to feel that sympathy of mind which thus proves its right to share in greatness. Until the true perspec- tive of life is in some measure understood by all, it is hopeless to expect any worthy realisation of the existence that is around us. To free ourselves from the tyranny of custom is of primary importance in helping us towards a scientific appreciation of the movement that we are all, with or without willingness, bound to take some significant or insignificant part in. With this ideal of clear, unbiassed truth as our aim, it is possible to survey Nature with less fear of completely missing her dominant characteristics, and with more hope of avoiding the pitfalls that xvi ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION man himself places in the pathways of his fellow- men in their endeavours to reach the road leading to all sound advancement. Once the need for avoiding the bias which our own surroundings are apt to give to our outlook is recognised, one is able to realise more clearly the extent of the vast country over which the mind would desire, but can never hope, to travel. This only makes the help of other travellers more wel- come ; and, as the sense of our own littleness grows with our knowledge, it creates an intense long- ing for the companionship of fellow-students, and thus abolishes the petty differences which even at the present day harm and degrade advanced thought. Broadly, existence presents itself under two aspects lower nature without man's guidance, and higher where his mind stamps its marks on all that it comes in contact with, and thus changes the character, not only of man's own environment, but also that of all other living forms. Nature without man's interference wears a uni- formly beautiful aspect. Ugliness does not seem part of her plan. Moorland, woodland, mountain and valley, lake, river, and ocean, under cloudy or clear sky, may frown or smile, be winsome or awe- inspiring, or even simply terrible, but the colours and tones are blended, the forms graceful or grand, and the contrasts imaginative, and the whole effect harmonious. Beauty indescribable, real, and abso- lute, evident to any who have sense and power to appreciate is the one great feature of our world GENERAL PREFACE XVli when uninterfered with by her youngest and highest child, man. Not less evident, however, is a less pleasant feature. The history of past evolution has been a history of carnage, of destruction of living by non-living causes, of one form of existence by another. No method is too cruel, if it be efficient, to succeed ; no form of life, however beautiful, too high to die. From the destruction of the older reptilia to the extinction of mammoth and arrival of man himself hideous brutality has been one all-pervading feature. If Nature is always beautiful, it is no less certain that she is always, to outward appearances, non- moral. Yet as a counteracting fact of vast significance it must be remembered that, so far, science has to record in the main only one long evolution, never a general devolutionary movement. We are, too, in an ordered world, moving in an ordered manner and in a fixed direction. If this were not so, science would have no existence. What is the meaning of this cosmos ? Whither is this progressive development tending ? Born deep down in all of us is a sense of purpose. Why is it there ? We cannot divest ourselves of its influence ; without it life would be meaningless and ridiculous. The savage expresses his sense of destiny in his worship of carved images, of animal or tree, and by mental imagery ; the Roman Catholic in his crude faith in symbols and ceremonies ; while higher thought and feeling believe in some cause that moves towards a XVlii ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION some unknown end. This feeling must in part be derived from nature. Beauty, the lack of any immediate moral direc- tion, and the apparent presence of an ultimate purpose, are the three abstractions that stand out everywhere in this nature now disappearing, in moulding which human influence has had no part. When, however, the passage is made from con- sciousness to self-consciousness ; when that feeling of will to do becomes associated with a sense of power, which all humanity practically accepts as being in some way a real control of force somewhere, there grow up on the earth, side by side with this growing evolution of human self-consciousness and human self-assertiveness, new features the presence of definite ugliness, and, not less definitely, the con- ception and appearance of absolute evil-doing, surely both alike witnesses of some new force. Just as the characteristics of nature in the earlier stage are wondrous consonant beauty, per- vaded, on closer examination, by an unmoral series of forces achieving a certain end by apparently universally unmoral means, so the not less striking characteristics of the human later stage are repulsive ugliness, relieved by occasional glimpses of beauty, and an even more repulsive immorality, with an occasional gleam of sublime moral grandeur. There is not one aspect of human life in which these two dominant appearances are not evident. The rows of hideous brick buildings that deface town-life, the factory chimneys, the railway stations with their shrieking locomotives, the ugly vehicles GENERAL PREFACE xix that move along the ugly roadways, the peculiarly inartistic dress of the people ; from the filthy slum to the gaudy assertive mansion there is wherever the eye looks ugliness. Yet a little old forgotten nook, or some attempt at better things, may occa- sionally be seen; but, generally, beauty has little to mark its existence in the modern movement. It would seem that as man increasingly acquires con- trol over his environment, so does he proportionately make it unrestful and offensive to the sense of higher harmony. The clatter of machinery and roar of town displace the music of bird-life and running stream, and the smoke of the factory the blue of the fathomless sky. And when one looks deeper the impress of evil is seen almost luridly. The mother's love, the troth of one man and one woman to each other, the over- mastering feeling of patriotism, of righteousness, the steady pursuit of knowledge, are found only as rarest exceptions to an otherwise general rule. Every age has its martyred great men whose lives have been blackest tragedies. And history records mainly one long list of tyrannies, of those that have tyrannised, and of the low, contented, apathetic victims, at last driven into revolt by iniquities that a true man would have died rather than submit to. Over the past and present life of man hangs a black cloud of evil, reflecting itself alike in the selfish debased rich and the debauched poor. Unselfish love, honesty, knowledge for the many these are but useful names to hide evil with ; a 2 XX ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION for the few only are they something real, noble, divine. Yet the world does progress. The slave becomes emancipated, law gains its victory over chaos, the names of womanhood and manhood grow to have purer meaning. Brute force gives place to mental force, and ignorance to knowledge. Life, in becom- ing more complex, becomes also fuller of higher meaning. The desire to do something, to attain some end, gains ground, even though it be slowly ; and man is gradually awakening his mind to that expression of infinite purpose that is found in nature itself. Amidst a beautiful unmoral world, being made hideous by man, with evil in the ascendant in the present, and yet under all a deeper progressive note of good to which the greater, and finally also the lesser, minds respond, the material for the newer social science must be sought ; unblinded by custom, unbiassed by flattery, undismayed by difficulties, patient, methodical, truth-loving, the new sociologist will record what is high and what is low, and on his judgment and honesty future progress must largely depend. To avoid the danger of interpreting Nature or Man in terms of the other ; to avoid mistaking what is only prominent for what is good or powerful in man's evolution ; to read and describe faithfully what I see, in the hope that it may be of some value to others, has been my main, and I hope not altogether purposeless, object. J. L. T. PBEFACE TO THE PKESENT VOLUME IN the present volume it has been my object to attempt to consider briefly some of the principal factors that form a rational basis for a scientific appreciation of the forces which govern the evolu- tion of all social entities. As Virchow pointed out in biology that the cell the smallest and simplest living unit, possessed of all the functions of life is the only safe foundation upon which the study of all multicellular organisms may be built, so in social evolution the growth of any complex or even simple state can only be under- stood if a study of the single units of which it is made up i.e. individual men and women is the first introductory consideration to the later secondary problem. To know something of heredity in order to understand how the individual has been developed, of temperament in order to grasp what may be done with the adult man or woman after being modified or selected, of environment so as to realise how the growing, and fully grown, individual reacts to sur- roundings, are therefore the necessary preliminaries to the study of the actual course which collective development has taken in the race. xxii ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION The drift of reform and of retrogressive in- fluences can only be understood when the relation of these different influences is interpreted by the actions they induce in the many varieties of citizens that make up any given tribe, nation, or empire. Preliminary individual study and then the chief aggregate resultant tendencies of all the individuals acting as a whole, and, lastly, the local and general atmosphere which such collective life and collective habits produce, are the natural order by which social problems may be considered, and it is therefore the one which I shall endeavour to follow. Now, it happens that there is one other science besides sociology that is based on the peculiar cha- racteristics of individual man. Medicine deals in many respects with the individual aspect of the same problem that sociology considers collectively. The medical practitioner ought to understand a good deal about the properties of cell life, of the effect of local surroundings on different cells, of the various organs of the body made up of cells of a special character or type in relation to the whole individual, and, finally, of how individuals differently organised, owing to the varying development of the various bodily organs, are affected by varying sur- roundings. Upon this knowledge rational treatment of disease should rest, and this same basis must support scientific sociology. Not only so, but medical conclusions must tend progressively to guide sociological tendencies. In the mapping out of streets, in allotment of air spaces, in the hygiene of school and industrial, as well as PREFACE XX111 of home life, in determining the fitness or unfitness of given persons for given employments, medicine must have a steadily and increasingly powerful voice. Besides, therefore, the fact that the two sister sciences arise from a common parent stem, there is also to be taken into consideration the com- plete dependence of the one on the other. Biological conclusions ought, therefore, to be considered in relation to their twofold application to individual medical and collective social problems. Nor can either set of deductions be satisfactorily divorced from the other, fcty the two sciences are complementary, and cannot, therefore, be studied independently. In the seven following chapters that form the present volume I have attempted to deal briefly with the leading conclusions of biology, in so far as its teachings tell the student something definite and important of the nature of individual man and woman, and to point out how this knowledge affects social and medical sciences. I have, however, purposely limited myself to little more than a mere statement of the facts that have some bearing on these subjects, only inci- dentally mentioning the deductions which may be drawn from them. In future volumes I hope to be able to amplify these preliminary statements, firstly, in reference to the more strictly social side, and, secondly, where distinctly medical questions are involved. My firm belief is that neither social development nor medical progress will ever make satisfactory XXIV ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION advancement until the vast importance of the trained medical practitioner, working among the people, with his power to forward or retard industrial and home evolution, is recognised by the nation, singly as a mass of separate individuals, and collectively as the State as a whole ; and until the principles of State development in relation to human health and disease, and the value of environment in selecting a higher or lower type, are appreciated and taught in the various medical schools throughout Great Britain and the Empire. This, with the reorganisation of the present pernicious cram system of examination, which ab- solutely destroys both the humanitarian spirit and the scientific desire by which alone men are induced to look at the larger problems of their work; and the limiting of the general practitioner's field of activity (by accustoming him to regard eye, ear, and obstetrical cases, and also those entailing greater surgical knowledge, as being outside of his more general practice), will give him both the power and the opportunity to pursue his calling intelligently and devote a large portion of his energies to public, trade, and home health problems, which he now almost entirely, and quite unavoidably, disregards. The medical man of the future must in all advancing countries take a progressively more pro- minent part in directing life towards higher ends, and because of this growing responsibility he must be less of a charlatan in his everyday practice. Much of the matter here treated was outlined in a paper read before St. Thomas's Hospital Medical PREFACE XXV and Physical Society (January 1897), entitled 'Evolu- tion and its Application to Medicine.' In this lecture I considered my subject mainly from three aspects : firstly, the need for understanding, as far as known data would allow, the laws of heredity ; secondly, the necessity of properly appreciating the importance of the question of temperaments, considered from this heredity basis, and studying them not only in rela- tion to predisposition to disease, but also in regard to health, insisting that the whole problem ought to be examined from the modern human racial and higher evolutionary standpoints ; thirdly, and lastly, I dwelt upon the need for grappling with the facts relating to environment in its power of favouring certain disease-producing organisms and certain types of individuals more or less resistant to them. My views of heredity were afterwards published in ' Natural Science,' more particularly in an article on ' The Scope of Natural Selection,' in Volume XV. of this periodical, and the first chapter of the present work is mainly reprinted from this. The other chapters have hitherto been unpublished. The illustrations have been very kindly prepared for me by Miss Minna Tayler, and are intended to be mere impressions. They have been reproduced without colours in order that the physical character- istics maybe better appreciated. It must also be borne in mind that the temperaments portrayed are every- where accentuated groups of characteristics found in different individuals. They were obtained by study- ing and noting down common characters existing in faithful portraits of earlier times, and from either XXVi ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION photographs or reliable collotype reproductions for savage, disease, and civilisation physiognomical pecu- liarities of the present day. They are thus extreme forms which should suggest the direction, by resemblance to any one or more types, of any given individual's organisation, and must not be expected to give detailed informa- tion in reference to minor peculiarities. Further circumstances relating to habits of life must always be considered as either checking or accentuating natural tendencies, and therefore occu- pation, slum, scum, and middle-class surroundings must always be taken into consideration in esti- mating the powers of each individual. Those readers who are little interested in ques- tions of biological importance will find that the drift of Chapter I. may be appreciated if only the conclusions beginning at p. 60 are read, as the earlier part is devoted to advancing evidence in favour of the position finally adopted. In the fifth and sixth chapters I have tried to emphasise the close dependence of Medical and Sociological sciences upon each other, and in the seventh to give a resume of the chief impression of the book. The second and third volumes will be devoted to social problems considered from the outlook of the principles here adduced, and I hope subsequently to deal with the medical position. J. L. T. SUMMAEY GROWING complexity of modern life, multiplication of trades and industries, and desires for mental realisation in musical, scientific, artistical, and lite- rary fields among the masses are the prevailing features of developing social existence. This necessi- tates in all pursuits, and in that of politics, perhaps, most of all, a much more sensitive and complex moral code. National as well as individual moral standards are required for crimes mainly against the State, on account of this greater complexity. The problem of heredity is that on which medical and social work must alike rest. An examination of this subject shows that the individual cannot be modified by his environment, and therefore the all-important question to consider is the natural power of the individual, and to determine what relation the environment has to the type or types existing under it. Temperament is, therefore, the fundamental basis of the sociologist. Evidence is adduced that the human form is not fixed, but is physical in its desires in a primitive environment, on account of its being coarsely organised, and mental in an advanced group of XXviii ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION social conditions, on account of natural higher powers. Physical environments select physical types, mental environments mental. In Art, there- fore, there is not one perfectly beautiful ideal to be considered, nor in Medicine one standard of health, but the ideal of beauty and the estimation of what is healthy will vary with the individual temperament to be considered, and with the environment. Temperamental science is emphatic in stating that advanced and primitive forms have always existed and will always exist. The question for the medical man is how these stand to disease ; for the educa- tionist, what different methods will be required to educate these different organisations ; and for the sociologist, do the higher types hold the higher positions in the nation ? While artist, musician, and scientist must see that their ideals of beauty, feel- ing, and truth conform to the needs of the higher and not the lower temperaments. A social atmosphere favourable to the advancing portion of the community will thus be evolved. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE GENERAL PKEFACK v PREFACE TO THE PRESENT VOLUME .... xxi SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . xxvii I. THE PROBLEM OF HEREDITY AND THE SCOPE OF NATURAL SELECTION 1 II. TEMPERAMENTS . . ... 73 III. TEMPERAMENTS (continued) 100 IV. TEMPERAMENTS (cantinmd) 124 V. THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF THE PROBLEM .... 188 VI. THE MEDICAL ASPECT OF THE PROBLEM . . . . 230 VII. CONCLUSION . ... 275 APPENDIX . . . 289 INDEX 293 ILLUSTRATIONS SCUM TYPE To face p. 112 DBEO TYPE 114 NORTHERN PRIMITIVE LONG-LIMBED TYPE ... 132 PRIMITIVE SHORT -LIMBED TYPE 134 MEDIEVAL TYPE . 138 SCIENTIFIC TYPE . / . . - . . 154 RATIONAL TYPE (ABSENCE OF ALL EMOTIONAL CHARAC- TERISTICS) 158 EMOTIONAL TYPE 160 FEMININE TYPE 168 MASCULINE TYPE r , 172 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION TEMPEEAMENTS CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF HEREDITY AND THE SCOPE OF NATURAL SELECTION IN considering the problem of heredity I shall throughout follow Lloyd Morgan, Mark Baldwin, and others in the precise usage of the terms varia- tion, modification, adaptation, and accommodation. Variation will apply to changes which are of germinal origin. Modification will apply to changes which are impressed on the ' body ' or soma in the course of individual life. Adaptation will apply to those changes which have been produced by the selection of favour- able variations. Accommodation will apply to those alterations which have been produced by the reaction of the soma to environmental conditions. We may seek to interpret the facts of organic evolution by resting wholly or in part upon one, or 2 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION a combination of more than one, of the following assumptions : 1. That organisms have evolved along definite lines, wholly or chiefly dependent upon the nature of each organism, developing either completely or partially irrespective of the peculiarities of the environment. On this view the more or less un- suitable organisms are simply eliminated ; but this elimination is of little or no importance in develop- ment, the assumption being that every organism that is not exterminated evolves at its own rate, and that its development is neither retarded nor accele- rated by the presence or absence of other organisms. 2. That organisms are modifiable by environment and that modifications so produced are inherited, the hereditary relation being subservient to the action of the environment. This assumption has to be considered under two heads. (a) Accommodations which are the direct result of environmental influence. (6) Accommodations which result from the activity of the organism itself in response to its environment. It is obvious that these two classes, though not usually so considered, are in reality fundamentally distinct. Class (a) includes the only kind of in- herited characters that can be truly called acquired. Class (6) includes what are in reality merely develop- ments of already existing somatic tendencies, which some biologists believe may, and others that they may not, become germinal. In any case there must HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 8 be an elementary something which can be developed by use or there would obviously be no development, but rather the formation of a new character, and the accommodation would then have to be classed under (a). In class (a) the influence of the environ- ment in producing a modification is one of primary cause and effect ; in class (6), on the other hand, the influence of environment is secondary, it is the indirect cause of the degree of the response, but not of the capacity of responding which exists in the particular form of protoplasm itself. Class (a) is incompatible with selection, for in proportion as direct modification is able to occur, the less is the necessity of selection, and this direct climatic influence must obviously be also inversely pro- portional to the power of heredity. Class (6), on the other hand, is not necessarily in opposition to the selection theory because within certain limits the more responsive the organism the greater the rapidity of development, selection would become simply more rigorous, the selection value would be raised, the less responsive organs being weeded out. There are thus two separate questions in this division to be answered : 1. Does a direct somatic alteration of structure ever occur as the result of climatic or other physical influence, and if so, how frequently and under what conditions? Do these alterations become germinal ? or 2. Do all, or any, somatic modifications in re- sponse to environment arise as developments 4 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION of a pre-existing element in protoplasmic structure ? If so, do somatic responses ever become germinal ? For a clear statement of the Lamarckian position it is necessary to determine the relation, if any exists, that class (a) has to class (6). 3. By the selection of organisms which possess favourable variations, and by rejection of those which have unfavourable, the offspring resulting will tend to reproduce the favourable variations of their parents, and the selection being continued in every subsequent generation, so long as conditions remain fairly constant, there must inevitably result an organism which tends to vary more and more definitely. To determine how far evolution has been de- pendent on one or more of these three factors, it is necessary to estimate I. The direct accommodative power of environ- ment over protoplasm, if it exists. II. The power existing in protoplasm of respond- ing to conditions which favour its activity, and the relation, if any, that somatic re- sponse bears to germinal in multicellular organisms. III. Whether the responsive power (II.) or the direct influence of environment (I.) is altered in relation to present by past accom- modations or variations, or both ; and, if so, the relative importance of the character, intensity, and persistency of these past con- HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 5 ditions in producing more or less permanent or transitory modifications or variations in organisms. It follows from the preceding argument that it is necessary to understand the theoretical capability of each of these three sets of factors to account for the process of evolution, and to endeavour to form some estimate of the probable primitive material from which the present forms of life have pro- ceeded. In this chapter I propose to examine this question from three aspects : first, the theoretical capability of natural selection ; secondly, some of the chief difficulties advanced against this principle ; and, lastly, a few of the more general properties of proto- plasm and the inferences which these main charac- teristics appear to justify. Incidentally, it will, I hope, become evident that while the responsive power of protoplasm must be admitted, yet the direct action of environment and the assumption of a definite self-evolving principle in life must be given up. The Limitations of the Principle of Natural Selection Ever since the publication of the ' Origin of Species,' in 1859, there have been steadily rising into greater prominence two lines of thought which seem to lead to fundamentally opposite conceptions of the principles which underlie the process of organic evolution. One tendency manifests itself in 6 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION an increasingly marked disposition to minimise the claims of use and climatic inheritance, and to explain the course of evolution by the single prin- ciple of selection and certain fundamental properties of protoplasm. The other school of thought tends as emphatically to disregard this selection principle, and to rely on the responsive power of protoplasm and the influence of environment as the main causes of evolutionary development. Some of the members of this school also add to these assumed properties of protoplasm other innate tendencies by which protoplasm is supposed to be capable of develop- ing along definite lines which are independent of environment. In the one case the supporters of selection main- tained that, as no case of supposed use-inheritance had ever been brought forward which could not be as easily, or even more easily, accounted for by the single principle of survival of the fittest and elimina- tion of the less fit, they were justified in considering natural selection to be the main or sole principle in species formation. In the other Neo-Lamarckians based their objections to natural selection on the assumption that modifications in nature were always, or nearly always, definite; that definite modifica- tions were admittedly unexplainable on the selec- tionist theory. It therefore followed, as nature could produce definite modifiability without the aid of natural selection, that, unless some special and additional reason could be found for its existence, the selectionist principle must be regarded as wholly subsidiary in nature, and that it could only be HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 7 regarded as a species-former in the limited field of the domesticated organisms which were under the direct influence of man. Neither position could be regarded as satisfactory, since each school of thought was apparently supported by some facts, while nega- tived by others. Professor Lloyd Morgan, in an article contri- buted to ' Natural Science ' in 1892, altered the whole force of the arguments advanced on both sides by demonstrating the fact that, if natural selection acts at all, it must tend, under moderately constant conditions, to produce definite variability through survival of the favourable line of inheritance and extermination of the unfavourable. This corol- lary to the principle of selection he has further expounded in his work on ' Habit and Instinct,' in a chapter entitled ' Modification and Variation.' In an article published in ' Natural Science,' April, 1898, I contended that natural selection was capable of producing in the whole organism a general definite variability under relatively constant conditions. I was at that time unaware that Professors Lloyd Morgan and Weismann l had both in large part anticipated me. The former writer's views may be summarised briefly as follows : The theory of natural selection involving as its fundamental principle the assumption that an organ- ism survives solely because it has certain favour- able elements in its nature which give it certain 1 In his theory of ' Germinal Selection ' put forward in September 1895, at Leyden. 8 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION advantages in the competition for existence, the less favoured organisms being eliminated, it follows, in so far as parental characteristics are able to influence those of their offspring, that the progeny of success- ful parents will be likely to inherit a higher average of adaptability to their environment ; and, as this average adaptability will keep rising so long as selection lasts, it will tend, under more or less con- stant conditions, to produce more or less definite variability. Definite variability is not, therefore, necessarily inconsistent with the principle of selec- tion. If it exists only where the conditions are such that the principles of the theory would lead any impartial biologist to expect such definite vari- ability, it will be strong confirmation of the truth of the theory in question. Every living organism may be considered from two aspects : (1) It tends to develop and maintain its own structure ; (2) it tends to reproduce, under suitable conditions, other organisms more or less similar to itself. We have, therefore, to consider every living form from a somatic and a germinal side. Both somatic and germinal aspects exhibit two tendencies which are differently proportioned in different organisms (1) to remain constant in spite of variable external conditions, (2) to manifest certain changes of structure. According as one or other of these tendencies predominates, the organism will develop and reproduce definitely or indefinitely. In both somatic and germinal development natural selection will tend to favour the requisite definiteness or indefiniteness of structure. The inheritance of HEEEDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 9 somatic characters does not appear to have been established in any one of the many alleged examples. The evidence, therefore, that up to the present time has been collected would seem to favour the con- clusion that if accommodations are ever inherited, it is an event of extreme rarity. Yet in spite of the lack of evidence in support of the inheritance of acquired characters, there seems to be a considerable mass of evidence in favour of the contention that germinal variations often cor- respond in their tendencies to somatic accommoda- tions. Definite variability corresponding to environ- mental accommodation might, however, be acquired in the following way. It has already been noticed that every organism, both from its somatic and germinal aspects, exhibits two tendencies, one to- wards definiteness, the other towards indefinite- ness ; somatic indefiniteness appears to be able to be modified by environmental influences, therefore those organisms whose somatic tendency is pre- dominantly plastic will survive under altered con- ditions of environment where those organisms of a less easily modifiable tendency will be eliminated. Now if somatic characters rarely if ever become germinal, the modifications of the parental organisms cannot be transmitted to their offspring, but those offspring that happened to be endowed with varia- tions in the same direction as the acquired but not transmitted modifications, would start their life with a predisposition favourable to their environment, and therefore favourable to more complete modification 10 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION of the somatic side of the organism ; this ten- dency being accumulative under constant conditions, coincident variability would arise by the process of selective elimination and preservation, without the need for the assumption of use-inheritance, which assumption facts appear to negative. Coincident variations would thus have a better chance of survival simply because they would be present in the surviving organisms, but the principle of selection would be the same whether the variations were coincident or not. It follows from the preceding argument that definite variability is a logical necessity, under certain conditions, if the principle of natural selection be allowed to be a factor of considerable importance in organic evolution. So far all facts point to the con- clusion that variations under stable conditions are definite, under unstable conditions indefinite, and this definiteness and indefiniteness occur under precisely those conditions which the theory of natural selection would lead one to expect ; hence, unless definite variability can be shown to occur under conditions which selection could not have pro- duced, the facts adduced by the Lamarckian School are favourable rather than otherwise to the Neo- Darwinian position. To realise how far the theory of selection is capable of explaining the facts of organic evolution, it is necessary to bear in mind the postulates on which the theory is founded. 1. It is obvious that Natural Selection can only act by preserving or eliminating the complete HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 11 organism. Selection must therefore be organismal. This Darwin and other selectionists have clearly recognised. 2. As the whole organism must survive, if the favourable variation or variations are to be preserved, it follows that certain minor unfavourable variations may also be preserved if they happen to exist in an individual which survives on account of its major favourable variations. And since no individual is completely adapted to its environment, it follows that there must be always a variable amount of residual unfavourable variability in every organism. 3. This residual unfavourable variability may be of considerable utility under changed conditions. 4. Complementary specialisation of parts, as Spencer has shown, is favourable to successful competition, and as it is the whole organism that is selected or eliminated, it follows that any weakness of one specialised part, since it would disturb the balance of all, would be detrimental. The more complex the organism, the more specialised the structures, the more dependent one part will be on the others for its existence, hence a complementary specialising tendency will be favoured by selection, and therefore all struggles of one part of an organism with another will be reduced to a minimum. It is clear that there must be some under- lying criterion which determines whether any given organism shall be selected or not, and that criterion must be the net result of its adaptability to its environment. One organism may conceivably sur- vive, by its possession of a large number of small 12 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION favourable variations, while another may survive in virtue of a single valuable one, but in each case it would be the whole value of that organism which determined its survival. This fact is continually disregarded by opponents of the Neo-Darwinian position, yet this selection of the organism as a whole is the fundamental postulate from which the theory of selection starts. Thus it is not uncommon to read criticisms bearing on the early development of some organ, in which the inadequacy of selection is supposed to be proved by the writer demonstrating, or believing he has demonstrated, the fact that the particular variation in question must have been too small to be by itself of selection value. In many cases the particular variation would, no doubt, if taken alone be, as the objector asserts, too unim- portant to be selected, but as it is the whole organism that is selected, it is not logical to make an artificial separation and study the development of one organ or structure irrespective of the other organs with which it is in nature associated. Every organ in its evolu- tion must be considered in relation to the whole of the particular organism in which that particular stage of development of that organ is found. Starting therefore with this fact, that the net value of adapt- ability of the whole organism to its environment must be the basis which determines selection or elimina- tion, it will follow that certain lines of development will result from the application of this criterion. In a series of organisms placed under new conditions, elimination will proceed along lines essential to bring about a proper adjustment to the new con- HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 18 ditions. If the offspring of these adjusted organisms merely repeated in their generation the characters of the exterminated as well as of the surviving organisms, that temporary adjustment would be permanent as long as the conditions were un- changed. But since the offspring are produced only by the surviving organisms, selection is con- tinually raised to higher and higher planes of adaptation, and therefore, as long as conditions remain constant, the tendency of selection must be, as Darwin clearly saw, cumulative. He did not, however, apparently see that from this cumu- lative tendency definite variability must arise out of indefinite. Selection in direct relation to climatic conditions is, therefore, of very minor importance, while selec- tion among the members of a species and all forms of inter-organismal selection is of infinitely more importance, since it is this interaction, produced by the offspring in different degrees inheriting the advantages of both parents (both of whom have survived on account of certain advantages), that leads to the cumulative development and never- ending struggle for survival. Darwin came very near to this conception of definite variability when he pointed out that ' if a country were changing the altered conditions would tend to cause variation, not but what I believe most beings vary at all times enough for selection to act on.' Extermination would expose the remainder to ' the mutual action of a different set of inhabitants, which I believe to be more important to the life of each being than 14 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION mere climate ; ' l and as ' the same spot will support more life if occupied by very diverse forms,' l it is evident that selection will favour very great diversity of structure. Bearing in mind this cumulative action of selec- tion, it will follow that under constant or relatively constant conditions the struggle for successful living will become more and more selective in character, even if the actual number of inhabitants remain more or less the same as when the struggle first commenced. The selection of variations will thus tend to pass through certain more or less ill-defined but nevertheless real stages. In proportion as the struggle becomes intense, either from the number or from the increasing adaptability of the organisms, or both, certain major essential adaptations, which were necessary for the climatic and other more or less comparatively simple conditions, will be sup- plemented by minor auxiliary variations which in the earlier stages would not have appeared. And still later as more and more rigorous conditions of life were imposed the advantage would tend to rest with those organisms which possessed highly co- ordinated adaptations, since this would entail more rapid responsiveness to environment. As evolution advances from the unspecialised to the specialised, and higher and higher forms of life come into being, with increasing complexity and specialisation of parts entailing an increasingly delicate adjustment of those parts to each other's 1 From Poulton's Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection (Abstract of Darwin's letter to Professor Asa Gray). HEKEDITY AND NATUKAL SELECTION 15 needs, the relation of each part to the whole organism becomes of more and more importance, and it fol- lows that selection must become more and more generalised in its action. No single variation could be of service to any of the higher forms of life unless it was in more or less complete harmony with the whole tendency of the individual. The adjustment of parts and their mutual inter-independence make it essential for adaptation that the relation of parts be preserved; consequently, correlated minute favour- able variations will tend to be more and more selected as evolution passes from the unspecialised to the specialised forms of life. This response of the whole organism should be still more delicate in those forms of life that are continually subject- ing themselves to changed conditions ; hence this delicacy of adjustment is far more necessary in the higher forms of animal life than in the more stationary plant organisms, and in the developing nervous system of animals we have just the central adjusting system that is required for these condi- tions. With evolution of type there will thus be an increasingly definite tendency given to organic, especially the animal, forms of life, if the acting principle of evolution has been selectional. Selection is therefore able to account for the steadily progressive tendency of life as a whole without calling to its aid any unknown and doubtful perfecting principle. To summarise : Natural selection, acting on the whole organism, tends to produce more and more definite tendencies in all surviving forms of life, which tendencies are progressive and continuous in 16 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION character. Variable conditions, by partially altering the line of selection, induce a temporary indefinite- ness. And, lastly, the process of selection being itself able to be the indirect, though not the direct, cause of those favourable variations, which it sub- sequently selects from, is able to dispense with any subsidiary factors, provided it has a certain number of elementary properties of life which afford suffi- cient material to work with. Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection Keeping constantly in view the leading principles of the selection theory, I believe it will be found that the facts adduced by the more scientific opponents of this theory can, when the importance of the corol- lary put forward by Lloyd Morgan, and after him by Weismann, is considered, be easily accounted for, and that as they then fall into line with its legitimate deductions they increase the strength of the theory by showing it to be a more and not less important principle than Darwin and even Wallace were led to believe. 1. Variations are definite and not indefinite in nature. This objection has already been met in the preceding part of this chapter, and as selection is able to explain the indefinite variability which arises from variable conditions, crossing, &c., and the con- stancy of type from rational inbreeding, it is in more complete accord with facts than any mainly Lamarckian or Orthogenetic theory. 2. That Natural Selection cannot be the cause of HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 17 New Characters The alternative must be present before the selection can commence. If any character or variation can be shown to have been produced which differs qualitatively, not merely quantitatively, from its parental forms, which is not to be explained by incomplete development, atavism, or degenera- tion ; if any variation can be shown to arise which has not some pre-existing though less or more differentiated counterpart, it would form an objec- tion of considerable magnitude. But as no case of the kind has been put forward which Neo- Darwinians have felt bound from the strength of the case to accept, this objection may be disregarded until such case arises. 3. The difficulty of the chance variation appear- ing at the right moment is largely met by the fact that selection tends to induce determinate vari- ability; this objection is still further weakened by the fact that even relatively rapid changes in nature are, as a rule, long in proportion to the life of the individual, and afford considerable opportunities for selection working through somatic accommodations and later coincident germinal variability to produce the required change. 4. That the earliest forms of variations must have been too small and insignificant in character to be of selectional value. This objection appears to me to be one of the most weighty of all the ob- jections which have been raised to the selectional hypothesis, and it is further an extremely difficult objection to reply to satisfactorily ; first, because it is almost impossible to say in what form of organism G 18 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION the earliest variations appeared, and without this no judgment on the value of any small variation can be of use ; secondly, it is equally essential to know the kind of environment which such an organism was living in ; and, lastly, if we were fully acquainted with the character of the organism and its environ- ment, it would still be difficult to form any adequate opinion on the value of such a variation, owing to the fact that this apparently simple organism would differ so widely from our own functional activity and life that any conclusions formed on comparative methods of testing its powers, &c., would be ex- tremely likely to be fallacious. If, however, we keep in mind the facts that (1) the whole and not merely a part of the organism is selected, and that there- fore each variation does not require to be of the same value as if selection depended on it alone ; (2) that specialisations are largely quantitative, be- tween man at one extreme of development and a simple unicellular organism at the other, the differ- ence, though very great, is mainly due to the fact that man is a huge multicellular colony ; this difficulty will be much simplified. To estimate the qualitative difference it is necessary to endeavour to determine the specialisation of an individual cell in one of those collective specialisations or organs : the difference between a cell in, for instance, the cerebral cortex of man and the character of an amoeba is no doubt great, but the amosba reacts to stimuli, though in a less specialised form, just as the cortex cell does ; in the same way the reaction to light in the mammalian eye is not a new development it has its beginnings HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 19 in the preference for light or darkness shown by many unicellular organisms. These two points, that selection is organismal, and that specialisations are as, or more, largely quantitative than qualitative, weaken, if they do not abolish, all arguments against natural selection that are founded on this objec- tion ; and it is further necessary to recollect that no specialisation has yet been found which has not a primitive counterpart in the earliest known forms of life. 5. The Imperfections of the Geological Record. This is obviously a much less important objection than the preceding one. The very large areas of the world that have yet to be examined tend very much to weaken any objection founded on imperfections and absence of links. And as with increasing re- search these missing links are being steadily filled in, it follows that this objection has become weaker and not stronger with advancing knowledge. There are, however, certain points which it is essential to recollect in any consideration of the im- perfections arising from this cause. Lloyd Morgan has pointed out that, as the tendency of natural selection is to favour, under appropriate conditions, definiteness both in the soma and in the germinal structures, the geological record should not be ex- pected to provide evidence that does not correspond to this definite line of development. There is also another point which does not appear to me to have been sufficiently emphasised. In the earlier part of this chapter I drew attention to the fact that Darwin considered the mutual action of a o 2 20 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION different set of inhabitants arising from the birth of a new generation to be of more importance than the mere conditions of climate, &c. ; and inasmuch as climatic selection will largely cease acting as soon as organisms, capable of surviving at all under these altered conditions, are produced, it follows that inter- organismal action, which is continuous, must be of more importance in species formation and differen- tiation of structure. But as organisms which can- not survive under these altered conditions will be eliminated, it follows that the more obvious struc- tural changes will be largely produced by this temporary climatic selection, and this form of selec- tion will be remarkably rapid in its action relatively to the inter-organismal selection. Hence the obvious structural changes induced by climatic selection will have less chance of leaving a geological record behind them than the less obvious variations induced by inter-organismal selection. For this reason certain imperfections in the record are likely, and should be expected, to arise, in addition to imperfections due to adverse conditions for fossil formation and preservation. 6. That the period of time is too short for such great alterations of structure to have taken place. As the rapidity or slowness of structural alterations will depend on the local surrounding conditions, it follows that, until some fairly complete record of these local conditions is obtainable, no objection as to time limit can be logically raised. 7. The co-ordination of parts necessary for the development of favourable adaptations. Spencer has HEREDITY AND NATUBAL SELECTION 21 pointed out that co-ordination of many parts to form one adaptation is based on a different principle from the cumulative results of many different varia- tions, each of which is of selective value, and urged that natural selection is powerless to explain this co-existent adaptation. Wallace, in referring to this subject, says : ' The fact, that in all domestic animals variations do occur, rendering them swifter or stronger, larger or smaller, stouter or slenderer, and that such varia- tions can be selected and accumulated for man's purpose, is sufficient to render it certain that similar or even greater changes may be effected by natural selection, which, as Darwin well remarks, " acts on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life." The difficulty as to co-adaptation of parts by variation and natural selection appears to me, therefore, to be a wholly imaginary difficulty which has no place whatever in the operations of nature.' l This criti- cism does not appear to me to do justice to Spencer's objection : he would no doubt agree with Wallace that these accessory variations can be developed by selection, but he would go one step farther back and ask why it is that the accessory variations happen to be there to be selected from at all. He would agree to the fact that selection must act on the whole machinery of life, but he would still urge that he is unable to see how it is that all these numerous accessory variations which are necessary to the working of one variation happen to be present at 1 Darwinism, p. 418. 22 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION one and the same time. His difficulty, therefore, does not appear to me to be answered by Wallace. Weissmann, 1 admitting the objection of Spencer as having a real existence, attempts to answer it by the tendency of natural selection itself to induce definite variability. This answer does not seem to me to be much more satisfactory than Wallace's, for the point of the argument is, that as the acces- sory variations are necessary to the proper working of the primary, they must be present from the first selection ; and as determinate selection can only appear after selection has been continued for some generations, it must be unable to explain this occur- rence of co-ordinated parts which occurs prior to the action of selection. Mr. Lloyd Morgan, in the December number of 'Natural Science ' (1898), deals with this difficulty in a manner which appears to me to be much more satisfactory. We have seen, in the brief summary of his views, that he draws an important distinction between somatic response to environment and the selection of germinal variations ; that under altered conditions of environment he considers somatic plasticity to be one of the principal determining causes of selective preservation ; and, as he admits the action of use-modification on the somatic struc- tures, those organisms whose somatic structures are sufficiently plastic to allow of this newer co-adjust- ment to the newer conditions will survive on account of their plasticity, and this will continue to happen over one or more generations until chance variations 1 Germinal Selection, HEREDITY AND NATUEAL SELECTION 23 happen to make their appearance in the same direction as the environment ; then the offspring of this organism or these organisms will start life with a slightly favourable predisposition to their environ- ment, which, in addition to somatic plasticity, will give them a slightly better chance than those with- out this predisposition. Hence by the fostering power of body response a co-ordinate structure might be formed through cumulative coincident variability. This objection, therefore, does not apply to the theory of Natural Selection modified as above. Keeping in view this theory of coincident vari- ability, there is another consideration which will also tend to 'weaken this objection. As selection must be from the first organismal, and as adaptation to climatic conditions must be absolute, as far as it is capable of exercising a selective action, a certain common tendency will be present in all more or less similar organisms living under these more or less similar physical conditions. This primitive climatic basis will give a certain direction to the subsequent inter-organismal selection ; and we have seen that with progressive evolution the necessary specialisa- tion entails an increasingly definite tendency in the organism as a whole, owing to the increasing de- pendence of one part on another. Hence it will follow that all variations will tend to become in- creasingly co-ordinated as they become increasingly specialised, and they will also become increasingly so as we pass from the lower to the higher forms. There will thus be very little tendency for 24 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION inco-ordinated variations to appear, and this tendency will dimmish with evolution of type. 8. That organisms not uncommonly exhibit a more perfect organisation than their environment demands. This statement is frequently associated with other similar objections, some of which, such as definite variability, and varying degrees of capa- city to vary in different animals, have already been met. It is also asserted that animals sometimes manifest at the earlier periods of their lives a higher condition than at a later period, and that this higher earlier condition cannot be explained by any assump- tion of reversion in the later stages of growth. Thus it is asserted that the infant ape is much nearer to man than the adult ape, &c. All these assumptions have as a basis the con- scious or half-conscious belief in some unknown internal force which is capable of producing evolu- tion of type independently of environment. To Lamarckian and selectionist theories alike any such force, were it proved to exist, would be largely fatal. It has been shown that an increasingly definite tendency in organisms evolved through the principle of natural selection is what, on theoretical grounds, one would be led to expect ; that the preservation of a definite relation of one part to another becomes of increasing importance with increasing specialisa- tion. That this is actually the case the facts asso- ciated with ' internal secretion ' in man and the higher mammals clearly prove. The thyroid, kid- ney, liver, pancreas, testes, ovaries, &c., have been shown to exert some remarkably important influence HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 25 on the nutrition of the whole body ; and this influence in the case of the thyroid, and less certainly in other organs, has been found to be produced through the throwing off of certain products into the circulation which are necessary to the metabolism of the whole body. On any theory of complementary specialisation of parts such facts are easily understandable. A chemical circle of nutrition would be the most economical way of maintaining tissue activity. If each organism can act chiefly on some particular substance, one organ or tissue requiring a more complex food material than another to carry on its metabolism, then the waste product of one organ might be used as a food product by the next in this food series, until the last organ of this series, having obtained all the energy from this material, excretes this simpler substance, which cannot be further utilised by the body, into some channel where it is got rid of. Some such hypothesis is necessary to explain the facts, and the increasing series of pro- gressively simpler products, although still incomplete, that have been obtained, which are allied to uric acid and other substances, lends considerable support to this theory. There would be thus a serial special- isation of food supply among the tissues of each organism which would be as economical as the specialisation of food supply among individual organ- isms competing in nature. Now this close relation of one part to another which is characteristic of the adult organism is also equally characteristic of the developing one ; and, keeping this sequence of 26 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION nutrition in view, each organism, starting from a more or less quantitatively generalised substance, is evolved to a quantitatively specialised structure, in the building up of which every antecedent stage of development is necessary, and forms a basis for the later stages. It will follow that a definite regular order will be developed ; and hence definiteness in growth and development is as essential as definiteness in the relation of one part of a specialised organism to another. That this necessary sequence in develop- ment is no mere unsupported conjecture is shown by the fact that the relation of parts alters with growth : an organ occupying a first place in activity at one period may become second or third at another. This alteration of the relative size of different organs to the whole body at different ages must be of some value to the whole organism, or it is unlikely that it would be perpetuated. The thymus gland affords a typical example of this. It appears in some way to be associated with development ; it reaches its maximum size in man about two years after birth, and then slowly shrivels up. The presumption is that at that period it had some function to perform which ceases to be required. If we assume a meta- bolic sequence in structure we explain this varying relation of parts, and we explain its definite character, and this sequence, as in other specialisations, would be subject to the influence of natural selection ; so far preservation of different stages of growth can be easily accounted for on a selection hypothesis if this necessary chemical sequence is assumed, and without it no theory has as yet explained the facts, HEEEDITY AND NATUKAL SELECTION 27 There thus remain from this objection only those cases where there is an apparent or real fore- shadowing of a higher evolutionary type. Now before this foreshadowing can he used as an objec- tion, it has first to be determined how far it is real or not. It is well known that the ovum of one animal resembles another considerably, and that the higher animals, as they pass through successive stages of their development, resemble more or less incompletely certain lower forms of adult organisms, and this has led to the assumption of the recapitu- lation theory. Were it possible to reverse the order of evolution and proceed backward, we should find all types converging towards unity, and while this applies to the whole line of development, it equally applies to lesser portions of it. As the infant ape is less specialised than the adult ape, it is more likely to present similarities to man, not on account of an actual foreshadowing, but simply because, being more generalised in structure, it is less easy to mark off differences ; for precisely the same reason a human child might appear nearer to some ideal and higher type of man. Until this fictitious resemblance is dealt with this objection can be disregarded. Further, as many biologists have already pointed out, there is always a certain excess force, which would be fostered by selection, sufficient to provide for emergencies. 9. Rudiments and their disappearance. It is assumed that there will come a point where the rudi- ment will be of such slight significance that it will no longer be of selection value, hence it is urged that 28 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION the fact that rudiments do tend to completely dis- appear, is against any purely selectionist principle. Leaving out of consideration the possibilities of reversal of selection, panmixia, &c., it appears to me that there is a comparatively simple cause for this disappearance. George Henry Lewes, Wilhelm Eoux, and more recently Weismann, have all fallen back on the assumed necessity of applying the principle of selection to the several parts and specialisations of the individual organism, in addition to the action of selection on the whole organism. The last writer in particular, in his ' Germinal Selection,' suggests that a struggle among the different parts of the germ-plasm may account for the complete disappearance of rudiments, this germinal selection thus supplementing the action of panmixia, personal or organismal selection, &c. Now the necessity for increased co-ordination of parts with increasing specialisation, entailing, as it necessarily must, an increasing mutual dependence of each part on the others, must lead as the type advances to diminished opportunity for any struggle of parts in the organism ; consequently, if such a struggle exist at all, it must be limited to the most undifferentiated organisms. I do not therefore see how this principle can explain the disappearance of rudiments in any of the more specialised organisms, hence it does not seem to be sufficient answer to the above-mentioned difficulty. In the development of the individual we see a disappearance of structures, which appear to become with advancing develop- ment useless, almost parallel to the gradual disappear- HEREDITY AND NATUEAL SELECTION 29 ance of rudiments, &c., in the history of the evolu- tion of species. And a common explanation for both of these series of phenomena can, I believe, be satisfactorily found in the known facts of nutrition. Growth of any tissue would seem to depend on three conditions : a stimulus of the part adequate to promote functional activity, a proper food supply, and efficient removal of products produced by that particular tissue's activity. There is abundant evidence to prove that the tissue tends to degenerate if its own excretory products are not removed ; the evil effects produced by fatigue products in muscle and other tissues on the activity of the tissue itself prove that this factor must be of great importance wherever it is found to occur. Just as the growth and develop- ment of bacteria are interfered with, and finally alto- gether checked, by the accumulation of products of their own activity, so a tissue in the higher organisms has its activity impaired and its power lessened when for some reason diminished elimination of its own metabolic products occurs. Now both in the develop- ment of the individual and the race we see an alteration of structure, a gradual transition from the less to the more specialised, and in this gradual transition there must be, as I endeavoured to prove in my answer to the last objection, an alteration in the line of functional activity of the parts. Owing to this fact, a tissue that was necessary in the earlier stages, becomes less and less so as specialisation advances, the whole tendency of the specialising organism being continually and in- creasingly against the earlier, less specialised, stages. 30 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION It will thus happen that every structure which is becoming useless owing to its deficient specialisation, whether in the history of the race or the individual, will have two adverse sets of conditions to contend w jth one, defective elimination of its own tissue products, owing to its becoming increasingly removed from the growing organismal specialisation of food products, while secondly, for this same reason, its own food supply will become less and less suitable. This theory would apply equally to germinal and somatic development and atrophy of structure ; there would thus, through the alteration of functional activity of the whole organism, be brought about elimination of all structures not in the line of evolu- tion, and therefore organismal selection alone, if this theory is sound, would be able to explain the complete disappearance of rudiments, the various forms of development and atrophy, without calling to its aid climatic inheritance, panmixia, and germinal or any other form of particular selection. 1 The only two other important objections against the principle of selection are : (1) those cases where it is assumed that automatism produced by habit has become hereditary (instinctive), 2 an assumption which an examination of the facts does not appear to warrant, and (2) those cases which are supposed 1 The atrophy by loss of food supply has its counterpart in social evolution in failure through changed direction of financial support. An institution like a tissue not functionally active in relation to the whole social body must degenerate or be healthily modified or become parasitic. It cannot simply persist. 2 See Lloyd Morgan's Comparative Psychology and Habit and Inttinct, and Mr. E. L. Thorndike's experiments, &c. HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 81 to be examples of experimental demonstration of acquired inheritance. In the best known of these experiments, par- ticularly those performed by Brown- Sequard, we have certain facts which appear to show that under very exceptional conditions somatic injuries may affect germinal structures. Assuming that reliance may be placed on this interpretation of these experi- ments, an interpretation which future facts might conceivably negative, there are other facts associated with the relation of environment, alcohol, &c., to crime and insanity which would seem to offer some slight confirmation of this view. 1 If further investi- gation proved the possibility of somatic responses affecting occasionally the germinal structures, it would only affect any theory of heredity which was based on the assumption that somatic and germinal elements were completely isolated. The purely selectionist position would remain intact unless direct climatic accommodation could be also proved to be a factor of importance. The objections to the selectionist theory do not appear, therefore, when examined, to be valid. Finally, in support of the selection principle, certain positive considerations deserve to receive attention. Firstly, there can be no doubt that selection by 1 Alcohol seems to cause disorganisation of tissue, and mentally leads to crime through destruction of the higher brain centres. It is physically evidenced by gouty, fatty, and cirrhotic changes. Some of these defects seem to be inherited, but this is. clearly not an ex- ample of use-inheritance but of tissue destruction 'followed, on account of this destruction, by non-inheritance. 82 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION man has been a most potent factor in adapting animal and plant characteristics to certain require- ments, and no other similar principle has been or is now practically available for the same end. Secondly, the opportunity for selection is uni- versal, as universal as the evidence of evolution is, and this again can be said of no other theory. Thirdly, no other principle is capable of being applied universally. Fourthly, the action of selection cannot be ex- cluded from any experiments, however made ; for it manifests itself in so many forms that even food and inorganic environment are subject to its influence. Fifthly, the resemblance between sociological and biological development is explainable if selection has been the guiding principle in both. There would seem, therefore, to be no reason, theoretical or practical, for introducing any other theory to explain known facts. The Primitive Characteristics of Protoplasm In this section I wish to briefly recapitulate a few well-known facts and generalisations, which appear to me to lead to the conclusion that natural selection acting on variations has been the sole means of producing divergence and evolution in the organic world, that protoplasm is never really modifiable, although it may be and has been adapted to a mar- vellous degree. In the evolution of organisms certain generalisa- tions have been shown to be in the main true. From HEKEDITY AND NATUKAL SELECTION 33 the lower to the higher forms organisation tends to grow more complex and also more specialised ; this development consists in a qualitative and a quanti- tative change. In estimating the value of any theory which claims to be able to largely explain the process of evolution, this quantitative, as well as the quali- tative, change must be kept in mind. If a study of the lower forms of life leads to the conclusion that even here elimination brings about adaptation, and that there is little or no evidence for modification of structure, while when we compare the higher and lower forms we find that the differences are very largely due to an increase in complexity, and that the qualitative difference is merely a further develop- ment or accentuation in the more advanced organism of a property which is always present in the less advanced, then it will be evident that the facts are largely in favour of a purely selectionist theory of evolution. That a study of the facts does lead to such a conclusion I shall now endeavour to demon- strate. In the lowest forms of life we are confronted with a kind of substance (protoplasm) which manifests certain peculiarities which appear at first to distin- guish it sharply from inorganic material. Proto- plasm from its commencement, as far as we are able to examine it, appears to exist in two more or less distinct forms ; these forms are not sharply marked off, but more or less shade into each other, yet still are sufficiently clear and distinct to have led apparently to widely different results. These two forms have developed on their separate lines and P 34 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION have resulted in the most important divisions of organic life, the animal and vegetable kingdoms; and the most marked difference between these two kinds of protoplasm appears to lie in the fact that one has to exist on comparatively complex foods, the other on comparatively simple. Excluding this and other differences, for the moment, from consideration, there remain three peculiarities which distinguish protoplasm from inorganic material : (1) It is ex- tremely complex in structure ; (2) it is remarkably unstable; and (3) it has the power, when placed under suitable conditions, of building up from its environment material similar to or identical with its own. Lewes, Spencer, and, in a crude unscientific form, many early writers, have noticed certain resem- blances between some kinds of dead and living material ; these resemblances have steadily multi- plied in number, while they have become far more forcible in character during the last forty to fifty years, so that many, perhaps most, scientists are beginning to assume, consciously or unconsciously, that purely physical and chemical causes are or soon will be sufficient to explain the lower and possibly also the higher forms of life. 1 Let us take first the peculiarities of protoplasm which are apparently most allied to chemical and physical phenomena, its extreme instability and complexity. Making a general statement of the characteristics of the chemical elements, it appears that they may be 1 Verworn, in his General Physiology, gives a fairly complete summary of this position. HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 35 grouped into three more or less ill-defined divisions those with marked affinities, others with very ill- marked tendencies, and a third intermediary division. Stability is usually associated in chemistry with simple molecular structure and satisfied affinities ; compounds are generally stable when they are made up of elements which exhibit strong mutual affinities, combined in such a way that each tendency is more or less completely balanced by others. The more perfectly the elements are brought into contact, the more combination of these elements is accelerated, and, finally, there is an evolution of energy when- ever the less stable passes into the more stable. Chemical instability, on the other hand, is asso- ciated with weak affinities, great complexity, and a combination of elements in a form which by re- adjustment might lead to the formation of simpler and more stable compounds. As there is always an evolution of energy when the less stable passes into the more stable, there is manifestly a storage of potential energy in the unstable forms. The in- stability and complexity of protoplasm is therefore really not a difference from, but a resemblance to, non-living substances, because its instability and complexity apparently exist under similar, though accentuated, conditions to those cases where the complexity and instability are purely chemical. The distinctive characteristic of living as opposed to non-living substances, therefore, must be found, if it exist at all, in some other property of living matter, and it may possibly lie in the third feature that has been noticed, its power of maintaining D2 36 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION a constant mass of unstable substance under con- ditions which appear to make for disintegration of the substance ; and we notice in addition another fact namely, that while life lasts a continuous series of chemical changes, at some periods less active, at others more, but never entirely ceasing, are always present. Now in this perpetual chemical change some energy is wasted, and passes off into the environment in the form of heat, motion, &c. How does the organism get sufficient extra energy, not merely to maintain but even to frequently in- crease its complex and unstable substance? The extra energy might obviously be obtained if the organism continually assimilated more complex and unstable food than the ultimate products into which this disintegrated protoplasm broke down. In con- firmation of this position it is noteworthy that plant tissues which have reached a much lower point of evolution than animal, and whose tissue change is less active, require less complex food than animals. For synthesis energy is required, and this could be obtained as above from the food material ; in addi- tion it would be necessary to have a very slightly conducting substance, such as we have in protoplasm, to prevent energy from being too rapidly dissipated, while every chemical reaction must be extremely rarefied, as any marked evolution of energy would obviously lead to the destruction of the whole organism. The essentials for the physical aspect of protoplasmic life would therefore appear to be, a certain small but constant amount of surplus energy which leads to a very gradual substitution of the HEREDITY AND NATUBAL SELECTION 37 less complex into the more complex, and then the gradual breaking down of the more complex protoplasm thus formed, by equally gradual stages, into simpler products than those which had been utilised as food. It seems, therefore, conceivable, supposing che- mical and physical conditions to be favourable, that a purely chemical product might be found which would, if situated in a suitable medium, manifest synthetical and analytical changes without any additional force being required. As further move- ments somewhat analogous in character to the amoeboid have been shown to be obtainable by chemical and physical conditions alone, as in the experiments of Quincke, Biitschli, and others, and also the various phenomena associated with chemio- taxis, phagocytosis, &c., appear to lead to the same conclusions, it would seem that the earliest forms of life might be accounted for on an entirely physical basis. 1 In many forms of bacteria, almost all the above conditions are complied with; they do not include any special phenomena of movement, or show any marked reaction to stimuli. There is usually a special temperature at which they grow most per- fectly, while below and above this their growth and metabolism tend to cease, and they will only grow on or in certain media. From a purely chemical standpoint, there is, therefore, nothing in proto- 1 I have purposely excluded psychical phenomena from this consideration, as I know of no reliable standard, materialistic or non-materialistic, by which these can be estimated. 208177 38 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION plasmic activity which suggests any new element ; that bacteria thrive under certain conditions but not under others, being dependent on their powers of combination and subject to the laws of chemical change, is consequently easily explainable. It may, however, be urged that, while it is true that bacteria are sometimes influenced by some slight alterations in their environment, they are often capable of standing great extremes in other directions, and in this respect do not resemble unstable and complex chemical compounds ; even this difference, however, does not hold, since there are many chemically complex and unstable compounds which appear relatively stable under certain conditions, while they are equally unstable under others. There are, therefore, a set of conditions associated with early primitive life, which except for the phenomena of fission, which, Spencer has shown, is, like the other properties of early protoplasm, capable of a physical explanation are all explainable by the laws of chemical change, osmosis, diffusion, &c. There are, of course, many fallacies to which one is liable in dealing with such a question ; thus the extreme minuteness of the organisms, and our necessarily imperfect knowledge of their life-history and structure, make it probable that any present-day explanation will be incomplete. I only wish to note that this resemblance is likely to be at least partially true. That this apparent closeness of connection between chemical change and bacterial metabolism may appear to future generations less close than it does to us is possible ; HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 39 still the increased knowledge of the higher organisms, the relation of food-supply to bodily exertion, the recent work on digestion, blood-supply, and tissue change, do not lead to a less but a more close chemical analogy ; in any case the inference, as far as the present time is concerned, is in favour of a very close connection between the laws of chemistry and physics on the one hand, and the forms of vital activity on the other. Now, as far as this inference has weight, it must tell against climatic modification in favour of climatic and inter-organismal adaptation, inasmuch as che- mical elements have definite affinities, and enter into definite combinations in fixed proportions ; and as any alteration in a compound, however complex, must proceed along definite lines, it follows that each form or variety of protoplasm, in so far as it is chemical in nature, can only grow and keep active by being fed by certain foods which it can make use of, and by being under certain conditions more or less favourable to its organisation ; and when a sufficient number of these favourable conditions are not present, the surplus energy of the organism must in time run down, and the organism will die because it cannot utilise other conditions. At the commencement of this chapter I en- deavoured to emphasise the importance of keeping in mind the fundamental distinctions between accom- modations which are the direct result of environ- mental influence, just as wood becomes altered in its composition by a sufficient amount of heat, and those other forms of accommodation which are the 40 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION result of the organismal response to its environment ; and I pointed out that only in the former set of conditions was it strictly correct to speak of acquired modifications ; and, further, that this somatic re- sponsiveness was not in the least discordant with the principle of selection it would, in fact, aid selectional development, making the process of evolu- tion more rapid. Now, just as the chemical analogy tells against climatic modification, and in favour of use-development or organismal response, with elimination of the less responsive, so I hope to show in this concluding portion of the chapter that every broad generalisation tells against climatic modifica- tion, and in favour of organismal response ; and I shall endeavour to show that the somatic response becomes increasingly separated off from the germinal, not through any special isolation of the germinal products, but for precisely similar reasons as those for which other organs have become separated namely, by increasing specialisation and complexity of structure. 1 For this reason I wish the reader to keep the following distinctions constantly in view : (1) The direct climatic response, an external influence or influences producing internal modifications ; except in so far as these external forces are destructive, I believe this influence to be negligible. (2) The response of the organism, whether it be uni- or multi-cellular, to external conditions and alterations that will ensue through elimination of the less fitted 1 Lloyd Morgan, in his Animal Life and Intelligence, has put forward a theory of reproductive specialisation to which I am greatly indebted. HEREDITY AND NATUKAL SELECTION 41 and preservation of the more fitted ; internal response to external conditions, and external elimination of the less responsive organisms. (3) The relation, if any, that the somatic response bears to germinal variability. In considering the chief differences between plants and animals, we find certain more or less constant conditions which lead to the conclusion that protoplasm is not directly modifiable ; thus a broad general difference is found between these two great divisions of the living world in the fact that vegetable organisms live on simpler foods than animal. The fact that the fungi and certain insecti- vorous plants form a partial exception to this rule only increases the strength of the selectionist posi- tion ; for, from the fact that the vast majority of the various forms of vegetable life do live on simpler foods than animal, we may infer that the difference in the structure of the protoplasm was not easily overcome, while the constancy of the character of the exceptions, now that a change has been pro- duced, is almost positive proof that, if organisms can be directly modified by climatic action, it must be to a very slight degree. The same line of argu- ment applies to the other differences observable between plants and animals. On the assumption that this difference of metabolism is due to a struc- tural difference existing in the protoplasm itself, that the assimilative power of an organism depends not on its environment but upon its structure, and that these structural peculiarities are never modifi- able, although they may be adapted through elimina- 42 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION tion of unfit and less fit, and subsequent reproduction among the surviving favoured organisms, and repe- tition of this process until a better and better adapted organism is produced, we have an explanation which satisfactorily accounts for both the constancy and the variability of the many forms of plant life. Again, the constancy of all low forms of life under varying conditions is often remarkable. In view of the fact that these unicellular organisms are not easy to keep under constant observation, that their reproductive power is often enormous, and that it is at present very difficult, if not impossible, to place them under test conditions to prove whether or no they are capable of being directly modified by changes in temperature, food, &c., it is worthy of note that the few recorded experiments have taken years, and not months or weeks, to induce any change in the organism ; and this suggests elimina- tion rather than direct modification as the main, if not sole, agent. The science of bacteriology is surely strong presumptive evidence that no very rapid modifica- tion of form and habits is effected by altered con- ditions in these low forms of life. The constancy of the characters of diseases known to be produced by these forms of micro-organisms, and the fact that the bacteriologist can frequently tell by the form and behaviour of the bacillus, micrococcus, &c., what disease it will induce, and this in spite of the immense capabilities for modification under changed conditions, &c., that its habits afford, are all argu- ments against direct climatic accommodation. HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 43 Another point which appears to me to throw very considerable light on the subject is the beha- viour that all organisms, as far as I know, without exception, exhibit towards their environment. Local conditions of light, heat, food-supply, do not appear to modify organisms in a certain definite manner, as one would expect were direct climatic accommo- dation possible ; on the contrary, the action of every organism, from the lowest to the highest, appears to be selective to its environment, the response of certain internal activities to outside conditions. Eecent observations made on the phagocytes of the blood show that the determination of their move- ments is partly chemical, that they move away from some and towards other products ; their action is selective. Plants living on the same soil do not make use of the same material, and it is perfectly extraordinary what minute quantities of a substance can be utilised if it be needed by the organism. Iodine, and its selection from sea-water by some forms of sea-weed, is a case in point. Precisely similar results occur in the animal kingdom. The same choice of food is manifested in different animals choosing different foods ; the same blood circulat- ing in the body of one animal yet has different substances extracted from it by different tissues. Wherever we look we see life display this selective action towards its environment ; if the materials that supply its needs are not present, the organism dies. This constant and universal tendency in living tissue to select out of many substances its own par- ticular foods is not favourable to any theory of direct 44 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION climatic modification ; it does, however, favour the principle of selective adaptation. The phenomena grouped around reproduction, in so far as it consists in conjugation and sex differentiations, seem to me to be explainable only on the assumption that protoplasm is scarcely, if at all, climatically modifiable. The simplest form of reproduction is that of simple fission; the single- celled organism in which it occurs splits into two or more divisions. Spencer has suggested that the reason for this division may be that, unless very exceptional conditions of growth arise, there will be a constant tendency for volume to increase relatively to surface, and consequently that a point would at last be reached when certain portions of the cell would be insufficiently nourished. To decrease bulk and increase surface division would be necessary. Such a theory of fission, formed on mechanical grounds, offers no difficulty to selection or other theories. But if the relation that bulk bears to surface determines fission, it follows that fission will be favoured, as we have seen, by poor food-supply and by rapid metabolism ; while the opposite conditions will favour slow metabolism. Under the first set of conditions a small rapidly dividing cell would be favoured ; while conditions that favoured slow meta- bolism would produce a large cell. On any system of climatic inheritance, the structure and needs of the organism would be modified according to the environment: hence one can see no need for con- jugation. On any hypothesis that relies mainly or HEREDITY AND NATUEAL SELECTION 45 wholly on selection, it is, on the contrary, easy to understand that union of two nearly allied indi- viduals would tend to preserve the stability, in so far as they were allied, and would promote variability on the unallied smaller portion. There would be as a result an increased number of possible variations to select from, and those organisms in which con- jugation occurred would be more likely to survive under all conditions, as they would always tend to adapt more readily. A certain limited unlikeness in the two cells which entered into combination would be favoured by natural selection, in order to preserve this necessary variability. This unlikeness might be the beginning of sex differentiation. That con- jugation occurs at all may be explained in part by the fact that all living tissue has a certain selective affinity (and in this it presents many analogies to non-living) for what it has need of. Conjugation might be merely the satisfaction of an organismic need. The fact that the male cell is in some cases attracted to the female by chemical products 1 is some confirmation of this view. Conjugation would thus be allied to the phenomena associated with assimilation. So far, therefore, the evidence appears to be in favour of protoplasm not being at any period directly influenced by climatic conditions. Protoplasm every- where exhibits a tendency to select its food from its environment ; and when it is unable to obtain such food, or is subject to conditions of environment 1 Hertwig's work on Tlie Cell gives a brief r6sum6 of some of these cases. 46 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION which are unsuitable, it appears not to be rapidly modified, but is apparently eliminated. Protoplasm manifests in its different forms considerable resem- blance to the more complex non-living chemical products ; and this, so far as the inference is justifi- able, points to the conclusion that certain conditions are essential for its development, that different forms of protoplasm require different conditions of environ- ment, and that when any organism is not in sufficient harmony with its surroundings, it is unable to live, and is therefore eliminated. The constancy of the differences of the early forms of life would seem also to lead to the conclusion that protoplasm is never, or at most with extreme difficulty, directly modified by external influences. Lastly, the facts associated with conjugation and sex differentiation are appa- rently only explainable on a pure, or nearly pure, selectionist hypothesis. Turning to another aspect of the facts relating to life, we find that while very considerable specialisa- tion may be developed in unicellular organisms, yet when these organisms multiply they do so with very little alteration of the mother plasm, reproduction consisting in the separation of a portion of this mother substance, this portion, whether small or large, becoming a separate organism. In multicellular organisms, on the other hand, we see, besides this method of reproduction, another kind, which very early in biological evolution takes precedence over the more primitive method. The younger organism is developed from a structure that is not represented in the adult form, and the younger HEEEDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 47 organism begins to closely resemble the older only after a period of development. In what respect is this latter kind of reproduction superior to the former? In the hydra we have an organism in which these two types co-exist. A new organism is sometimes developed as a simple outgrowth of the mother substance, develops a mouth and tentacles, and with this new mode of obtaining nutriment gradually loses its connection with the parent organism and becomes independent. In other cases we find interstitial cells collecting into groups at different parts of the organism, in some of these groups the inner cells becoming slightly altered in shape, and developing thin, ribbon-shaped pieces of protoplasm or tails, by the aid of which they become capable of considerable powers of movement, and thus provided escape from the hydra into its sur- rounding medium. Other groups of cells undergo a different change : one cell, again occupying an internal position in the group, enlarges at the expense of the surrounding cells, and when it has attained a certain size ruptures from the capsule which surrounded it, extrudes two nuclear portions of its substance (polar bodies), and if one of the smaller active cells comes into contact, and fuses with it, it will commence a series of cell divisions accompanied by increasing growth, and develop into an adult hydra similar to its parent. This sexual mode of reproduction very rapidly supplants all other forms ; it is probable, therefore, that there is some immediate advantage resulting to the organisms which reproduce in this way rather than by budding. The most obvious 48 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION difference in these two methods is that there is a great reduction of tissue material, much less being required for this mode of development than the other ; it is therefore less expensive to the parent organism. Apart from this there is the additional factor that it would be the most suitable for develop- ment, if direct climatic accommodation does not take place, owing to its being the best means of obtaining the requisite amount of variability. This reduction must presumably be largely quantitative and not qualitative, since we find that under very dissimilar conditions a complex hydra can be formed, provided portions of both ectoderm and entoderm are pre- served. Now, where this sexual mode of reproduction arises, we have to consider a new set of conditions ; we find that each individual appears to go through a stage of development, maturity, and decay, and that during maturity the reproductive power of the whole organism is best developed. Perhaps one of the most striking facts associated with the higher forms of life is that these three periods of growth, maturity, and decay in the whole organism do not correspond in time to similar periods in the several different parts of the organism in question. This fact appears to be universal in its application ; how is it to be explained ? Now, as I have already noted, the most marked difference between unicellular and multicellular reproduction consists in the fact that the latter develop chiefly by a quantitative evolution from a cell which is quantitatively undif- ferentiated, while the former reproduce by splitting 49 off a portion of their structure, so that in most particulars, except size, the parent and the offspring are identical. Now, one of the peculiarities of development and growth in one of the higher organisms is just this quantitative development, yet we must assume that the morphological element is present, for it is inconceivable that actual differentia- tion of structure could arise without some structural difference for its starting-point. We are bound therefore to assume two positions as essential to development : (1) Some basis for the differences that are found in individual development which must be of a structural and not a physiological nature, whether we call them gemmules, physiological or morpho- logical units, biophors or stirp ; (2) that develop- ment consists largely in a reduplication of parts which at the time of fertilisation are somehow or other qualitatively represented in the fertilised ovum. In development every organism passes through a series of stages which are more or less proportional to its specialisation and complexity, and the definite stages are passed through in a definite order, the highest specialisations, except where definite ata- vistic or degenerative phenomena intervene, always coming at the later periods of development. When decay sets in in the organism we not uncommonly find that this order is reversed, the higher being the first to disappear, just as they were the last to come. In the action of many drugs we see the same ten- dency ; if their action is general, the highest nerve- centres go first, the lowest fail last. Now this sequence in development, since it is so universal, E 50 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION must serve some purpose. The very early stages of segmentation appear to be little else than quantita- tive in character, but later qualitative differentiation begins to be manifested. The study of life in recent years has shown conclusively what an enormously important part the various products of tissue meta- bolism exert over life ; the toxic and anti-toxic theories in disease, phenomena associated with in- ternal secretion, the influence of vegetable alkaloids on different animal tissues, &c., all go to show that tissue activity is very dependent on its surroundings for its activity. Some facts of embryology lead to the conclusion that some organs have an almost purely developmental significance, and are of little use to the developed organism. We know also that organs vary in their relative importance and size to the whole organism at different periods of its development. How are we to explain the cause of this atrophy of some organs while others are de- veloping, except on the assumption of a chemical food sequence ? If we assume that, with a growing specialisation, itself induced by the liberation of metabolic products in the preceding stages, there is a growing specialisation of ferments and other material necessary to a more developed organism, and as a consequence a growing specialisation of all food material, we shall have a theory in accordance with facts, and which can explain many otherwise incomprehensible phenomena. The more specialised the food products circulating in the organism, the less favourable the conditions for the more generalised tissues ; hence the progressive development of some HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 51 tissues, and atrophy of others, would be explain- able. The sequence in development would then be itself understandable, as the higher could only be developed from the lower through this sequence ; hence the necessity of recapitulation of the ancestral types in development. Rudiments would on this theory disappear in proportion to the generalised character of the rudiment as compared with organismal spe- cialisation, and this would apply to germinal and somatic development. On this theory the whole organism would continue specialising so long as the morphological elements allowed of further differen- tiation ; when this limit of specialisation was reached the organism would arrive at maturity, and, so long as each tissue remained proportionately active, health would result, but when this balance failed degenera- tion and disease would follow. We come now to the concluding question, the relation that germinal development bears to somatic. As an organism reaches maturity, the phenomena associated with reproduction become manifest ; this fact is practically universal, it holds good for multi- cellular and unicellular organisms alike, and for both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In unicellular organisms, as we have seen, it is probable that there is a mechanical limit to the size of the cell, beyond which growth as a single cell becomes impossible ; this growth limit will not be the same under all conditions, but must ultimately be reached in all single-celled forms. In the metaphyta, under suitable conditions, 2 52 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION there appears to be a nearly constant tendency to growth at any place where a breach of continuity is formed in a living tissue or tissues ; in the lower forms of metazoa removal of a portion of tissue is nearly always followed by growth of the remaining, so that more or less complete repair results ; in the higher animals, on the other hand, this local repa- rative process is much less complete, yet even here some attempt is always present. The fact that removal of tissue tends to produce activity and growth at the seat of injury suggests that possibly some mechanical limit to growth is one of the causes of cessation of growth. The inferences so far necessary to determine the relation that somatic development bears to germinal may now be summarised as follows. I have endea- voured to point out that facts do not favour direct climatic modification, and I accept the Neo-Darwinian conclusion, and believe that there is very little evi- dence for the transmission of somatic responses. From a study of facts which have universal applica- tions I have endeavoured to show (1) that growth and reproduction are in some way closely related ; (2) that facts justify the inference that an increasingly complex food sequence prepares the way for morpho- logical quantitative specialisation ; (3) that some morphological interpretation of heredity is necessary to explain the facts. Some such provisional theory as the following would, I believe, explain the facts of heredity, growth, decay, and certain facts which have reference to disease, better than previous theories : HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 53 1. That there is a mechanical nutritional limit of growth for each cell, that this bulk limit varies according to physical conditions and food supply, but is reached sooner or later by all growing cells (Spencer). When this limit is reached, cell division takes place, which may be equal, as in fission, or unequal, as in budding, &c. 2. Under conditions which demand variability of the organism, conjugation of similar organisms placed under similar conditions would be favourable for the attainment of this requisite variability. If protoplasm is never directly modified by climatic conditions, then the best chances of survival and adaptation, either to old or to new conditions, would be through conjugation. Selection would therefore favour conjugation (Weismann). 3. If for some reason, possibly nutritional in origin, fission in an organism had not been quite complete, and the cells instead of separating had remained together, then as each new division reached maturity it would divide and the process of division would continue till interfered with by some outside condition ; many different forms of these masses of cells would thus be produced, examples of which may be found in the different forms of sponges. Now, if for any reason a curved single layer of cells were formed, it would go on growing in all directions until it met other cells of the same collective cell colony ; a multicellular growth limit would thus be reached. Now, assuming this growth capacity to remain constant, one of three things can happen. With a somewhat irregular hollow sphere of cells, it 54 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION would be conceivable that : (1) a bending in at one of the weaker points, or (2) a bending out would occur, many cells being involved in this yielding ; or (3) each cell might bud off a certain portion inde- pendently. Of the first or outward yielding, and the formation of buds, we have many examples occurring in nature, as, for example, bud development in the hydra ; of the inward yielding, the passage from the blastoderm to the gastrula stage, through the process of invagination occurring in the development of many animals, affords an example of the second means of satisfying this growth tendency ; while in the third case division of the individual cell, and separation from its parent tissue, occurs in the formation of red blood corpuscles in mam- mals, &c. 4. It is obvious that the general structure of the organism would be least disturbed by each individual cell throwing off buds, and therefore the more specialised the organic structure the less likelihood of those organisms reproduced by any collective alteration of the organism surviving. With growing specialisation each tissue will become less and less able to reproduce other than its own specialisation, hence reproduction will occur only when the buds from the requisite differentiations meet ; now, in the case of the hydra it appears to be only necessary to have representatives of two classes of cells, the ecto- and entoderm, and these thrown-off portions of cell structure would, when the requisite number met, owing to perhaps some stronger growth tendency, tend to push up the cells above them, and as the HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 55 most likely place for the ectoderm and entoderm units to meet would be "between these two layers, we should expect development to commence from this position. With increasing differentiation repro- ductive centres would tend more and more to be localised to one centre. Hence with increasing spe- cialisation there would be progressively less power of local or somatic reproduction. 5. A special kind of organism survives for two reasons : (1) because it is suited to its environment ; (2) because it can reproduce similar organisms in sufficient number to maintain or increase its relative position in its surroundings. The more perfect the organism the less its chance of elimination, conse- quently so long as its reproductive power is success- fully maintained it is to its advantage if it can reduce to a minimum the loss incurred by the organism in successful reproduction ; it will follow, therefore, that the cells which throw off least reproductive material from the adult structure will require less nutriment, and therefore the collective organism will, other conditions equal, survive under competitive conditions. For this reason protoplasmic growth will be reduced as far as possible when beyond the needs of the organism, and the reproductive buds or units from each cell will tend to be reduced both in size and number. For these reasons it would obviously be of advantage if merely the morphological elements were extruded from the different cells, 1 and 1 In the extrusion of the polar bodies from the ovum, we may possibly have an instance of what on a smaller scale is universal among multicellular organisms. 56 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION these when collected in the reproductive centre would form the material for the new individual. 6. As differentiation of reproductive function continued running a parallel course with other specialisations of structure, natural selection con- tinuing to favour the best-formed individual and offspring that environments could allow, two ten- dencies would become manifest : (1) a tendency to reproductive economy, by which every unnecessary development would be eliminated so as to make reproduction a less and less expensive process to the organism ; (2) owing to increased complexity, specialisation, and evolution of structure, repro- duction would become a more and more delicate process, and would constantly have to be conducted with increasing care, and the stages of development of the organism would therefore become increasingly prolonged. The development of the individual, and the capacity of that individual when developed for competition with other individuals, would form two partly competing and partly complementary elements of race progress, and the resultant of the two would correspond to the line of progressive adaptation and development. With the increasing length of the period of development differentiation of sex becomes first an advantage and then a necessity. 7. A progressively specialised method of food supply will be required to keep pace with the other specialisations. In applying these conceptions to the interpreta- tion of phenomena, certain points must be specially emphasised : HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 57 (a) Every important specialisation of structure must be represented. (i) As, however, one of the causes of evolution of structure is quantitative complexity, it follows that every quantitative element need not be represented, but only the right proportions preserved between the various qualitative specialisations. (c) Reproduction on this theory commences when full, or nearly full, development of a structure is reached, when its growth capacity is in excess of its demands. From this it will follow that the re- productive units will be collected in the reproductive organs in the order of their evolution. (d) A progressively specialising food-supply would determine the development and the atrophy of the different reproductive units. (e) The later a specialisation was developed, either in the history of the species or the individual, the less chance of its obtain- ing a foothold in reproduction ; and, conversely, these must be the first to be eliminated under stress conditions. It will follow from this that the effects of use and disuse, in so far as they are of a somatic nature, will be very little, if at all, transmitted to the germinal struc- tures, since development, in so far as the major part of the organism is concerned, will be completed early. 58 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION The first advantage of a theory like the preceding is that it has no need for the supposition of any isolated germ structure, use-inheritance being largely negatived by specialisation. The relation of germinal to somatic development is on this theory understand- able. It would account for recapitulation in develop- ment, not on the ground of a tendency in the organism to repeat certain ancestral characters, but simply as the necessary preparatory specialisations out of which the later ones are built. 1 It would divide all anomalies into (1) those cases of faulty representation due to the missing of some prior stage in development, as in the case of cretins, where the morphological element is present, but the means of developing it is not, or where there is deficiency of the element itself, as possibly happens in the case of mongoloid idiots ; (2) disproportionate representation (quantitative anomaly), leading to dichotomy, &c. ; (3) under rare conditions the re- appearance of real ancestral characters. If, therefore, the recapitulation theory has a different meaning from that of ancestral repetition, and if most cases of so-called atavism can be ex- plained on the assumption of incomplete develop- ment ; if it is further borne in mind that, given the power of segmentation, then all that is chiefly required is a proportionate representation of germs, then the complexity of the germ plasm, although very great, need not be so inconceivably great as that which involves the representation of a large 1 In a limited sense, however, these stages would represent the history of the individual ancestral line. HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 59 number of ancestral as well as all living character- istics. Normal sexual reproduction would, on this theory, be the right principle for selection to rely upon, since the male and female lines of heredity would be largely in harmony over the earlier stages of development, the tendency to vary being increased towards the later stages. Thus the requisite stability and variability would be largely obtained. Finally, this theory involves no very great assumption ; it is, when examined, very little more than a series of inferences drawn from peculiarities of life that appear to be nearly or completely universal in application, being dependent solely on the assump- tions of mechanical and chemical limits to growth, the latter being no longer an assumption, but an established fact in some instances ; on the innate capacity for growth, qualitative and quantitative specialisation ; and upon the conclusion that proto- plasm is never directly influenced by climatic con- ditions. The theory of coincident variability and the non-inheritance of acquired responses would equally accord with this theory as with Weismann's, while it would account for those cases of modifica- tions which have been effected during the early stages of development. In conclusion, I have endeavoured to show reason for believing that the principle of selection, when rightly viewed, is the only theory which is capable of explaining the various phenomena in their entirety ; l that the properties existing in the lowest forms of life do afford sufficient material for natural 1 Mendel's principles, if true, do not weaken this position. 60 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION selection to act upon ; and therefore, until it can be shown that another theory is in more complete accordance with the facts, that natural selection must be regarded as the dominant factor of evo- lution. The conclusions to be drawn from this chapter prove how little our present life conforms to bio- logical principles which ought to be practically, and are scientifically, its natural foundation. 1. Natural Selection is the only theory that makes the progressive development of the living world comprehensible, and the more closely it is studied the more its universal power is recognisable. There would seem to be no aspect of existence where the living responding organism is not subject to its control. From the more limited climatic to the more extended inter-organismal, inter-industrial and international forms, its action is never ceasing. From birth onward perhaps even pre-natally there is no period of a child's or of an adult's life which is not tested by the particular environment in which such an individual lives, in regard to indi- vidual surviving power. Further, be it remembered, this environment may be beneficial or evil in its character, may be actually or relatively aiding or stultifying any given person in desiring higher or lower living. There is something indescribably awful in this thought. Actually at this time, in the twentieth, as in the preceding centuries, there are probably amongst us human beings who are failing in business, and dying from disease, be- cause, and only because, they are nobler, more self- HEREDITY AND NATUEAL SELECTION 61 sacrificing, more intelligent and more refined than their fellow-man. How long would public opinion be indifferent to the social atmosphere of the nation in which it arises, if it once realised that this atmosphere deter- mines who shall survive among the millions born in each new generation ? If individual fathers and mothers felt that, as the smaller but intenser surroundings of the home and the larger of the community are noble or ignoble, so will those children that are noble live and succeed or be crushed out and perish, and the ignoble be eliminated by higher surroundings, or survive and multiply in lower, would they remain as now carelessly apathetic? If so, humanity is inevitably and justly doomed ; but to believe this is to believe the inconceivable, for man is progressive. Henceforward, therefore, environment, in all its multiplicity of forms and multiplicity of influences, will be the transcendently important and worthy study and occupation of life ; and its influence, as it gradually takes its rightfully supreme position, will infuse all subsidiary subjects with the sense of its greater end. This is the first lesson that biology has to teach to its sister science, sociology. 2. No organism is capable of being modified by what environs it. However much any one feature predominates in the surroundings over others, it yet has no power over living forms brought into contact with it except to debase and destroy the unsuitable, leaving the fit to survive and compete among them- selves for a still higher survival and reproduction of 62 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION a higher or perhaps only a more specialised type. Like produces like with absolute fidelity. From the fig seed, the young fig tree, varying only as fig trees vary and because they vary. From the navvy father and a mother naturally suited to a navvy life only navvy sons and daughters, some more, others less like, as they inherit in varying degree better or worse features in their parents' constitutions formed by countless selections of the successful, after countless rejections of those that have failed. From the lovers of higher life only children who love it too, some more, some less ; from fig trees, figs, though some may be ripe and full flavoured, and others poor and ill nourished, and from the thistle, thistles. Do we understand this terrible truth that modern science has laid bare, but which has been half -realised for centuries ? Do we know where we are ' drifting when we allow the loafer to breed from lust, while true men and women struggle desperately for a bare pittance, and are compelled to marry late, perhaps mistakenly, through enfeebled ideals, because the wealth-seeker likes sweated bread, sweated clothes, aye, even sweated thoughts and feelings, and that thus the loafer is happy where the citizen starves ? Do we know that weeds will grow in flower gardens, and that the flowers will die because of them? That the great mind is choked and stifled when compelled to live in alley tenements, work with alley workers, and exist on an alley wage ? From the citizen, citizens ; and the loafer, other loafers. HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 63 3. In any progressing set of conditions specialisa- tion to ensure fitness is necessary, but this means that generation by generation an increasingly definite direction must be given to each organism existing under them, and because of this definite character there will be less variability. Yet it is only through many variations arising and a few of these being selected that progress can be ensured. But the necessary definiteness of structure and the necessary variability are both requisite, although seemingly antagonistic to each other. Like, however, only produces like, so that if reproduction were unisexual the child would never advance beyond the parent. On the other hand, if one living form could share parentage with another of widely different organisation, the variations of the offspring would be so divergent as to be unselectable. The parents, therefore, must be similar along the main, and even most of the minor developmental lines, in mental and bodily growth, and yet suffi- ciently unlike to produce children differing from themselves to an appreciable degree. This end can be, and is, obtained by sexual divergence. The specialisation of sex in each species, Man not excluded, is, therefore, probably of incalculable importance, affording evidence of possi- bility for further development and improvement, owing to the greater opportunity that is given for variability in healthy and progressive directions. Sexual differences are important not merely, nor even mainly, on account of the value of reproductive specialisation, but rather because female and male 64 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION predominance pervading the whole organism is of supreme value in racial evolution. Quite apart, therefore, from the enormous value of the manly and womanly types of mind in their power to influence the course of social development, there is the not less valuable result obtained of making it possible for every succeeding generation to be, if environment permits it, mentally and physically of greater human worth than its predecessor. Lastly, evolution teaches that every change to be healthy must be sufficiently rapid to be vitalising, sufficiently slow to seem natural to the mind, so that it can be readily assimilated, and should lead easily and by gradual transitions from older defective ideas to newer and more valuable ones. If we attempt to ask ourselves the meaning of these considerations on life at the present day, it becomes evident that much that we have been accustomed to is obsolete, where it is not actively hurtful and transitory in its nature; while fami- liarity from infancy with evil customs has made us blind to things that are in themselves transparently vicious. If Natural Selection be the controlling principle of biological and social evolution, and if hereditary variability sufficient to secure adaptation to changing surroundings can only be obtained through survival of the favoured types and permanently by no other means then it is clear that all tendencies that promote evolutionary selection ought to be fostered and those which help devolutionary checked. Yet the now obsolete feudal and the irresponsibly HEREDITY AND NATUEAL SELECTION 65 wealthy classes of to-day are allowed to exert their unjustly large influence without let or hindrance, in spite of the fact that this scum aggregate forms the strongest bar to advancement. 1 The hereditary claim is based where it makes any pretence to an honest and logical assumption at all on the permanent superiority of a class of individuals. This cannot be justified. With changing environment, and evolution of all social surroundings, an altered selection and an altered type are required, and therefore the upper classes in healthy national existence should be con- stantly and everywhere interchanging less fitted individuals of their own with those more fitted from the lower sections. Under an hereditary system this is impossible. The even more puerile contention that wealth is in any way associated with intelli- gence, either approximately in general terms, or in degree according to amount possessed, is too absurd to require serious refutation. Yet, in spite of the rational and ethical weak- ness of their position, feudal and monetary scum classes exist. That they are tolerated proves how little modern civilisation is even now beyond medi- evalism in its ideals, and explains why humanitarian influences appeal to disputants with so little force in commercial and international transactions. It further affords a solid reason for the continuance of the Monarchical system on a reformed basis till 1 A large number of scientists and sociologists have dwelt upon this evil in their works, and this is a distinct step forward, but public opinion is not yet sufficiently educated to demand reform. F 66 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION greater intelligence in the people fits it for some- thing higher ; but this point I shall allude to more fully in a later volume. At different periods, different capabilities are re- quired, and different intellectual, moral, and physical standards are aimed at, and the standards which appeal to each age should be in the ascendant for that age if Society is to progress. This is true not only for civilisation and for each nation as a whole, but also for each profession and trade, and for each professional and trading man separately, and not least in importance for the home itself. Ordered change (not rigid class customs) graded according to an ordered evolution, so that natural leaders are selected because of natural ability, is there- fore the ideal which progressive life must slowly and steadily substitute for the monetary and the feudal. Biology lends no support to privilege nor to the contemptible idleness and luxury of the parasitically wealthy and parasitically influential in our midst. The environment must necessarily, however, favour inequality founded on natural divergence of powers on account of the progressive specialisation of life and it must therefore be largely anti- socialistic in aim. For the necessary inequality required cannot fail to be accompanied not only by differences in output of effort and power, which might be made to earn an equal social claim, but also by inequality of life requirements, dependent upon inequality of disposition and desires, and these justly presuppose an inequality of remuneration in order to satisfy them. So that by no means devisable HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 6? would it be possible to fix an equal general citizen value to this divergent individual life. Moreover, advance is in itself bound up with progressive sub- ordination of lower to higher; it is therefore im- possible to do away even in the home and private life with the idea of caste, while industrially, as State organisation develops, class rule must increase rather than diminish, but the supremacy of one growth over another must be on account of natural powers, and not by antiquated customs. Further, genius has a social value, and the amount for each generation is fixed, to be wisely used or foolishly wasted according to the wisdom or folly of each state and nation throughout the world. Kuskin was, no doubt, largely right when he insisted on the impossibility of manufacturing talent, and asserted that ' a certain quantity of intelligence ' is produced for us ' by providential laws,' and that we are quite unable to add to, though we might easily lessen, this stock of genius that each generation possesses. But science demonstrates that higher surroundings may, by selecting and favouring those who have greater aptitude and power than the majority of their fellow- citizens, create a still higher environment, which will require still greater talents from those living under it, and by this means the capacity of the average and exceptional persons of each succeeding generation will be largely increased. To endeavour to secure the right atmosphere which shall favour the capable for each generation, and to know how to recognise, discover, and utilise talent and genius, while at the same time subordi- F 2 68 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION nating the counterfeit, should be the dominant aim of those wishful to take part in the upward move- ment manifesting itself around us. In the United States of America the death- rate of the coloured races is much in excess of that of the white because the environment is primarily a white man's. Less noticeably, but not less inevitably, the law of survival prevails in classes of any nation as among separate nations and races. The slum has its own death-rate l and its own selection, as the palace has, and the sur- vivors will have survived, in each case, because they are naturally adapted to slum and palace vicious habits and modes of life, and to this extent both are a menace to the industrially surviving portion of the community, growing, if their environments are not forcibly changed, more slum-like, more loafing, with lower and lower tastes ; more palace-like, more luxurious, more selfish, more debauch-desiring de- cade by decade. Individual reform of individuals is therefore useless unless scum and dreg environ- ments are altered. So long as they are not, the wealthy self-seeker and the public-house lounger will live and breed in the surroundings which suit them, and our ideals of manhood will be propor- tionately debased by their desires. Capacity to socially utilise is the scientific as well as the moral test of social rights, and this capacity varies from year to year. 1 The infantile mortality is at least twice that of the wealthier scum, and probably three times that of the cultured portions of the community. HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 69 Again, biology teaches that sex is one of the earliest as well as one of the most important spe- cialisations. It is indeed doubtful if any cell exists which is completely devoid of sexual character. In plants as in animals, in single-celled as in many-celled organisms, in lowly only less than in highly developed life-forms, sex is observable as a fundamental feature or series of features. When, in the advanced animal types, the reproductive organs become clearly localised and separated in their functioning from other organs of the body, sex, as an all-pervading influence, does not cease, nor even become mainly limited to one part, as one might expect, but becomes, on the contrary, more diffused and more intense, more dominating, as the animal occupies a higher position in the species and class to which it belongs. Sexual science, so evolu- tionary and progressive are its characteristics, might almost be defined as the study which is concerned with the development of life from the lowest organ- ism, in its single-celled, primitive, and undifferen- tiated sex state, to the higher and more complicated forms in which sexual specialisation has attained its most marked and dominating influence. To treat this subject in any other manner than becomes one so progressively important is illogical. Its effects, therefore, on the whole organism of man in relation to mental and physical peculiarities, and the changes that it has been responsible for socially, must be sought out and examined and not, as heretofore, disregarded with the greatest care. Everything that encourages healthy manly and 70 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION womanly ideals, that favours natural differences in dress, in occupation, in habits of life, as well as every influence that strengthens mutual respect for these distinct, but complementary, sex standards, and that brings boys and girls, and men and women more completely into each other's presence, so that they can realise and appreciate them more fully, should be fostered. For it is from the development of these ideals that higher home and industrial feelings grow, and also because these same differences have a special value in promoting the requisite amount of racial and national differentiation in the social body by increasing individual variability. This power of social environment to select certain individuals, while it rejects, or partially rejects, others, coupled with the hereditary persistence of characters, so that an organism must die or cease to breed if its peculiarities are not to be perpetuated, makes the need for surroundings being kept sensi- tive to every higher influence vital. In educational science, in the general trend of industrialism, in the various ideals of the various arts, this principle of a continuous change in an upward direction must be constantly and always dominatingly present. Any ancient dogma based on fixity of beliefs, fixity of scientific methods, fixity of art standards or of persistent-tone ideals in music, must be given up. As the environment should be evolving, so should the individual types existing be multiplying and becoming more perfect in it as it evolves ; and, if the tastes of human beings are getting more human, they must necessarily be displacing old ideals by HEREDITY AND NATURAL SELECTION 71 newer and better ones. Hence upward paths rather than fixed goals will become the means of stimu- lating effort. The physical standards of existence must every- where be displaced and subordinated to the mental. Human beauty, womanhood, manhood, love, truth, honesty, and other similar conceptions must be mentally, not physically, visualised. The laws of heredity establish beyond doubt a conclusion deducible directly from them which over- shadows all others the attainment of a healthily advancing environment which has one standard, and one only, that never changes ; one which, on the contrary, must grow more firmly rooted as others grow less namely, a belief, a faith, in time a religion, founded on the one great fact of life evolu- tion, progress. As in social science so in medical, the whole aspect of the subject is changed when it is looked at from the modern selectionist standpoint. For all individuals, according to this view, being possessed of a comparatively fixed organisation, which is in some manner favoured or unfavoured by surround- ings, it follows that the study of differences in different constitutions or the mastering of the facts relating to the science of temperaments, on the one hand, and the relation that different environments bear to different temperaments, on the other, are the two fundamental groups of considerations upon which all subsequent medical superstructure must be built. Even now the risks in different occupations to differently constituted individuals is an important 72 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION subject dependent primarily on medical knowledge. With the multiplying of trades and professions and the minute specialising of industry, knowledge of the environment, and the form of men and women living in it, will be essential in order to determine what individuals will be best fitted for the widely divergent occupations. We are thus led, for sociological and biological reasons, to a consideration of the varying charac- teristics of the individual, in the hope that this may form a basis for social and medical reform. To endeavour to discover what class, or classes, of citizens ought to survive because they are fitted naturally for higher social life, and then with the knowledge gained return to the question how to change the environment so that it shall select them, is the social aim ; while the medical inquirer desires to know what the individual is fitted to healthily labour upon, in order to advise each patient correctly as to the best manner of living. The medical practitioner has the more general problem of understanding how the different tempera- ments can be occupied industrially to their own advantage, while the sociologist has to search for types that are liable to react favourably to a society growing more complex, more speedy in its working, and more mental in its methods, in which human ideals are acquiring more power, and the merely brutal less, and where manly and womanly sex differences are multiplying and intensifying. The study of temperament is therefore a necessary step to further knowledge in either direction. 73 CHAPTER II TEMPERAMENTS PASSING down any main street of a large city, any ordinarily observant man or woman can hardly help noticing the broad contrasts between the many individual human units that move in the great stream of coated and f rocked persons drifting heed- lessly, or occasionally curiously, by. To the thought- ful student of nature the problems presented are fascinating and intricate. Short and tall, fair and dark, here a firm athletic figure closely knit passes with swinging, easy stride, while after him, perhaps, a stout, greasy mass, who wobbles rather than walks, and all are alike bound for some destination. Nicely clothed or flashily plastered, dressed for comfort or in rags, pinched and haggard, or stout, well fed, and comfortable. This face thoughtful, truth-loving, and impressionable, that leaden and clownish. Some soddened with drink, some with the marks of vice manifested in every gesture, and others looking like hunted beasts, cringe past in their desolation. Animal, diseased, selfish, stupid; human, healthful, intelli- gent. In the right understanding of this monster multiform medley lies the secret of the only true 74 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION means of forwarding all that is worthy in modern life. Here for sociologist and medical scientist is a problem whose solution must be sought in main street and side street, in the factory and on the farm, in the mansion and the bare existing room of the slum. What is the meaning of individual differences ? Why do such variations exist ? What end do they serve ? How far are surroundings responsible for them ? There are many aspects to be considered in dealing with this problem. Is beauty of form found in all healthily developed types, and ugliness always associated with some amount of imperfection ? If so, is there more than one ideal of the human figure ? How far is the presence of ill health in any indi- vidual evidence of defective power in that indi- vidual's organisation ? What amount of importance is the educationist to attach to these differences, in educating the young, and to what degree should these natural powers of each citizen be stimulated and utilised in industrial life ? How far can diver- gence develop without interfering with the evolution of the common human manly and womanly basis which should itself be progressing in all persons irrespective of temperament, as commonly under- stood ? To what extent can specialisation of indus- trial work be carried by methods of individual specialisation without endangering the worker's individuality ? These are some of the questions that any study of the individual naturally suggests. The subject may be considered historically, and TEMPERAMENTS 75 in this case the evolution of the varying ideas that have been formulated from age to age may be mainly valued, or the student keeping his attention fixed on facts and largely disregarding past theories can search for evidence of a non-speculative character. Each method, however, is incomplete if pursued alone ; and as the former plan of procedure is the less important and also naturally precedes the latter, it may be convenient here to briefly allude to the con- clusions to be adduced from past workers in this field. Primarily the study of the individual must to a large extent be dependent on medical knowledge. As the Art of Medicine has come down to us from prehistoric times, and is not even yet based on sufficiently solid principles to be thinkable and workable as a science should be, it is not therefore surprising that the theories of temperament are even more crude than those belonging to the parent study. Besides medical, however, artistical gene- ralisations have had some share in arousing interest in this subject. These two aspects of the history of temperament afford a curious confirmation of the danger of ap- proaching any series of facts with any preformed notions to direct the course of investigation. Medical men have endeavoured to establish some rules for depicting the more or less perfectly or imperfectly formed groups of human beings, as if each group were a distinct unrelated unity, and that any person must necessarily belong to one group, or at least be mainly characterised by the group characteristics, and as a consequence little notice has been taken of 76 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION the many minute resemblances between one type and another, and the pictures have been made clear only at the expense of truth. The artist searching for an ideal of human beauty looked upon all human beings as if they diverged more or less from a fancied standard of perfection which he imagined he had deduced from nature. Both ideas were untrue. Art very early in its growth appears to have formulated rules on human proportions. The ancient Egyptians had certain standards of symmetry to which they evidently thought men and women ought to conform, and Greek and Koman figures are gene- rally modelled on some similar basis. Modern artists have followed with like plans, endeavouring to dis- cover some unit which will prove that all parts of the body bear some definite relation to all other parts. Yet it is a striking fact that, in spite of the most diverse attempts of great students in this field from a Vitruvius down to a Topinard or a Marshall, there is no satisfactory law of proportion in exist- ence by which the artistically fashioned form can be gauged, and yet all the while during the whole of this period of research great artists have succeeded practically where the others have failed in theory. Is there one ideal type ? Not less ancient beginnings are traceable in medical history. Hippokrates considered that four temperaments existed dependent upon the prepon- derance of one of four substances blood, phlegm, yellow bile, or black bile in the body. Innumerable modifications have been made by innumerable writers, yet none have proved satis- TEMPEEAMENTS 77 factory or even added any new consideration to the problem till modern times. This is remarkable, for the subject has attracted the attention of some of the greatest thinkers and observers in the past. It is not a little curious that as the evolutionary idea began to gain ground the first real advance in this subject commenced and continued till it was checked for the time by the knowledge of disease obtained through another channel bacteriology making the older study less profitable. Sir Charles Bell made the first real advance in the study of man's form when he insisted that in order to understand what is essentially human it is necessary to know what is characteristically animal, so as to increase the former elements and decrease the latter, when depicting ideal forms of men and women. Dr. Gregory, in pointing out the importance of the nervous system in determining the characters of one temperament, brought into prominence in another way the same truth. For the nervous part of man is that which most characterises him. It is difficult to state precisely any time at which a change from the old humoral theory began to show itself; but as one advances from ancient to modern conceptions of this subject one finds the belief growing first that bodily organs, and later groups of these organs, and not theoretical fluid substances, account for differences of temperament, and this change, no doubt, corresponds with our advancing knowledge of the physiological conditions of the body. 78 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION Finally, Thomas Laycock's ' Lectures on the Physiognomy of Disease ' (1862), and his ' Principles and Methods of Medical Observation and Research,' with Charles Darwin's ' Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,' and Francis Galton's ' In- quiries into Human Faculty ' and ' Hereditary Genius,' mark the commencement of a new epoch that of systematic observation. Nevertheless, Jonathan Hutchinson's words may be repeated with truth at the present time : ' As yet I fear we must say that the labours of the physio- gnomist and those of the student of temperament have been alike disappointing.' l The medical like the artistical effort has, there- fore, been abortive, and it is possible that the want of success may be due to some common difficulty. Now, the fundamental deduction to be drawn from the teaching of evolution is that of a continuous progress ; is it possible that the ideal of beauty is progressive in human forms, in physical and physi- cally expressed mental beauty as in human thought ; is it possible that the temperaments vary age by age, and that in neither case are unchangeable pro- portions and characteristics to be sought? If so, new methods for the study of human differences must be adopted. If, as it would seem from the conclusions of the last chapter, it be necessary to accept the selectionist basis as the foundation of all biological superstructures, then it is clear that surroundings of the individual as well as individual peculiarities must receive attention. 1 The Pedigree of Disease. TEMPERAMENTS 79 Now, as far as I am aware, no study of indi- viduals based on a large number of observations, including sexual, racial, idiosyncratic characters as compared with the temperamental, has been made, nor have occupational and environmental influences on the individual during life been studied. The subject has almost exclusively been taken up either medically in relation to present types, and these mostly of one nationality, or artistically in reference to past works of Art. As a matter of scientific interest the first ques- tion should obviously be, Do type characters exist ? and secondly, if they do, Are they changing under changing conditions? Yet neither of these funda- mental positions has been considered. It is clear, therefore, that any analysis not taking these considerations into the general plan of the problem must infallibly fail, and the conflicting conclusions arrived at by older investigators is not surprising. The lesson taught by this brief histo- rical survey is that any narrow method of research adopted for present inquiries must be doomed to failure as certainly as its predecessors. The Bational Basis of Temperament If an attempt is made to examine this subject on purely rational grounds, it is reasonable to suppose that relative predominance of certain tissues in the body will lead to relative predominance of certain individual characteristics. This assumption is necessary whether we assume that mind and body are merely correlated, or that 80 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION mind is in some way either a phenomenon of, or connected with, matter. On any causal hypothesis the fact of the close correspondence of certain bodily and mental states with each other must be admitted, and this granted a relative preponderance of one group of tissues will be associated with certain individual characteristics, and these may be studied by the ordinary methods of modern science. It may therefore be assumed that the first question to con- sider is the manner in which the various structures are grouped, and next to observe what effect each of these groups is likely to have on the whole body considered physiologically and structurally. The first obvious relationship of tissues function- ing for one end is the sexual. Certain gland struc- tures and certain subsidiary organs are definitely associated with the phenomena of reproduction. Further, throughout the higher forms of the animal kingdom certain characteristics bodily and mental are found associated with the preponderance of male or female reproductive organs. Rationally, therefore, the sexual system seems to form the first division of a rational classification of temperament. Besides this system there are in the body tissues connected with motion, tissues connected with absorbitive processes, absorptive or digestive, 1 tissues connected with dis- tribution of food material or circulatory and respi- ratory, and lastly tissues connected with co-ordinating 1 I exclude what might be called an excretory group, because, as I have explained in Chapter I., it is probable that all tissues are ex- cretory, and also for the reason that the kidneys and skin must, in all healthy temperaments, vary their functioning according to the demands that each type puts upon them. TEMPERAMENTS 81 and responding to impulses or nervous. There are thus four other groups to consider : motor, digestive, circulatory and respiratory, and nervous. How far are these systems when relatively developed asso- ciated with temperamental characteristics? How far is this rational classification into six tempera- ments supported by facts ? Taking first sexual characteristics and the rela- tion that these appear to bear to physiological and pathological physical and mental states, we have evidence : Firstly, that the presence of active functionary testicles in some way or other does influence the growth of essentially masculine characteristics, and that, after removal of these organs in early life, the individual, though still of masculine build, appears to develop in a feminine rather than in a masculine direction. This is also true of almost all higher animals, and similar evidence is supplied by diseased states and errors in development affecting this part. Secondly, removal of ovaries even when this occurs late in life generally leads to changes in the individual of a masculine nature, such as growth of hair on the face and deepening of voice, &c. The same changes are often seen when the functional activities of the ovaries cease, and the climacteric period in woman is perhaps more generally than not associated with some change, often, however slight, of a masculine nature. In animals similar alterations in their organism show themselves under similar circumstances. G 82 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION Thirdly, there would appear to be almost every stage of sexualism from pseudo-hermaphrodite indi- viduals in which in rare cases it is impossible to assert which sex predominates, and who are some- times without sexual desire, and even without any marked manliness or womanliness of character through feminine types of men and masculine types of women to the highest forms known on this earth, the real manly man and the womanly woman, both specialised physically and more important mentally for worthy human life. As moreover sexual diver- gence is an increasingly marked feature of progressing communities, it is additionally necessary to under- stand each of the two types. There can therefore be no doubt of the existence of sexual temperaments, and their mental as well as physical significance will be considered later. When, however, we pass from sexual to the other divisions which rational principles would lead us to expect to exist, the evidence is found to be conflicting and uncertain. There is the general fact that among white races the conquering peoples of the past have been largely tall and muscular, and it might be assumed from this that motor activity and powerful muscles are associated with a combative type. The fighting qualities of man, as compared with less muscular woman, might be adduced as additional evidence ; and some aspects of recent psychology which asso- ciate willing-power and doing-power together might seem to form further evidence in support of the contention. Again, the ancient Greeks and Eomans, TEMPERAMENTS 83 when their power was greatest, believed intensely in athletics as a basis, almost the foundation, of natural development ; while to-day the Anglo-Saxon, the most progressive race existing at the present time, is equally characterised by its love of bodily exercise. Unfortunately, facts when more closely examined do not bear out these generalisations. Muscular power and muscular skill are often asso- ciated with extreme cowardice, and small and nervously organised men are often distinguished by their intense fighting desires. It is difficult, there- fore, to believe that any causal relation exists between motor bodily predominance and fighting capacity. And although the whole drift of civilisation is to protect the physically delicate and to lay less stress on bodily and more on mental powers, yet the civilised white man of to-day does not seem to have deteriorated in courage. It is true that the Anglo- Saxon does spend an unnecessarily large amount of time on the physical side of life ; yet this excess is found mostly in the scum and dreg, the unproductive and inferior portions of the race, and therefore is not characteristic of it as a whole. The main body of the middle class are more seriously inclined. One cannot, therefore, assert that development of the motor system, with large bones and strong muscles, leads to any corresponding mind qualities which, a priori, one would expect it to. Neither can one assert that muscular people are peculiarly susceptible to any particular group of diseases or resistent to others. There is, however, a general and probably well-founded impression that fevers are more severe 02 84 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION in such people, the temperature being unusually high ; but the tendency to excesses in eating and drinking may fully explain this. Even if true, it is by no means clear that this peculiarity is due to constitution rather than to habit. Again, among white races it is probable that the darker, shorter peoples (Italians, French, Spanish, &c.), who approach the feminine type in relatively small chest capacity as compared with abdominal development, are more resistent to certain fevers, as malaria, and more prone to tubercular diseases, such as phthisis, than the masculine, fairer, taller, and larger-lunged Teuton and Scandinavian ; and a similar parallel may possibly hold among darker races. So that there is slight, though quite in- sufficient, evidence in favour of abdominal and respiratory temperaments. Therefore it would appear that the only satis- factory truths obtainable which lead to conclusions of a definite nature are those relating to the action of certain gland tissues on bodily growth, alluded to in Chapter I., and others which seem to point to co-ordination of bodily form and nervous organisa- tion. 1 The first evidence of this has already been noticed, when facts in favour of sexual temperaments were considered. There is reason to suppose that the Thyroid, Suprarenal, Thymus, Pituitary, and Renal structures each excrete some substance, which passes into the 1 The nervous system has quite possibly its own internal secre- tion, and Would thus be like gland structures in its organismal influence. TEMPERAMENTS 85 blood and exercises in some way wide influence over the whole body. I have suggested in the previous chapter that this is possibly due to some sequence of nutrition, and that all tissues in the body may not unlikely exert their own particular influence in a food-chain ; so that what is an excretory product to one tissue may be a nutritive product to another, and interference with this circle of activity may, by breaking the bodily metabolic series at one point, affect the whole system. Whether this be so or not, there is now definite ground for associating Thyrnus, Thyroid, and Pitui- tary glands with development; and the relation of the latter two glands to the curious conditions known as Cretinism and Acromegaly, and in a less definite manner Gigantism, affords some reason for believing that the science of temperaments may one day be definitely established on some gland-group basis. The Cretin has a large abdomen, small limbs, short extremities, which are, however, stout and thick ; head relatively large and broad, and general physiognomy approaching to the Mongoloid type. Intelligence and sexual power are mostly undeve- loped, and this state is associated with absence or disease of the Thyroid Gland. Again, in Micromegaly and in the study of dwarfs the characters that seem to be manifested are relatively large heads with small jaws, and often with relatively short limbs and large bodies. In giants, on the contrary, the height is mainly due to enlargement of the limbs ; and, as may be seen by reference to illustrations and specimens, 86 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION there is generally a very considerable development of the lower portions of the face. This is particu- larly well seen in the skeleton of O'Brien at the College of Surgeons. Nearly the same facts are disclosed by a study of the disease Acromegaly. Not only are the limbs longer, but the hands and feet are large even in proportion to this extra height standard. In the face and head the main growth is seen in the superior and inferior maxillary bones, the lower jaw in particular growing to a strikingly noticeable degree. This growth in the face, as in the limbs, is not confined to bony tissues, because the nostrils, lips, and tongue enlarge and thicken, and even the ears may be affected. Broadly, therefore, there are facts here which suggest that there are certain features of growth definitely associated with a motor or limb tempera- ment, which, in the cases of giants and acromegalic patients, has run to great excess, whereas in dwarfs it has been slight, often almost absent. And tall and short individuals have unquestionably distinct traits of character. There are, therefore, facts which definitely con- nect male, female, and motor temperaments with certain glands of the body. Further, it will be noticed that in more than one feature dwarf cha- racters approach the female type, and giant and acromegalic the male. In the size of the jaws, in the largeness of limbs with their large extremities the male and the acro- megalic agree, whereas the short limbs and larger TEMPERAMENTS 87 bodies of the dwarf find some counterpart in the female form. The large head in the dwarf, how- ever, is not, of course, a specially feminine cha- racteristic. Sex types appear to accentuate or weaken the characteristics of the long and short, giant and dwarf, forms of men. Generally, also, the tall races conform to the male type, and the short to the female, as may be seen in a comparison of Latin and Teuton races. But there would appear to be no known reason why the tall type should thus resemble the male, and the short the female. The facts that have relation to the development of a nervous form may now be considered; but, unlike the above-mentioned evidence, it rests on an observational rather than a physiological basis. It has long been noticed in England that the John Bull type of Englishman is disappearing. Whether we look at portrait galleries like Hampton Court and the National Portrait Gallery, or turn over illustrations in old books, whether caricatures or not, it is evident that some physiognomical change has been taking place. The stout, plethoric, muscular, ruddy-faced man of stolid expression is becoming exceptional, and his place is being taken by a thinner, more alert, active type. What is the explanation ? It is the same in the United States. The modern face is more keen, leaner, and of less coarse mould than that of the older pioneers who laid the foundation of their country's greatness. Portraits of old French, German, and Italian people 88 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION reveal, though to a less marked degree, the same fact. What is seen in the men is equally obvious in women and children. The stout mask-like contented type is dying out everywhere, wherever civilisation exists, only more slowly in backward countries. At the present time the manual worker is most like his predecessor, and the average brain worker least. For this reason, and because of the widespread evidence from old portraits in all parts of the civilised world, the change must be accepted as being too general in character to be due to any fashion or custom, or manner of living or habits among painters of por- traits. Is this change real or fictitious ? There is nothing inherently unlikely in the assumption of such alterations in men and women. We have evidence that the type of to-day is very different from past forms of man if we go far enough back. Broadly, too, the savage now existing has everywhere signs in smaller cranial capacity and in general formation of face and head of a lower organ- isation than the civilised man. Within the last 150 years, short as the time undoubtedly is, vast economic changes have taken place. There is evi- dence, too, that contact of savage and civilised man leads to a great destruction of the former till some imperfect equilibrium is reached. There is nothing, therefore, improbable in the assumption that eco- nomic changes are resulting in a destruction of the less responsive types and a preservation of those TEMPERAMENTS 89 more adaptable, and later a still further selection among the children of the selected parents owing to a progressing environment. What are the known facts upon which conclu- sions may be formed ? The first factor of importance to consider is that Natural Selection has ample scope to produce a modified type in the variety of material open to it to select from. The more carefully that one studies different organisations, the more divergences and differences are manifested. From the quick alert child to the one generally stupid, from the child with early developing bent to one with scarcely any preference at any age, from the vast differences in capacity everywhere manifest, it is clear that material is available if it only be utilised. (See Francis Galton, ' The Human Faculties,' &c.) That some sort of selection does take place may be seen from the fact that in children under one year the death-rate is exceptionally heavy, and, although diminishing rapidly from this period with however minor variations to adult life, it is even for the most healthy periods always an appreciable one. If for the first thirty years of life the death-rate were practically negligible, it would be evident that environment would have very little chance of select- ing its desired types. The facts, however, being quite otherwise, it may be worth while to consider briefly how selection would be likely to affect a population composed such as ours now is as com- pared with former states. Taking town life as contrasted with country life, 90 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION there can be little doubt that on the whole it is less healthy for all classes of adults. The death rates in the main prove this, but the death rate is greater and the health is poorer in densely packed poor districts. We have therefore to take into considera- tion two features : (1) the increase of town life and the rise of machinery and its accompanying conditions ; (2) the differing effects of such con- ditions on the comfortably situated and the poverty- stricken. As a result of essentially modern conditions there is a greater nerve strain, and a greater selection of mentally fit in a multitude of different directions. It is inevitable that some change in the direction of weeding out the incompetent must be taking place, and prisons and asylums all over the advancing parts of the world prove it. This greater demand on the nervous system may possibly affect injuriously the stability of the organism, and the growth of chronic diseases of such a nature as cancer may be in part the result of such advancement, though even if this be so, means must be found for com- bating them. The other inevitable general fact of advance is the increasing risks of spreading diseases of an infectious nature by the greater rapidity and ease of communication. This is already being counter- acted by isolation and notification of disease, and the remedies will probably fully keep pace with the growing requirements, though this field of medical activity is likely to become an increasingly prominent one. TEMPERAMENTS 91 As a particular cause affecting particular groups of the nation, the occupational risks of the people in the working hours of the day varying, owing to im- provements in old trades and the rise of new, from year to year, are a factor of vast importance. Fac- tory and workshop legislation has already made creditable advances in this direction. Whether enough attention has been given to private individual habits such as street shouting and lumbering noisy vehicles, station noises, spitting in the highways, drunken men and women in public thoroughfares, &c., which are dangerous to the community is more than doubtful ; but even here improvement is commencing, and it is not unlikely that before long further extensions of the tendency may take place, and public musical performances in parks and streets may be controlled by municipal powers, and even ugly buildings may be in time prevented from being erected, so that aesthetic con- siderations may at last be valued practically. But growth of machinery, multiplying employ- ments, and general surroundings are conditions affecting all more or less equally, though even these influences can be more readily avoided by the wealthy than by the poor. And, moreover, to con- sider these conditions adequately requires much more extensive treatment than can be given in this volume. 1 To do so completely it would be necessary to understand the special risks of each of the hundreds of different occupations, and also how these risks 1 In subsequent portions of the work I shall again refer more fully to these considerations. 92 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION are likely to be modified and developed in future times. After the conclusions on this subject have been mastered, it will be necessary to advance one step farther and trace out how these complex tenden- cies affect individuals (men, women, and children), and how marriage between those of similar or dis- similar occupations will check or foster qualities good or bad in each class, and in the nation as a whole. While, therefore, the subject is too intricate to deal minutely with here, it may be well to note certain broad conclusions deducible. Increased rapidity in all aspects of life is beyond doubt inevitable. Greater speed in travelling, in conducting business, in writing and quite possibly in reading, must make a quick responding type an absolutely inevitable feature in the future. On the other hand, the need for pioneers of new movements, and the greater delicacy of ideas essential in higher employments, will make a delicately susceptible refined form of mind and body requisite. Finally the growing complexity of social interactions will favour those of large reason- ing powers as well as others who can by artistical, musical, and practical talents develop a new poetry of life out of the newer surroundings. Thus a quick responding mechanical lower section of modern society will probably some day be developed to displace the sodden clownish labourer of to-day, and a refined delicately organised group must sup- plant the now moderately efficient middle and useless scum portions of the community. So far, therefore, from the alteration in type as shown by our picture galleries appearing improbable, TEMPERAMENTS 93 when examined by the light which modern economic change throws on this problem, it is seen that these two groups of facts, drawn from different sources, strengthen each other. The John Bull type is, therefore, probably dying out as inevitably as a result of modern human life conditions, as the old Mammoth and larger reptilian forms of animals have been displaced by others smaller and more adapted to newer environments. Thus much may be inferred from a study of the general tendencies of the times as they affect all classes of any social aggregate of individuals. The surroundings of the wealthier members of society, when compared with those of the poorer citizens, offer a set of influences that are much more easily traced and grasped by any observer who is prepared to free himself from prejudice. And as this problem is one that I believe is not only fundamentally bound up with the capacity to progress in a nation, but also explains to a large degree one aspect of the temperament theory, I pro- pose briefly to consider it. The main difference of a physical nature between rich and poor, particularly in town life, though to a considerable degree everywhere, is that conditions among the -poor favour brute living with a tendency to destroy those whom it brutalises and those who are too delicately organised to stand lower life. Briefly, the poor are from birth underfed, over- crowded, and to a not inconsiderable degree forced, owing to lack of washing and toilet opportunities, to lead lives which are in varying degree dirt-surrounded. 94 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION The air of their houses is stuffy or draughty, even the most washable articles smell close and foul. As the children grow up they tend more and more to find their way to the streets, because the mothers are glad to get rid of them, and even when this is not so, their playmates attract them, and later they are not expected to inhabit the home, and still less if unmarried to live in lodgings, but merely to sleep at night in them. There is no place to go to in the day time and evening except the public-house. In the libraries, if any happen to be near, talking and chatting are not allowed. There may be a mission hall with a person who preaches religion to them, but does not seriously attempt to remedy their grievances. The public-house is to them their refuge, and it is a refuge that soddens and under- mines the little constitution they may by this time possess. A wealthy person can, if he will, live a life which is not dependent upon capacity to exist under unhealthy conditions the poorer fellow- citizen cannot. Now, the disease which is peculiarly powerful and operates with extraordinary power under these con- ditions is tuberculosis in one form or another. Now that typhoid and typhus fevers have been almost exterminated, this one disorder is of all others the predominant eliminator. How will this disease tend to act in its ability to destroy? What type or types of individuals will it be likely to select ? G. Archibald Eeid has done good service in TEMPERAMENTS 95 pointing out how important a factor narcotics and diseases are in evolution. 1 That narcotics and nerve stimulants, especially when taken in excess, do predispose to disease is un- doubted. That alcohol is a potent factor in creating a favourable soil for consumption is proved again and again in medical practice. It is generally recognised that there are two types subject to tubercular disorders, the finely organised intelligent type and the coarse type. The former generally at some period in life has tried to keep respectable under adverse conditions, and some- times failing this has gone wholly to the bad ; the latter is almost always a public-house lounger or excessive drinker and lives in filthy surroundings. Broadly, however, the finely organised dislike their surroundings, and the coarse are not much troubled by them. Among the poorer classes, therefore, selec- tion attacks two groups quite unlike in disposition. Why should both these groups be classed as de- generate ? Now, in mental disorders the same groups tend to repeat themselves. There is the coarse thick-set muscular type who becomes morbid when life ad- vances too fast, who has perhaps been placed in a position which requires intelligence and decision above the individual's capacity. Such a person, being frequently the subject of syphilitic disease, contracted as a result of immoral life, often alco- holic, indulging perhaps in betting, and attaching more importance to ' Sport ' and music-hall amuse- 1 The Present Evolution of Man, &c. 96 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION ments than either home or business pleasures, has become, through his own excesses and also because life conditions have been too high for him, en- feebled. On a slightly higher plane is the big, stout, buxom individual, who from overfeeding is troubled greatly with indigestion, has gouty aches and pains, and who, though really in fairly good health, is a general nuisance to the medical practitioner on account of constant cowardly fussiness and fear for his health. General Paralysis of the Insane, Hypochon- driasis, Alcoholic Dementias are common diseases in this John Bull class when run down by following too closely the cravings of animal appetites. In contrast with this group there are others who are strongly averse to physical excesses. They are nervously organised, slim, with delicately fashioned limbs, acute and sensitive faculties all alert to every passing sight or sound, eyes that often look startled and half-frightened, though their possessors have plenty of moral and, when occasion demands it, of physical courage also ; often hard workers and keen students, and nearly always sober and peace-loving, their tendency is to use themselves up with over- work and too much worrying over business troubles ; with women, especially, household affairs will get on ' their nerves,' and they will fancy that their homes are not quite as tidy as they used to be. The slightest noise will cause them to start, glaring colours and bright lights hurt their eyes, and if this mood is not checked by rest and relaxation life becomes very burdensome, and is faced, though often TEMPERAMENTS 97 very pluckily, also very wearily. A month or two's rest at a quiet seaside village will often restore them to a surprising degree. To these fine and coarse types may be added a third, the feeble-minded, half-witted, generally ill- formed group. Tubercular diseases attack these three groups of individuals, though in each case for different reasons. Must we condemn them all as degenerate ? Are we justified in asserting that this wholesale elimination is necessarily beneficial in all cases ? Now, the test of degeneracy is not, and never has been, dependent on the mere fact of destruction. If it can be shown that the highest class of external conditions, which were fitted for each type, did actually prevail, then destruction can be rightly assumed to be eliminating the unfit i.e. those too primitive and those too degenerate for their sur- roundings. This cannot be demonstrated; hence the mere destruction argument is fallacious. Let the reader think for a little while of the import of this conclusion. Think how many millions of future men and women may arise happy and progressive, or brute-passioning and debauched, as a result of humanity at the present day, grasping, or not grasping, in some degree, the meaning of this problem. If the evidence in favour of a higher type is strong ; if the social need for that same type is almost self-evident ; if there is reason for believing that the old forms of man are even now being dis- placed, though very, very slowly, by higher forms, H 98 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION and these only slightly higher than those that they displace ; if there is reason to believe that, as well as destruction of the most animal men and women, there is going on side by side with it a destruction of others who are too human, too advanced for the brutal nature of their environment, ought not every one of us who has manliness or womanliness in our nature to exert oneself to the utmost to make ' civilised ' conditions a little less disagreeable than they are to-day, so that the children of the coming generations may not die because of our passion for, or indifference to, brute-modes of living ? Reviewing, therefore, briefly, the conclusions arrived at in this chapter, we have, firstly, the un- disputed fact that sex is a temperamental, and not a merely local, condition ; secondly, that there is every probability that through progressing environment the John Bull types are being displaced by others of a nervous temperament ; thirdly, short and tall types somewhat resembling male and female in their characteristics exist. We have further to note that survival, though in some respects due to general causes, the result of general national and social conditions, is in others dependent on variable local class surroundings, and what may be highly organ- ised social forms, as well as what undoubtedly are low and anti-social, are being destroyed by conditions which ought not to exist in a civilised land. In the next chapter the consideration of the problem of healthy organisation and development as a test for estimating the healthiness or unhealthi- ness of the individual has to be considered. For, if TEMPERAMENTS 99 the organisation is naturally responsive and pro- gressive, and yet has become through living diseased, the fault must be sought in the manner in which it has been compelled to live, and in this only. The surroundings where this is so, and not the citizen, are degenerate. 100 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION CHAPTER III TEMPEEAMENTS (continued) IN the last chapter some reasons were given for believing that an examination of the possible causes that may lead to the development of the different forms of temperament might not be unprofitable, as by this means only can evidence be collected capable of explaining the reason for the presence of higher and lower types of humanity in society. It was also pointed out that the absence of evidence on this subject was not sufficient justification for think- ing that future work conducted on more rational lines would be as barren of result as past labours have been. Further, some evidence was brought forward to show that certain gland structures do tend when relatively active as compared with other bodily tissue changes to be associated with dis- tinctive mental and physical characteristics. At the outset of our inquiry certain difficulties re- quire consideration, in order that the legitimate scope of the investigation can be adequately appreciated. The study of temperament is concerned solely with peculiarities which have a physiological signifi- cance, and which are found in certain large groups of individuals who appear to be healthily organised, TEMPEKAMENTS 101 as far as known data permit of our estimating accurately what is or is not healthy. But while it is true that the science of temperaments should be concerned only with those characters of human, and in some cases other animal, organisms that are free from the effects of disease, yet, in order to limit the study to these features, it is necessary to under- stand other subjects that lie close to its natural boundaries. The more carefully the influence of disease on any individual organism is studied, the more certain must be the conclusion of the investigator as to the permanently modified state of that individual organism as the result of that disease. Most acute fevers protect more or less completely the individual throughout life from further attacks, therefore some changes in the individual's tissues must have resulted otherwise no protection would have been secured. Syphilis is a disease which has, perhaps, been more closely followed up in the life history of each patient than any other, and we know that in the majority of cases each person suffering from the complaint con- tinues to suffer in some degree throughout the whole period of life. Did we know as much of other diseases it cannot be doubted that the study (dia- thesis) of the influence of past disorders on patients would be valued much more highly than it is at the present day. But diathetic states are closely related to temperamental, hence a knowledge of the former conditions is necessary to the right appreciation of the latter, and vice versd. But many diseases, particularly those that run a 102 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION chronic course, produce a series of changes in the body which result from the activity of existing disease. The individual during the whole period of the continuance of the disorder is not in a healthily reacting state, and consequently does not respond to the surrounding environment in a manner similar to other individuals who are not so suffering. In so far as this response is unhealthy and differs from what is physiological, it is dyscrasic and not tempera- mental, but dyscrasic states pass by insensible degrees into diathetic, and thus knowledge of this branch of medicine is also required to appreciate adequately the facts upon which the study now under consideration is based. Further idiosyncrasies of different individuals must not be confused with widespread temperamental features. Nor must racial phenomena be included. A consideration of what is healthily as contrasted with what is unhealthily organised, of the chief diathetic and dyscrasic states, as well as determining wherein race and individual features are separable from the temperamental, is, therefore, a necessary preliminary to the main study. A few points on each head may now be appropriately noted. If there are different kinds of temperaments there must clearly be different kinds of healthy states corresponding to these distinctive organisations. Health as a subject for study is not therefore co- extensive with the science of temperaments, though it is closely related to it. What is common to all true temperaments, because this common basis is essential to healthy functioning of human life every- TEMPEKAMENTS 103 where and in all its forms, is the field which the science of health occupies. But since it is necessary to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy types, it is necessary to understand the principles of healthy organisation in order to discriminate between dys- crasic, diathetic, and temperamental states. What is health ? Most authorities would agree with Marshall Ward l when he states that ' disease is a condition in which the functions of the organism are im- properly discharged,' or with Allchin 2 that ' the standard of bodily health is at present incapable of accurate definition.' Such statements, however, are of little value and do not lead to any wiser outlook from which the problem may be considered. Bland Button has pointed out that disease may in some cases be the result of features persisting in a later stage which naturally belong to an earlier. This conclusion is of service in drawing attention to the fact that one of the elements to be estimated is this imperfection in the later stages of development, and it opens up, by suggesting an opposite group of con- ditions, a further means by which disease is fostered, namely, where developmental processes lead to the production of a more advanced structure than is required. It is not impossible that just as a citizen may fail in a state because he is too honest to hold his own with surrounding competitors of a lower order than himself, so some part of any individual's constitu- tion being more highly organised than the other 1 Diseases of Plants. * Manual of Medicine. 104 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION parts, may become diseased because this higher level in an otherwise lower body cannot be maintained. Disease may quite as possibly result from irregular progressive tendencies as from retrogressive. It is also clear that any steady environment that surrounds any individual may be favourable or un- favourable to that person. If unfavourable, such an individual is not necessarily unhealthily organised should he or she become diseased. If the environ- ment does not conform to general health laws, all individuals will be more or less prejudicially affected by it. If the surroundings are unfavourable to a particular kind of organism, then some group of men and women belonging mainly to one tempera- ment will be principally injured. Health is, there- fore, as much the result of environmental plan as individual organisation and disease may be the result of failure to grow in progressive directions in either or both. The capacity to live healthily in any person cannot therefore be estimated solely by present and past evidence of disease. Again, among the millions of cells of which the Mammalian animal is made up there are always thousands belonging to each class of tissue which are functioning defectively, some because of uncom- pleted growth, others on account of excessive age, and yet still others that are diseased as a result of some slight local disturbance. So long as this weak- ness is limited to a relatively small number of cells and can be adequately held in check by the others, the whole state of the individual may be one of comparative health ; nay, more, the presence of these TEMPERAMENTS 105 few diseased cells may be necessary to keep in a condition of active resistance the many healthy. Health is not therefore a fixed condition, but a rela- tively harmonious adjustment of parts. Health and Temperament. While it is true that to define what is healthy in one individual is often at the same time to describe that which may be disease in another ; that what is a satisfactory environment in one instance may be quite otherwise for some other ; that the term bodily health signifies, only as it were, an aggregate well-being, and never pre- supposes an equal condition of health in all parts of the organism at the same time every cell in the body being in some evolutionary or devolutionary condition whose course is related to, but distinct from, other cells yet it is possible to formulate certain general principles which are capable of being applied in such a manner that some estimate of a healthily formed organisation may be arrived at irrespective of its temperamental peculiarities and of the healthy or unhealthy response which a beneficial or prejudicial environment may elicit from it. Thus while temperament as a science does afford some valuable criteria for forming a judgment on the natural powers of certain individual groups, the study of health also supplies material by which the per- fectness of each individual belonging to each group can be estimated. Hence to understand what is generally healthful is to have means at one's disposal to reject, even among the most divergent types, those forms which are actually unfitted to exist not on account of unfitness for their surroundings but 106 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION because they would be defective anywhere owing to imperfection of organisation. The science of health should enable us to discover actual flaws in the build of the individual, while that of temperament explains the aptitude. Health principles therefore afford the only avail- able means of estimating the degree of perfectness of the type irrespective of fortunate or unfortunate environment in which such type may be compelled to exist. This science thus forms the basis of all sound temperamental work, and is also pre-eminently the study for the artist on account of its disclosing true beauty of form, and for the medical man in pointing out the healthily fashioned organisation. With the principles of this study to guide one the artist will know how to avoid utilising, except under appropriate conditions, characteristics that are really defective, and the medical practitioner will under- stand more fully when a form is too imperfectly modelled to be of value to the nation, and also the need for preserving it from strain. What deductions is one justified in making on this subject ? In the first chapter I pointed out the need as higher and higher forms come into being for in- creasingly delicate adjustment of each part to all others in each individual, so that harmony of all tissues and structures delicately adapted to the whole plan of each complete organisation becomes of in- creasingly vast importance to the welfare of each being ; progress and specialisation in one tissue becoming, at last, actively harmful unless accom- panied by an ordered adjustment of the others. TEMPERAMENTS 107 This applies with most force to man, the most complex and highly evolved life-form. A definite adaptive individual end is therefore an absolute essential of healthy capacity. A marked uniform personality pervading the whole organism is the first requisite of fitness. In this respect, as one would expect, savage falls far below civilised Man. Firstly, there are fewer higher sexual characters as distinct from merely reproductive. Manly and womanly life is little marked off from the bmtal, and manliness and womanliness, in so far as they exist at all, are less distinctive features of sex, woman is more masculine and man more feminine relatively to each other than is the case in the cultured citizen of either sex. Secondly, the less complex bodily appetites much more largely predominate in primitive Man in supplying incentives to action than the higher, more numerous, and later evolved mental desires. There is, therefore, more diversity and, on account of great specialisation, more individuality in the cultured man and woman ; and in society organised on modern lines the criminal, the labourer, the artisan and tradesman, and lastly, the professional man, have in the order named progressively less resem- blance in this respect to the savage and semi- civilised races. Unity of plan throughout the whole body focussed towards a given goal by powers that thus give rise to a strong individuality is the first important feature of a healthfully evolved person. While, however, this conclusion is supported by 108 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION all known biological and sociological data, it is yet neither practically nor theoretically recognised. The educationist in the main disregards individuality as an educational factor ; the medical man does not consider it among the assets of health, neither does he specially consider that the presence of a mixture of temperamental conditions in one body is neces- sarily primitive. Yet relatively large hands and feet in a woman, or small in a man, may reveal an organic defect or lack of vitality difficult to establish by other means ; or again a prominent face, a broad flat nose, &c., in an individual otherwise delicately developed may give warning of an unbalanced cha- racter that can be detected by no other sign. The artist, too, frequently combines in one ideal the coarse thick powerful labourer's hand, beautiful in its own way, with a face strongly suggestive of mind power that is beautiful in another and higher manner, when, as a matter of fact, the whole form should conform to one standard and one only. Unity of design is one essential of healthy organisa- tion. As almost a part of this conception, but never- theless to be looked for separately, is the evidence of co-ordination of functions. Stammering, awkward- ness of movement, &c. of a more or less incurable character show that the ordered control of bodily activities is defective ; though these conditions must not be confused with the natural slowness of a person of physical rather than nervous organisa- tion. The inability to direct one's own actions seen in an old man's fumbling would in a young TEMPERAMENTS 109 adult imply serious defect. Much less obvious points would probably be noticeable if the study of functional unity were more adequately valued. Apart from this idea of harmonious ordering of the whole body, it is generally recognised that lack of symmetry and irregularities in growth such as inequality in the two halves of the face, uneven growth of teeth, deflection of nose to right or left side, eyebrows unequal level, &c. are phenomena which quite apart from reversionary peculiarities (as the Mongoloid (Chinese) or Ethiopian (Negro) forms and characters, in those of European origin) are of great importance when estimating the more or less defective nature of any person's constitution. As, however, these small irregularities exist in some degree in all persons, it is necessary not to attach too much importance to them, if small and few in number, especially if the organisation of the indi- vidual is uniform. Some variability when not extreme is evidence of a progressing type. Finally, there are a large group of characters which, though not coming under either of these three heads, are yet always evidence of faulty development and are usually spoken of as atavistic or reversionary phenomena ; such instances as hair in non-human positions, rudimentary tail, accessory auricles, additional breasts or nipples, &c., are examples of this class. The still graver errors in development do not come within the scope of this present inquiry. I have purposely omitted such considerations as muscular tone (evidenced by firm muscles, strong 110 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION abdominal wall, regular action of bowels), clearness of complexion, sound teeth, &c., for these depend, though not exclusively, more largely on an environ- ment suitable to the natural powers of the individual, and hence do not have any definite relation to the more fixed temperamental features. The same principles that apply to the body are not less true of the mind. Other things being equal, that personality which is dominated by purpose is always healthier, and on account of the increasing necessity of direction in the later evolved, more complex and specialised minds, generally higher. 111 health will make even the strongest will vacillat- ing, and the imbecile and feeble-minded are generally quite unable to direct their energies towards any end. In like manner the savage's and the child's attention wanders and cannot be concentrated with- out great incentives, and then the effort is spasmodic. Again, as man advances from primitive to cultured forms of environment, individuals tend to survive who are progressively more capable of sub- ordinating lower to higher feelings. Such mental qualities as cruelty and wanton destructiveness, which are natural to primitive peoples, are always indicative of faulty development in persons belonging to advanced races. As in the body certain temporary signs of enfeeblement were only alluded to in passing because they afforded proof of lack of harmony between it and its environment, and were not there- fore of value in the study of temperaments, so certain states of the mind are not available as evidence of TEMPERAMENTS 111 defective powers, and for a like reason, but merely show that the individual is overwrought, and is living under such pressure of uncongenial circum- stances that there is some danger of a breakdown. Irritability of temper (not mere hastiness), a constant harassed feeling, dread of sudden and grating noises, &c., are not symptoms of permanent mental weak- ness existing from birth, and are not, therefore, utilisable for the subject now under consideration. Summarising, therefore, the conclusions arrived at, it is evident that a healthy organisation must be, firstly, manly or womanly throughout its entire development ; secondly, characterised by the features of one temperament, its hands ought to suggest the form of the face, and the face that of the body, and the whole have a definite distinct individuality of its own ; thirdly, it must be co-ordinated one part with another, be symmetrically proportioned, and not be marked by reversionary (primitive) characters ; fourthly, the various vital functions performed must respond readily and not act more or less imperfectly and independently to the needs of the whole person ; fifthly, the mind must have definite predominant tastes, harmonising with bodily powers, which direct the whole individuality towards one clearly defined goal ; sixthly, and lastly, in a more or less civilised man or woman mental desires should control physical, and the desire should be to act with rather than against one's fellows. Now, bearing these points in mind, it is evident that some types do exist which, although not strictly diseased nor arising from the after results of disease, 112 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION are nevertheless not temperamental, because they are not developed on any physiological system or gland basis. Moreover, these forms appear to exist mostly in surroundings which favour those social forces which make for general degeneracy. Caricaturists (Gilbert strikingly ; see illustrations to ' Bab Ballads ') have often depicted the simple, empty-minded type so frequently met with in army and merely wealthy Society circles. Its receding chin and forehead, and its small conically shaped head, smaller part upward and the lower portion at the back fusing in one straight line with the neck, while, to increase the ugliness of the picture, ears of an uncompromisingly large size project from a physio- gnomy that is expressionless or vaguely curious. The gold-mounted cane depicted as resting between rather thick lips and against teeth which are fre- quently large, though set in feeble jaws, and a clumsy figure clothed flashily, completes a picture of inanity that has its tragic as well as comic aspect. (See plate.) Any large portrait gallery will afford evidence of the characteristics alluded to. Although most typical of the idle, wealthy sections of the community, and probably due in them to interbreeding among individuals who are distinguished by feebleness of mind, it also occurs to a considerable extent among the poorest and most destitute members of civilised nations. Talbot states that about 50 per cent, of criminals at Elmira, New York (p. 256, 'Degeneracy'), have arrested growth of the lower jaw, and the sugar-loaf head is ^ r / SCUM TYPE. TEMPERAMENTS 118 a fairly common criminal feature. A comparison of fashionable scum and slum-dreg crowds will afford evidence to anyone caring to utilise his powers of observation of the existence of this class of person in our social life. It does not appear to exist to any appreciable degree in savage- life conditions. In about five hun- dred reliable illustrations l it was present only once, and that doubtfully. This is evidently because un- civilised races have usually large faces as compared with heads ; and, although the chin is mostly slight, the jaw does not recede, and thus the typical pro- minence of the middle part of the face, especially the nose, 2 is not obtained. The form of degeneracy found among the poorer classes is characterised by poor physique, small size, flat and narrow chest, with a generally thin, shrivelled, hunted appearance. The face is not always symmetrical, but is notably so more often than not ; the forehead actually recedes as in the preceding type, and does not merely appear to do so, and is low and narrow. The eyebrows often extend slightly down beyond the root of the nose on to the bridge, and the nose itself, though not sunken, as in syphilitic cases, is slight and only very little raised above the cheek-bones. These latter are also very little developed, and give the face a sunken appearance below the eyes, while the jaws 1 Taken from modern anthropological works of reference where collotypes have been used, or from photographs and museum specimens. * This is generally less prominent in savage types. Old Roman and Jewish faces are occasionally like this scum, degenerate type. I 114 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION are extremely feeble, and the angle is scarcely, if at all, visible when seen front full-face view. (See illustration.) These individuals are often phthisical, and always mentally deficient ; and in women pelvic disorders frequently make life a great burden to them. There is much evidence to point to the conclusion that the present commercial conditions of sweating, child labour, overcrowding, and poor food have pro- duced this deteriorated form by deficiency of healthy conditions. So far we have seen that certain general features ought to apply to all temperaments, and also that there are degenerate types which are not tempera- mental, in the sense of being dependent on any predominant system of organs and tissues. The next difficulty that of excluding diathetical charac- teristics is not easily dealt with, for unquestionably certain persons having certain natural characteristics do tend to develop certain diatheses, and it is there- fore peculiarly easy to confuse true temperamental characters with diathetic. In the diathesis that remains after rickets has subsided, and continues often into adult life, certain features, such as high, square forehead, with lateral parts specially developed, with enlarged ends of bones, and other features, all of which are usually regarded as diagnostic, are found. No doubt the thickening of the ends of the bones, and the curves due to the once-softened bony tissue having again become hard and fixed, are unmistakable evidences. But a high, square forehead does exist frequently ' DREG TYPE. TEMPEKAMENTS 115 without either a history or other evidence of rickets, and a forehead with proportions relatively developed in comparison with the face is frequently evidence of mind-power in the individual, just as it is when viewed as a racial characteristic ; and it may be that nervously organised children are naturally predisposed to rickets. The same difficulty of estimating what is a diseased head, as compared with one that is highly developed, presents itself in Hydrocephalus, the so- called ' water on the brain.' Except in the extreme forms, it is difficult to tell a hydrocephalic child from one that is genuinely large-brained ; and, again, it is not improbable that the naturally large develop- ment of brain may, owing to its being the seat of rapid growth, be also one that, on account of its instability, is especially liable to be attacked by tuberculosis and hydrocephalus ; these diseases may therefore be most often found in children with large frontal regions, because they attack those that tend to natural predominance in this direction. Again, writing of congenital syphilis, Jonathan Hutchinson remarks : ' There is usually exaggera- tion of the frontal eminences, and between them and the eyebrow is a shallow furrow or depression. Posteriorly, on the parietal bones similar eminences, but more widely spread and lower, exist, constituting the natiform skull of Parrot. As a whole, the skull is somewhat larger than normal. All the peculiari- ties are chiefly due to chronic infantile periostitis, with softening, but a tendency to hydrocephalus takes some share. All of them tend to diminish in i 2 116 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION conspicuousness as their subject advances in life. With these peculiarities of skull may also be noticed the very common flattening of the bridge of the nose, consequent upon internal and external perio- stitis of the nasal bones.' (P. 85, ' Syphilis.') Thus not only may one kind of diathesis be confused with another, as the rickety and the syphi- litic, unless great care is taken, and the two forms may co-exist, but also racial and temperamental features have to be taken into account. Again, in the alcoholic type the bloated blotchy individual with his thick coarse features, his solid heavy frame, and watery eyes it may be that the naturally coarse man has a natural tendency to excess in eating and drinking, and that part of the typical alcoholic's appearance is temperamental in character. It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish carefully between diathesis and temperament, and it is not always easy to give a definite opinion on isolated characters. With dyscrasias, also, the same diffi- culties are present, only here other evidences of actual disease make it much more easy to decide as to the nature of each peculiarity. Finally, idiosyncrasies may be excluded on the ground of the isolated character of the features presenting difficulties, and racial points because differences largely occur as variations not specially linked together by physiological function, though occasionally some alteration may have a tempera- mental significance as well, and then would be included in the general description. TEMPERAMENTS 117 Certain general characteristics, all of related functional nature, existing in individuals who are distinguished by symmetrical form, co-ordinated bodily functioning, mental and physical uniformity of plan and distinctive personality yet marked by a common resemblance, too adaptive to general bodily ends to be of purely racial meaning, too general to be individual, and too full of present activity to be atavistic or reversionary, are the basis upon which any rational theory of temperaments must rest. Before seeing what characteristics remain after exclusion of irrelevant material, it may not be un- profitable to consider some of the special difficulties involved in the study of this problem that have not been alluded to in the past pages. Firstly, there is the fact that family histories have been studied in relation to actual disease in- cidence and not upon any predisposition basis. But given a sufficiently unhealthy environment, and the most robust will give way before the unusual severity and strain, and where conditions are satis- factory the most delicate may lead healthy lives. Environment, disease organisms, and general aetiology are, therefore, the known factors which, studied care- fully, ought to throw light on individual suscepti- bility. On account of current medical practice, and investigators not studying environment from both occupational and home aspects, and satisfactorily examining each series of diseased persons upon this knowledge of their individual habits, there is now no evidence available to prove how certain human 118 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION organisations react to certain diseases under certain conditions as compared with others. The same unfortunate deficiency is observable on the sociological side. No school or industrial records exist which show the innate tastes of each child or worker in relation to after life, with the commercial and domestic skill that has or has not been developed, and how far the success or failure afterwards attained was associated with predisposi- tion. Hence, the first difficulty in the way of the study of temperaments is the complete lack of reliable statistical evidence. Secondly, privileged national and class types, and individuals drawn from them, obtain an arti- ficially high place in society and civilisation, not merited by their actual powers. Hence, if allow- ance for this unmerited success is not made, talent existing under unfavourable circumstances will be under-estimated, while the untalented, fortunately placed, will be included among groups for which their natural capacity does not fit them. Again, in those exceptional cases where real natural mind power is possessed by individuals born in scum- surroundings, it must be remembered that great force of will is required to live a studious life amidst the excesses and brutalities around them. If these pos- sibilities of error are not constantly remembered, the studies of physiognomy and temperament will seem little more than a foolish jumble of unproved asser- tions. The intensity of desires and the nature of these desires, and the effort put forth to overcome environmental difficulties, are of infinitely greater TEMPERAMENTS 119 value as indexes of character than the mere popular estimate of notoriety. Even achievements are largely a matter of opportunity. Temperaments must, therefore, be studied in some degree from a purely individual aspect, and the facts known of each person's environment must be utilised to balance any over- or under-estimate of successful or un- successful effort. Thirdly, social qualities are likely to figure more largely than home in any character-estimate formed of any human being known to one merely by repu- tation, on account of the greater opportunity for observation of the former qualities. The distinctly home-loving persons are therefore likely to suffer from an inadequate treatment of their powers if this unavoidable failure of evidence is not allowed for. Fourthly, geniuses, when once their reputation is gained, are likely to appear unnaturally separated from the talented because their lives are constantly before the general public through their works ; so that the less known, but still clever, men and women of more than average ability are passed over as if only possessed of ordinary capacity. Fifthly, some occupations require more con- tinuous skilled effort than others, and a few may require little more than a brief spell of inspiration now and again. For instance, a poet requires less persistency than an artist, because he has no manual dexterity to acquire by training, like that of drawing and painting. The drudgery entailed in good prose literary work probably exceeds the drudgery of the 120 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION artist, and the musician and scientific writer have yet greater difficulties to contend with. The more drudgery the greater the love required to master it ; hence the more completely will the profession of the individual who has attained eminence in such a subject be evident in his physiognomy. The average artist and poet will probably, therefore, have less distinctive and determined faces than the musician and scientist. Again, in the lower walks of life so little is de- manded of the worker that each person's characteris- tics may be in different individuals widely divergent from others, because, so long as the small minimum capacity is reached, any excess of power, mental or physical, may be drafted into channels that are not made use of by the trade or kind of labour performed. Sixthly, photographs, collotypes, even impres- sions jotted down by watching living men and women themselves, are open to a multitude of objections, when dealt with statistically, in esti- mating features and forms of persons, and I need not enter more fully into them in this volume, as I hope, when dealing with trade and professional aptitudes in a later book, to treat of these in some detail. All of these six groups of difficulties are practi- cally dependent upon the weakness of material for study that is available. The rest of the obstacles are to a certain extent inherent in the subject itself : (a) Civilising tendencies are difficult to estimate in different races and in different periods of time, TEMPERAMENTS 121 and comparative studies based on these estimates are, though necessary, peculiarly difficult. (b) As the many types of man have almost certainly sprung from one primitive ancestral form, it is difficult to separate what are merely these primitive only modified characters from those that are truly temperamental. (c) A type bred and selected for generations under one set of conditions frequently migrates to another set, and this leads to confusion of two different climatic and temperamental selections. (d) The same apparent characteristics have often different meanings in different stages of evolution. (e) Instability of the individual may be evolu- tional as well as devolutional, and diseases may attack advanced types because they are too far ahead of their surroundings, as well as those that are too low. Disease is not therefore an accurate index of faulty organisation. (f) A further difficulty in reading correctly temperamental features is due to the fact that marriage of individuals unsuited to each other's mental development tends to debase characters that would otherwise not be debased. Hence a strong face with the form that should be associated with higher living is frequently found in objectionable home surroundings which seem to contradict the temperamental peculiarities. In spite, however, of these difficulties, certain conclusions seem to be formulable : (1) That in Europe a tall, fair-complexioned, blue-eyed type, most frequently long-headed, with 122 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION big limbs, large hands and feet, and large lower jaw, with many resemblances to giant and acromegalic individuals, has been associated mostly with cold, mountainous, and northern parts of the Continent. (2) That a darker-complexioned, shorter form has been found mainly in warmer and more southern regions. (3) That both of these types appear to be under- going modification by the advancing conditions of civilisation. (4) That the characteristics of the evolution of sexual temperaments has to be considered in relation to the three other groups of features. William Bipley, in his ' Races of Europe,' gives very strong reasons for assuming that the European races have originated from Ethiopian and Mongoloid sources, of which the former was probably the more primitive. The fact that in idiots these two types have been specially noticed is strong evidence in support of his view. He further puts forward the hypothesis that the original European type was short and dark-complexioned, and that the Teutonic race of Northern Europe may be merely a variety of this primitive long-headed type of the Stone Age, 'both its distinctive blondness and its remarkable stature having been acquired, in the relative isolation of Scandinavia, through the modifying influences of environment and of artificial selection.' However originating, it is clear that anthropo- logical data definitely afford support to the two contentions with which I commenced this chapter, and I considered the physiological evidence for this TEMPERAMENTS 123 at some length in the last, pointing out that wrong methods of study have been previously resorted to, and that the right path is to be found only through greater breadth in research, which will probably be based on the effect of glandular secretions in their influence on the tissue exchanges of the whole body. In the next chapter these considerations will be taken as the foundation principles upon which any sound temperament theory must be founded. 124 CHAPTEK IV TEMPEBAMENTS (continued) IN the last chapter I pointed out as one of the great difficulties which the consideration of this subject involves, that the faulty position of nearly all indi- viduals in the State, dependent upon the official disregard of real merit, leads to widespread confusion in the popular estimate of what qualities and powers are the real test of ability. As a result of these misapprehensions not only are persons of poor or average capacity found in responsible positions, but, what is more unfortunate, their commonplace utterances are looked upon as statements of real value, so that there is not only an untrue, dishonest official standard to be dis- regarded, but also an honest popular one. Let any individual consider carefully the signifi- cance of this fact. An absolutely incapable indi- vidual cannot, of course, hold any position, certainly not in England or Scotland, unless behind his in- capacity is the capacity of some nominal inferior. In the main the incapable are tending to be excluded from public posts, and they may, therefore, be left out of the problem. Provided, therefore, that the small minimum of mind power is present, any posi- TEMPERAMENTS 125 tion attainable in Great Britain is rendered incom- parably more easy of attainment if scum influence is procurable. On the other hand, almost the whole of the higher positions in life are closed to any who are not born in homes where at least a moderate competence is assured. Now, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that opportunity, even to the average man or woman, is almost essential to advancement in life; to the genius, unless possessed of unlimited fighting power, it is everything. Give a truly great mind a clerk's position, force him to sit obediently to a wealthy, natural inferior, and you stultify and degrade him. Give a medical man practising exactly as other medical men the opportunity of, and the necessity for, study which a staff appointment on a large teaching hospital requires, and in a few years he will know more of medicine and have had more experi- ence and have become more capable. Force the natural medical scientist into the hurry and fashion- enslaving circle of general practice, and he soon becomes as enslaved as his fellows, or perhaps even more so, only he will feel his practical inferiority and know his natural superiority to the day of his death. Hence the naturally capable grow with faulty life surroundings unnaturally incapable, while the naturally unfit grow, supported by unjust usages, unnaturally efficient, only the efficiency is always conservative and imitative in character and scarcely ever initiating. Now mark what this involves. In the recent 1 Eeports of the Mosely Industrial Commission,' 126 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION Mr. Mosely, in writing his prefatory remarks, makes the following observation: 'As a rule the British employer hardly knows his men, seldom leaves his office for the workshop, delegates the bulk of his authority to a foreman whose powers are arbitrary, and who, if any of the men under him show par- ticular initiative, immediately becomes jealous and fears he may be supplanted." The italics are mine, and I have quoted the above opinion not because it is original, because it is not, nor because it is true, though it undoubtedly is, but because it is the belief of a thoroughly sincere practical man, and it states in plain language par- ticularly what is of universal application. The fear of being supplanted is always the particular fear of the man who is relatively incapable. In the present unjust state of existence there are a large mass of discontented, and justly discontented, workers who know that the right man does not obtain the right place, and there are a few unjustly fortunate who knowing, but not openly confessing, their inferiority, subordinate the capable men by unreasonable and nationally detrimental tyrannies. The result cannot fail to be universal hypocrisy. Now, with these considerations in the mind, it is possible to return once more to the study of tem- perament and physiognomy. It is clear that, as the favoured scum type grows from the result of his position more capable and more hypocritical, and the unjustly treated geniuses and talented grow less capable and more embittered as they grow older, in a large number of cases physiognomical expression, TEMPERAMENTS 127 which is the result of life habits rather than innate power, will conflict with temperamental features, which are more permanent evidences of capacity. Hence the more permanent characteristics of the individual must be mainly considered in dealing with the existence of groups of individuals believed to be naturally fitted for certain ends. Now, in order to consider advanced forms, it is necessary to appreciate what are the more or less permanent primitive needs of individuals living under the conditions which the climates of Europe demand from them. What common features, if any, can be found which will harmonise with the modern anthro- pological and medical data which we have already considered ? From Anthropology we learn that the tall, fair type inhabits mainly Northern Europe, and that a shorter, darker, and stouter form is found mostly in the more southern parts. Further, from racial physiognomy the deductions to be drawn are : (1) that primitive races have usually large faces in proportion to size of heads ; (2) that less advanced peoples have mostly large squat features that are coarsely moulded ; (3) among the most sodden, drink-loving, and brutal men and women of our own races these characteristics are still to be seen. The old types must, therefore, have been heavy-featured and large-faced. Further evidence on these points will be con- sidered later. There would, therefore, appear to be existing among white races a tall, fair, long-limbed form, 128 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION and another short, dark, short-limbed, and it has already been seen that these two groups have many resemblances to the extreme giant and dwarf ab- normalities seen occasionally. On a priori grounds one would, as has been seen, expect that in the northern colder climates those individuals possessed of large lung power, to permit of rapid tissue exchange, and active excretory powers, to remove waste products, as well as great motor powers, for alertness in procuring food, would be predominant. In actual fact the Teuton has large muscular limbs and big lung power, is a big eater, and seems capable of standing extreme cold. Of course, beyond a health-responding limit one can understand that the largest supply of foods of a heat- liberating character would be barely sufficient to combat the rigorous climatic surroundings, height would under these conditions be a disadvantage, as adequate nourishment could not be obtained, and the short, dumpy Arctic inhabitants are, therefore, probably best fitted for their environment. But in Northern Europe the cold is, though severe, mainly such that it stimulates to activity. Exactly opposite conditions prevailing in the southern countries, one would expect a more slowly reacting type adapted, owing to the surrounding warmth and less need of heat-supplying foods, to less active life. A frugivorous and vegetable diet would probably supply sufficient food material to support life adequately, and as this class of food is more bulky and less nutritious, those individuals whose abdominal system was relatively well de- TEMPERAMENTS 129 veloped might be expected to survive ; and as the production of large quantities of bodily heat would be a disadvantage, smaller lungs supplying smaller quantities of oxygen would probably be better fitted for climatic requirements. As civilisation develops, climatic needs become less imperative in their demands on the individual because they can be more readily overcome by ap- pliances, hence primitive characters tend to become obliterated under higher life conditions. Now, broadly it is known that these climatic inferences are not merely hypothetical assumptions, but are conclusions that are supported by a study of racial characteristics. The Italian, Spanish, French, and Greek bear badly northern climates, and the Norwegian, British, and German are not so well adapted to warmer regions ; and I have already noted the fact that the southern peoples are darker, shorter, fatter (and this implies less active lung power) than the northern. Is there, therefore, a common primitive northern type existing and com- parable with a southern ? It must be here noticed that I am not contending for the existence of a race, or races, having these characters which actu- ally does, or did, inhabit these respective regions, but for individuals who if they tend to possess these temperamental peculiarities will live most readily in the regions corresponding to their powers. Northern Long-Limbed Type. Broadly speaking, it is tall, long-limbed, long-headed, and is found usually in colder climates. These features are all met with in an extreme form in the condition known K 130 ASPECTS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION as Gigantism, together with a long face in which the lower part, particularly the jaws, is well de- veloped relatively to middle and brow portions. In acromegaly similar features to those of gigantism are present, and although disease of one ductless gland is mostly present, there is reason for think- ing that the distinctive features are rather due to physiological excess of activity in this gland than to the disease, and that this pituitary body, as it has been named, has some definite causal relation to growth. In many of the oldest skulls and limb bones found in Northern Europe this same type of head and body repeats itself. If, therefore, we can class these features under one group, it is probable that large hands and feet (and these features are generally present in tall individuals of the present day), as well as long limbs, long face, and relatively large jaws with long head, are the normal associa- tions of a tall type. And if we judge from racial features it is also probably large-chested. This, with fairness of complexion, light-coloured hair and eyes, makes a nearly typical Saxon description. Maturity in this primitive form should be reached late. (Retardation, effects of cold.) Southern Form. Shorter, with relatively short limbs. 'In the majority of cases, particularly in Europe, a relatively broad head is accompanied by a round face, in which the breadth back of the cheek bones is considerable as comparable with the height from forehead to chin ' (Eipley, p. 39, ' Eaces of Europe ') ; and again (p. 123), ' From Northern Europe as we go south the nose portrays a marked TEMPEKAMENTS 181 tendency to become flattened and open at the wings.' The darker colouring and the stouter bodily forms thus complete the idea of a southern as contrasted with a northern European individual. Endeavouring to exclude characters which seem to be due to the effect of the influences of civilisa- tion, and bearing in mind that sexual divergences of form are a late rather than an early feature, two primitive types may be portrayed that have a dis- tinctive individuality. LONG-LIMBED NORTHERN (PRE-CIVILISED) (1) COLOUB CHAEACTEEISTICS. Complexion, ruddy, fair. Skin, coarse (primitive feature). Eyes, blue. Hair, wavy or straight more often the former golden or reddish. (2) FORM. Face, the whole physiognomy uni- formly coarsely fashioned (primitive feature), and head and face both long rather than broad ; cranium relatively small to face. Forehead, less than one- third of face, receding (primitive feature). Middle portion of face, about one-third, cheek-bones high and prominent, but not wide (northern feature). Nose, bridge well defined and large (northern feature). Jaws, more than one-third of face; very powerful (northern feature). Chin, absent or slight (primitive feature). 1 Lips, bright red, little curved (primitive feature), and not very thick (southern and tropical races generally thick fleshy features). ' Not well developed in lower races, and in the most primitive almost absent. (See Holden,