Alfred Russel Wallace

“ I have proved that human nature is not in itself such a complete failure as our modern eugenists seem to suppose, but that it is influenced by fundamental laws which under reasonably just and equal economic conditions will automatically abolish all these evils.
In the second place, I have shown that the dread of over-population as the result of the abolition of poverty is wholly and utterly fallacious—a mere bugbear created by ignorance of natural laws and of presumption in thinking that we can cure social evils while leaving the man-made causes which produce them unaltered. ”

“ Who has murdered the 100,000 children who die annually before they are one year old? Who has robbed the millions that just survive of all that makes childhood [50] happy—pure food, fresh air, play, rest, sleep, and proper nurture and teaching? Again we must answer, our Parliament, which occupies itself with anything rather than the immediate saving of human life and abolishing widespread human misery, the whole of which is remediable. And all for fear of offending the rich and powerful by some diminution of their ever-increasing accumulations of wealth. ”

“ Taking account of these various groups of undoubted facts, many of which are so gross, so terrible, that they cannot be overstated, it is not too much to say that our whole system of society is rotten from top to bottom, and the Social Environment as a whole, in relation to our possibilities and our claims, is the worst that the world has ever seen. ”

“ If we glance through the past history of mankind we see an almost unbroken succession of aggression and combat between the various races, nations, and tribes. We can dimly see that this continual struggle did lead to a rather severe process of selection, as in the lower animal world. It can hardly be doubted that as a result of these struggles the strongest physically, the most ingenious in the use of weapons, and the best organised for war did survive, and that the weaker and lower were either exterminated or kept as slaves by the conquerors. ”

“ That purpose seems to have been the development of a life-world culminating in Man—a being capable of studying, and enjoying, and to some extent comprehending, the vast universe around him, from the microscopic life in almost every drop of water to the whirling nebulæ of the glittering star-depths extending to almost unimaginable distances around him. ”

“ We see, then, that the whole commercial fabric of our country—our immense mills and factories, our vast exports and imports, our home trade, wholesale and retail, and innumerable transactions in our Stock Exchanges—is permeated with various forms of dishonesty, gambling, and direct robbery of individuals or of the public. No class is wholly free from it, and it increases in volume from decade to decade, just as our boasted commerce and accumulated wealth increases. ”

“ When we remember that many of these degrading laws and customs, oppressions, and punishments have extended down to our own times; that the terrible slave-trade and the equally terrible slavery have only been abolished within the memory of many of us; and that the system of wage-slavery, the distinction of classes, the gross inequality of the law, the overwork of our labouring millions, the immoral luxury and idleness of our upper-class thousands, while far more thousands die annually of want of the bare necessaries of life ”

“ In building up the sciences each of the early steps was the work of a genius. But now that there has been nearly a hundred centuries of discovery and specialisation by thousands or even millions of workers, that by means of writing and of the printing press every discovery is quickly made known, and that ever larger and larger numbers devote their lives to study, the rate of progress becomes quicker and quicker, till the total result is amazingly great. ”

“ Among the very rudest of modern savages the wounded or the sick are assisted, at least with food and shelter, and often in other ways, so that they recover under circumstances that to most of the higher animals would be fatal. Neither does less robust health or vigour, or even the loss of a limb or of eyesight, necessarily entail death. The less fit are therefore not eliminated as among all other animals; and we behold, for the first time in the history of the world, the great law of natural selection by the survival only of "the fittest" to some extent neutralised. ”

“ We might as well say that Newton's discovery of the laws of gravitation was worthless because its cause was not and has not yet been discovered; or that the undulatory theory of light and heat is worthless, because the origin of the ether, the thing that undulates, is not known. The beginnings of things can never be known; and, as Darwin well said, it is foolish to waste time in speculation about them. I think I have shown in my World of Life that infinite variability is a basic law of Nature, and have suggested its probable purpose. ”

“ Underneath the feet of the whole wage-earning class is the abyss of the Poor Law. I see before me a respectable family applying for relief. What do we do to them? We, the Government of England, break up the family. ”

“ Organic nature is indisputably one and indivisible. It has been developed throughout by means of the fundamental forces of life, of growth and reproduction, and the equally fundamental laws of variation, heredity, and enormous increase, resulting in a perpetual adaptation in form, structure, colour, and habits to the slowly changing environment. These forces and laws are universal in their action; they are demonstrably adequate to the production of the whole of the phenomena we are now discussing. ”

“ Our system is also one of monopoly by a few of all the means of existence: the land, without access to which no life is possible; and capital, or the results of stored-up labour, which is now in the possession of a limited number of capitalists and therefore is also a monopoly. The remedy is freedom of access to land and capital for all. ”

“ In my recent works, Man's Place in the Universe and The World of Life, the conclusion was forced upon me, that the scheme of the development of the universe of stars and nebulæ with which we are acquainted, and especially of our sun and solar system, was such as to furnish the exact conditions on our earth, and there only, which should allow of the origin and evolution of the organic world culminating in man. ”

“ How can it be possible to determine by legislation those relations of the sexes which shall be best alike for individuals and for the race, in a society in which a large proportion of our women are forced to work long hours daily for the barest subsistence, with an almost total absence of the rational pleasures of life, for the want of which thousands are driven into wholly uncongenial marriages in order to secure some amount of personal independence or physical well-being? ”

“ The vast fabric of our Foreign Trade in food, or the raw materials of our manufactures, is also used to support perhaps the greatest system of gambling the world has ever seen. The fluctuating prices of corn or cotton, of coal or mineral oil, of iron and other metals, in the great markets of the world, are used in two ways by a large community of gamblers, who not only do not require the goods they buy, but who never see nor possess them. ”

“ And is not the fact that the whole world has not become utterly degraded, and that anything good remains in our cruelly oppressed human nature, an overwhelming proof that such influences are not hereditary? ”

“ The great body of the more intelligent workers are determined to have Justice. They insist upon the abolition of monopolies of the forces of nature, and upon the gradual admission of all to equal opportunities for labour by free access to their native soil. Thus may be initiated the birth of a new era of peaceful reform and moral advancement. ”

“ In dealing with the great problems of organic development there is probably no department in which so much error and misconception prevails as on the nature and limitations of Heredity. These misconceptions not only pervade most popular writings on the subject of evolution, but even those of men of science and of specialists in biology, and they are the more important and dangerous because their promulgators are able to quote Herbert Spencer, and to a less extent Darwin, as holding similar views. ”

“ Wherever conditions were favourable to progress in art or science, time was needed for its full growth and development; while perpetual [122] war necessitated organisation and training against conquest or destruction. Even the cruelties and massacres by despotic rulers excited at last the uprising of the oppressed, and so developed the nobler attributes of patriotism, courage, and love of freedom. In the very worst of times there was an undercurrent of peaceful labour, art, and learning, slowly moulding nations towards a higher state of civilisation. ”

“ The ethics of Plato and of the great moralists of the Ciceronian epoch, together with those of Jesus and of His disciples and followers, kept alive the sacred flame of pure humanity, and their preservation constitutes perhaps the greatest service the monastic system rendered to the human race. ”

“ In order for man to develop speech he must have possessed a brain and an intellect far above that of the brutes. As in the more fundamental problem of the origin of life, it is admitted that organisation is a product of life—not life of organisation—so we must believe that speech was a product of a brain and an intellect sufficient for their development. But such brain and intellect were not necessary for the lower animals, which have reached their highest lines of development in the dog, horse, elephant, and ape without making any definite approach to the acquirement of such higher faculties. ”

“ Before entering on the question of the relation of morality to our existing social environment, it will be advisable to inquire what we mean by moral progress, and what evidence there is that any such progress has occurred in recent times, or even within the period of well-established history.
By morals we mean right conduct, not only in our immediate social relations, but also in our dealings with our fellow citizens and with the whole human race. ”

“ We see great conquerors and great material civilisations as a result of their accumulations of wealth and of slaves. Then, for a time, luxury and the arts flourished, and with them came rulers who encouraged degradation and vice at home, supported by more and more remote conquests. Then new conquerors arose, often lower in civilisation—barbarians, as they were termed—but higher in the simple domestic [113] virtues and a more natural life of productive labour. ”

“ Natural Selection as the Essential Factor in the Origin of Species
There are two great, universal, and very conspicuous characteristics of the whole organic world which, because they are so very common, were almost ignored before Darwin showed their importance. These are (1) the great variability in all common and widespread species, and (2) their enormous powers of increase.
The facts of variability are recorded in every book on Darwinism or on organic evolution, and it is only necessary here to appeal to the reader's own observation or to state a few illustrative facts. ”

“ Such are the evil products of the social environment we have ourselves created in the course of a single century. We have seen it going from bad to worse, and have applied petty remedies here and there during the whole period; but the evils have continued to increase. It has now become clear to the more intelligent of the workers that if we wish to improve it—if we wish to prevent it from getting even worse than it is—we must deal with [154] the root-causes of the evil and, so far as possible, reverse the conditions which are so demonstrably bad, such hideous failures. ”

“ There they remain, day after day, without ever going down the workhouse steps until they are old enough to go to the Poor Law school, or until they are taken down in their coffins, owing to the terrible mortality among the workhouse babies."
Of course, all workhouses are not so bad as this, but many are, and have been during the three-quarters of a century of their existence. Can we, therefore, wonder that week by week some poor and honest parents commit suicide rather than see their children starve, or be separated from them in the workhouse! ”

“ We see, then, that over by far the greater part of the whole world of life any modification of external structure, form, or colouring during the life of the individual is impossible; while in the remainder its action, if it [110] exists at all, is of very limited range. No adequate proof of the inheritance of the slight changes thus caused has ever yet been given, and it is therefore wholly unnecessary and illogical to assume its existence and to adduce it as having any part in the ever-active and universal process of evolution. ”

“ For our present purpose, however, Egyptian civilisation is the most important, because it presents us with the most definite proof of the attainment of a high degree of what is specially scientific attainment at the very dawn of historical knowledge. This is well exhibited by that most wonderful work of constructive art—the Great Pyramid of Gizeh—which, though not quite the earliest, is the largest and most remarkable of about seventy pyramids in various parts of Egypt, and has been more thoroughly explored and studied, both as to its proportions, construction and uses, than any of the others. ”

“ Owing perhaps to the tropical or sub-tropical climate, with marked wet and dry seasons, the oldest buildings that have survived, even as ruins, are less ancient than those of Greece or Rome—but those corresponding in age to the period of our Gothic cathedrals are immensely numerous, and show an originality of design, a wealth of ornament, and a perfection of workmanship equal to those of any other buildings in the world. ”

“ A more immediate and effective check to rapid increase of population will, however, be brought about by the social reforms already suggested. When poverty is abolished and neither economic nor social advantages will be gained by early marriage, there can be no doubt it will be generally deferred to a later age. Still more effective will be the extension of the period of education or training for the whole population for several years longer than at present, together with the growth of public opinion against all marriages between persons who have not yet begun the serious work of life. ”

“ Yet there is no effective protest against this unjust and absurd system, which absolutely denies all redress of wrongs to the poor man when oppressed by a rich one. One would think it self-evident that justice ceases to be justice when it has to be paid for. ”

“ But besides this lofty intellect, man is gifted with what we term a moral sense: an insistent perception of justice and injustice, of right and wrong, of order and beauty and truth, which as a whole constitute his moral and æsthetic nature, the origin and progress of which I have endeavoured to throw some light upon in the present volume. ”

“ Many people are alarmed at the statement that the effects of education and training are not hereditary, and think that if that were really the case there would be no hope of improvement of the race; but closer consideration will show them that if the results of our education in the widest sense, in the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the world at large, had really been hereditary, even in the slightest degree, then indeed there would be little hope for humanity ”

“ The mental faculties which go to form the "character" of each man or woman are very numerous, a large proportion of them being such as are required for the preservation of the individual and of the race, while others are pre-eminently social or ethical. These latter, which impel us to truth, to justice, and to benevolence, when in due proportion to all the other mental faculties, go to form what we distinguish as a good or moral character, and will in most cases result in actions which meet with the general approval of that section of society in which we live ”