Herbert Spencer

“ Ignoring their other aspects, we may class the factors which affect each race of organisms as forming two conflicting sets. On the one hand, by what we call natural death, by enemies, by lack of food, by atmospheric changes, &c., the race is constantly being destroyed. On the other hand, partly by the endurance, the strength, the swiftness, and the sagacity of its members, and partly by their fertility, it is constantly being maintained. These conflicting sets of factors may be generalized as—the forces destructive of race and the forces preservative of race. ”

“ Physiological differentiation and physiological integration, are correlatives that vary together. We have but to recollect the familiar parallel between the division of labour in a society and the physiological division of labour, to see that as fast as the kinds of work performed by the component parts of an organism become more numerous, and as fast as each part becomes more restricted to its own work, so fast must the parts have their actions combined in such ways that no one can go on without the rest and the rest cannot go on without each one. ”

“ We have already seen that the forces preservative of race are two—ability in each member of the race to preserve itself, and ability to produce other members—power to maintain individual life, and power to generate the species. These must vary inversely. When, from lowness of organization, the ability to contend with external dangers is small, there must be great fertility to compensate for the consequent mortality; otherwise the race must die out. When, on the contrary, high endowments give much capacity of self-preservation, a correspondingly low degree of fertility is requisite. ”

“ Chaque fois qu’il y a progenèse dans un type déterminé, on constate soit momentanément, soit d’une façon définitive, un arrêt de croissance et de développement: l’animal progénétique a, par suite, l’aspect d’une larve sexuée, lorsqu’on le compare soit à l’autre sexe, soit aux formes voisines, qui ne présentent pas le phénomène de la progenèse. ”

“ Thus the hypothesis of evolution prepares us for those two radical modifications of the cell-doctrine which the facts oblige us to make. It leads us to expect that as structureless portions of protoplasm must have preceded cells in the process of general evolution; so, in the special evolution of each higher organism, there will be an habitual production of cells out of structureless blastema. And it leads us to expect that though, generally, the physiological units composing a structureless blastema, will display their inherited proclivities by cell-development and metamorphosis ”

“ Impossible though it may be to imagine the natures of those ultimate units peculiar to each species, which have proclivities towards the particular form of organization characterizing it, yet that a change of structure arising in one part of the organism is accompanied by multitudinous changes of structure in other parts of the organism, is not only congruous with the belief that there exist such constitutional units, but yields it distinct support. ”

“ On the one hand, remembering the fact that during its centuries of life an Oak does not produce as many acorns as a Fungus does spores in a single night, we see that the Fungus has a fertility exceeding that of the Oak in a degree literally beyond our powers of calculation or imagination. ”

“ Though the intensity of its action is ever being mitigated in one direction by greater production of food, it is, in the other direction, ever being added to by the greater production of individuals. Manifestly, the wants of their redundant numbers constitute the only stimulus mankind have to obtain more necessaries of life. Were not the demand beyond the supply, there would be no motive to increase the supply. And manifestly, this excess of demand over supply is perennial: this pressure of population, of which it is the index, cannot be eluded. ”

“ Darwin has so admirably explained, give to the individuals of the species a kind of integration that makes possible a mutual aid in the production of vigorous offspring. And it is interesting to observe how, in that dimorphism by which in some cases this mutual aid is made more efficient, the greater degree of integration is dependent on the greater degree of differentiation—not simply differentiation of the fructifying organs from other parts of the plant bearing them, but differentiation of these fructifying organs from the homologous organs of neighbouring individuals of the same race. ”

“ Here we see the antagonism between growth and sexual genesis under both its aspects—see a struggle between self-evolution and race-evolution, in which the first for a time overcomes the last, and the last ultimately overcomes the first. The continued aggrandizement of the parent-individual makes abortive for two seasons the tendency to produce new individuals; and the tendency to produce new individuals, becoming more decided, stops any further aggrandizement of the parent individual. ”

“ It cannot but be that during the intercourse between an organism and its environment, equal forces acting under equal conditions must produce equal effects; for to say otherwise is, by implication, to say that some force can produce more or less than its equivalent effect, which is to deny the persistence of force. Hence those parts of an organism which are, by its habits of life, exposed to like amounts and like combinations of actions and reactions, must develop alike; while unlikenesses of development must as unavoidably follow unlikenesses among these agencies. ”

“ Thus far we have observed how, by their exceptionally-high evolution and exceptionally-low fertility, mankind display the inverse variation between Individuation and Genesis, in one of its extremes. And we have also observed how mankind, like other kinds, are functionally changed in their rates of multiplication by changes of conditions. But we have not observed how alteration of structure in Man entails alteration of fertility. The influence of this factor is so entangled with the influences of other factors which are for the present more potent, that we cannot recognize it. ”

“ Still more entangled are we among qualifying considerations when we contrast species in their powers of multiplication. The total cost of Genesis admits of even less definite estimation than does the total cost of Individuation. I do not refer merely to the truth that the degree of fertility depends on four factors—the age of commencing reproduction, the number in each brood, the frequency of the broods, and the time during which broods continue to be repeated. ”

“ But now suppose that the mass, instead of being inert, is the seat of active changes—suppose that it is a portion of complex colloidal substance, permeable by light and by fluids capable of affecting its unstable molecules—suppose that its interior is a source of forces continually liberated and diffusing themselves outwards. Is it not likely that while at the centre the action of the internally-liberated forces will dominate, and while at the surface the action of the environing forces will dominate, there will be between the two a certain place at which their actions balance? ”

“ There is first the universal fact that development of the germ begins when it is exposed to an incident force—heat—the undulations of which, increasing the oscillations of the mixed units, give them greater freedom to arrange themselves in conformity with their type. We see this alike when spring warmth makes a seed germinate and when the warmth of a sitting hen sets up organization in her eggs. Heat frees the molecules of inorganic matter from local restraints and, as we see in molten metal, lets them yield to other forces ”

“ Such a degree of modifiability becomes comprehensible only when we remember how little a plant’s functions are integrated, and how much, therefore, the functions going on in each part may be altered without having to overcome the momentum of the functions throughout the whole plant. But this modifiability being as great as it is, we can have no difficulty in understanding how, by the cumulative aid of natural selection, this primary differentiation of the surface in plants has become what we see it. ”

“ If, as we see, public opinion in many places and times becomes coercive enough to force men to fight duels, we can scarcely doubt that at a higher stage of evolution it may become so coercive as to prevent men from marrying improvidently. If the frowns of their fellows can make men commit immoral acts, surely they may make men refrain from immoral acts—especially when the actors themselves feel that the threatened frowns would be justified. Hence with a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior. ”

“ Whether a species of animal produces many offspring of which it takes no care or a few of which it takes much care—that is, whether its reproductive surplus is laid out wholly in germs or partly in germs and partly in labour on their behalf—must have been decided by that moulding of constitution to conditions slowly effected through the more frequent preservation of descendants from those whose reproductive habits were best adapted to the circumstances of the species. ”

“ The animal will be physiological richer. Part of its augmented wealth will go towards its own greater individuation—its size, or its strength, or both, will increase; while another part will go towards more active genesis. Just as a state of plethora directly produced enhances fertility; so will such a state indirectly produced.
In another way, the same thing must result from those additions to bulk or complexity or activity that are due to survival of the fittest. Any change which prolongs individual life will, other things remaining the same, further the production of offspring. ”

“ Consequently the crop, tolerably abundant in quantity though innutritive in quality, possibly suffices to meet the comparatively-low expenditure, and to leave a good surplus for genesis—perhaps a greater surplus than remains to the males and females of the English peasantry, who, though fed on better food, are harder worked.
We conclude, then, that in the human race, as in all other races, such absolute or relative abundance of nutriment as leaves a large excess after defraying the cost of carrying on parental life, is accompanied by a high rate of genesis. ”

“ Connexions of phenomena of a rare, distant, unobtrusive, or intricate kind, which we either suffer from or do not take advantage of, have to be responded to by new connexions of ideas, and acts properly combined and proportioned: there must be increase of knowledge, or skill, or power, or of all these. And to effect this more extensive, more varied, and more accurate, co-ordination of actions, there must be organization of still greater heterogeneity and definiteness. ”

“ The proposition at which we have thus arrived is, then, that excess of fertility, through the changes it is ever [529] working in Man’s environment, is itself the cause of Man’s further evolution; and the obvious corollary here to be drawn is, that Man’s further evolution so brought about, itself necessitates a decline in his fertility.
All future progress in civilization which the never-ceasing pressure of population must produce, will be accompanied by an enhanced cost of Individuation, both in structure and function; and more especially in nervous structure and function. ”

“ Arguing from general data, we saw that for the maintenance of a species, the ability to produce offspring must be great, in proportion as the ability of the individuals to contend with destroying forces is small; and conversely. Arguing from other general data, we saw that, derived as the self-sustaining and race-sustaining forces are from a common stock of force, it necessarily happens that, other things equal, increase of one involves decrease of the other. ”

“ If instead of imposing our ideal forms on Nature, we are content to generalize the facts as Nature presents them, we shall find no warrant for the morphological doctrine above enunciated. The only conception of type justified by the logic of science, is—that correlation of parts which remains constant under all modifications of the structure to be defined. To ascertain this, we must compare all these modifications, and note what traits are common to them. On doing so with the successive segments of a phænogamic axis, we are brought to a conclusion widely different from that of Goethe. ”

“ Thus, then, it is with the proximate parts of plants as it is with plants as wholes. The radial symmetry, the bilateral symmetry, and the asymmetry, which branches display in different trees, in different parts of the same tree, and at different stages of their own growths, prove to be all consequent on the ways in which they stand towards the entire plexus of surrounding actions. The principle that the growths are unequal in proportion as the relations of parts to the environment are unequal, serves to explain all the leading traits of structure. ”

“ Thus, on inquiring what is the morphological unit, whether of plants or of animals, we find that the facts refuse to be included in any rigid formula. The doctrine that all organisms are built up of cells, or that cells are the elements out of which every tissue is developed, is but approximately true. There are living forms of which cellular structure cannot be asserted; and in living forms that are for the most part cellular, there are nevertheless certain portions which are not produced by the metamorphosis of cells. ”

“ As fast as it assumes a function unlike the rest, each part of an animal modifies the blood in a way more or less unlike the rest, both by the materials it abstracts and by the products it adds; and hence the more differentiated the vascular system becomes, the more does it integrate all parts by making each of them feel the qualitative modification of the blood which every other has produced. ”

“ In the first place, natural selection is here described only as furthering direct adaptation—only as aiding progress by the preservation of individuals in whom functionally-produced modifications have gone on most favourably. In the second place, there is no trace of the idea that natural selection may by co-operation with the cause assigned, or with other causes, produce divergences of structure; and of course, in the absence of this idea, there is no implication that natural selection has anything to do with the origin of species. ”

“ Of course if the competition which increasing pressure of population entails, is prevented from acting on a considerable part of the community, such part, saved from the needed intellectual and moral stress, will not undergo any further mental development; and must ever tend to leave a posterity, and an increasing posterity, in which none of that higher individuation which checks genesis takes place. Such State-meddlings with the natural play of actions and reactions produce a further evil equally great or greater. ”