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 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
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 Cornell University Library 
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 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 M CM XII 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030238889 
 
BIOLOGICAL FACT 
 
 AND THE 
 
 STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 
 
 THE HERBERT SPENCER LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE EXAMINATION SCHOOLS 
 ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1912 
 
 BY 
 
 W. BATESON, M.A., F.R.S. 
 
 HONORARY FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 DIRECTOR OF THE JOHN INNES HORTICULTURAL INSTITUTION 
 
 OXFORD 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 M CM XII 
 
 W 
 
^ 
 
 "J 
 
 h 
 
 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK 
 
 TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 
 
BIOLOGICAL FACT AND THE 
 STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 
 
 There are signs that the civilized world is at length 
 awakening to the fact that the knowledge needed for 
 the right direction of social progress must be gained by 
 biological observation and experiment. Such a turn in 
 public opinion would, we may be sure, have been viewed 
 by Herbert Spencer with exceptional interest and 
 approval. The truth, so obvious to the naturalist, that 
 man is an animal, subject to the same physical laws of 
 development as other animals, is a doctrine he constantly 
 expounded, and perhaps his teaching did more than that 
 of any other philosopher towards helping men to see 
 themselves as they really are, stripped of the sanctity 
 with which superstition and ignorance have through all 
 ages invested the human species. 
 
 Spencer not only contributed that great service, but 
 I suppose that no one ever looked forward with serener 
 confidence or a fuller optimism to the consequences 
 which follow upon a recognition of these natural facts, 
 to the possibility of a further evolution of our species, 
 and to the certainty that by his own action the destiny 
 of man may be controlled. It is natural therefore that 
 in a lecture founded to commemorate his work we should 
 examine the possibilities of biological discovery as; 
 applied to the constitution and future of human society. 
 
 Many causes have combined to give prominence at 
 this moment to the biological aspects of Sociology. 
 There exists a general perception on the part of the 
 more intelligent that the present condition of the social 
 
4 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 structure in civilized states is one of extreme instability. 
 The apprehension that changes of exceptional magnitude 
 are impending is widely spread. In addition to these 
 indefinite sensations of uneasiness, the minds of obser- 
 vant persons are becoming keenly alive to the fact that 
 the unexampled changes in the conditions of human 
 life, made possible by the applications of science, are 
 likely to result in an alteration of the composition of the 
 population. Owing to the control which civilized com- 
 munities have acquired over the forces of nature the 
 average human life has been materially lengthened, and 
 we need no evidence beyond that of ordinary experience 
 to show that especially have the lives of those who are 
 \/ defective in mind or body been prolonged by application 
 of these new powers on their behalf. 
 
 A general acquaintance with the idea of Evolution, 
 in outline at least, has become universal. We are all 
 habituated to the notion that the form of a society, like 
 that of an individual, is a consequence of an evolutionary 
 process. To that process experimental interference on 
 an enormous scale is being applied, and it is inevitable 
 that the community at large should be asking, not without 
 anxiety, how far the outcome of these interferences with 
 what have usually been regarded as natural forces will 
 bring good or evil to the societies which attempt them. 
 Within the last few years, moreover, mankind has 
 suddenly begun to realize what heredity means. The 
 deliberate interferences hitherto contemplated by eco- 
 nomists have related to the distribution of wealth and 
 opportunities of many kinds, the regulation of supply 
 and demand, the creation or abolition of divers political 
 institutions, and other measures of similar character. 
 Though the effects of these devices are commonly 
 described as profound, such measures are indirect, and 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 5 
 
 to the mind of the naturalist most of them are essentially 
 superficial. Every legislative encouragement given to 
 one class and every repression of another has an effect 
 on the future of the race. Exerted over long periods of 
 time, these interferences must indeed influence the com- 
 position of a population ; but with knowledge of the full 
 meaning of the physiological process of heredity we 
 perceive that man has it in his power to operate upon 
 his species in a much more drastic way. In Spencer's 
 time and long before, this fact was obvious to all who 
 reflected on the matter. He himself in many passages 
 alludes to these possibilities. In 1873, for example, he 
 wrote : * 
 
 'If any one denies that children bear likenesses to 
 their progenitors in character and capacity — if he holds 
 that men whose parents and grandparents were habitual 
 criminals, have tendencies as good as those of men 
 whose parents and grandparents were industrious and 
 upright, he may consistently hold that it matters not 
 from what families in a society the successive generations 
 descend. He may think it just as well if the most active, 
 and capable, and prudent, and conscientious people die 
 without issue ; while many children are left by the reck- 
 less and dishonest. But whoever does not espouse so 
 insane a proposition must admit that social arrangements 
 which retard the multiplication of the mentally-best, and 
 facilitate the multiplication of the mentally- worst, must 
 be extremely injurious.' 
 
 In the period when these words were written practi- 
 cally nothing was known of heredity. Naturalists knew 
 that in general offspring resemble their parents more or 
 less, and that by selection for an indefinite number of 
 generations types could be fixed so as to breed approxi- 
 mately true. That there was a vast province of exact 
 
 1 The Study of Sociology, ed. 1908, p. 343. 
 
6 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 and readily ascertainable knowledge, fraught with im- 
 measurable practical consequence to mankind, hidden 
 behind the word heredity had occurred to scarcely a single 
 mind. 
 
 Many were perfectly aware of the importance of 
 heredity. All upholders of evolutionary doctrines, both 
 those who preceded Darwin and those who followed 
 him, were familiar with the fact that change of type came 
 about through the inheritance of modification. In many 
 admirable and striking works the late Francis Galton 
 had endeavoured to direct attention to the practical 
 significance of heredity. He had shown also that the 
 descent of characters could be partially expressed in 
 a system, which, though erroneous in fundamental con- 
 ception, still gives an approximately correct representa- 
 tion of several of the phenomena. 
 
 But the discovery of Mendelian analysis, though as 
 yet imperfectly developed, opens up a new world of 
 physiology. Expressed in the briefest possible way the 
 essence of the Mendelian principle is not difficult to 
 grasp. It may be conveyed in the statement that 
 organisms may be regarded as composed to a great 
 extent of separate factors, by virtue of which they pos- 
 sess their various characters or attributes. These factors 
 are detachable, and may be recombined in various ways. 
 It thus becomes possible to institute a factorial analysis 
 of an individual. 
 
 How far such analysis can be carried we do not yet 
 know, but we have the certainty that it extends far, and 
 ample indications that Eve should probably be right in 
 supposing that it covers most of the features, whether of 
 mind or body, which distinguish the various members 
 of a mixed population like that of which we form a part. 
 From such a representation we pass to the obvious con- 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 7 
 
 elusion that an individual parent is unable to pass on to 
 offspring a factor which he or she does not possess. 
 
 Just as various features or characteristics may be due 
 to the presence of the corresponding factor, so we have to 
 recognize that other attributes appear only in the absence 
 of certain factors. Moreover, since those individuals 
 only which are possessed of the factors can pass them 
 on to their offspring, so the offspring of those that are 
 destitute of these elements do not acquire them in sub- 
 sequent generations but continue to perpetuate the type 
 which exists by reason of the deficiency. You will 
 readily understand that in practice the analysis and 
 detection of these factors is a difficult matter. The 
 difficulty arises especially from the very important fact 
 that some of the ingredient-factors have the property of 
 inhibiting or masking the effects of other factors, and 
 that many features of bodily organization are due to the 
 combination and interaction of two or more ingredients, 
 which alone might be present without producing any 
 perceptible sign of their presence. Thus one flower 
 may be white, because it is lacking in the element 
 which produces colour; but another may be white 
 though it has everything needed to give it colour, 
 because it has in addition an element which suppresses 
 the pigmentation. Again, colour in some plants is due 
 to one factor, but in others it is developed only when 
 two independent complementary factors are present, and 
 either of these may be present alone in a flower which 
 is perfectly white. 
 
 Such rules have been demonstrated in operation for 
 an immense diversity of characteristics in both animals 
 and plants in great variety! It should be explicitly 
 stated, however, that in the case of the ordinary attributes 
 of normal men we have as yet unimpeachable evidence 
 
8 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 of the manifestation of this system of descent for one set 
 of characters only, namely the colour of the eyes. 
 
 There is nevertheless no reasonable doubt that the 
 extension to the normal attributes of man is one which 
 we are well entitled to make. For with the doubtful 
 exception of certain features of quantity, size, and num- 
 ber, no characters of animals and plants which have been 
 made subject to adequate experimental tests have hitherto 
 proved incapable of being represented as governed by 
 such a system. Moreover, if the evidence as to normal 
 characteristics of man is defective — which in view of the 
 extreme difficulty of applying accurate research to nor- 
 mal humanity is scarcely surprising — there is in respect 
 of numerous human abnormalities abundant evidence 
 that a factorial system of descent is followed. 
 
 To appreciate the full significance of these things one 
 must have practical experience of breeding. I wish it 
 were in my power to bring to the minds of such an 
 audience as this some part of the emotion which the 
 contemplation of this display of order can excite. 
 Imagine a greenhouse stage full of a miscellaneous col- 
 lection of varieties of some plant, such as the Chinese 
 Primula, with all theirvaried shapes of leaves and flowers. 
 Their colours also seem at first sight to range through 
 an endless series of tints of magenta, crimson, pink, and 
 blue. By appropriate treatment we have it in our power 
 to determine that in three generations at the most the 
 offspring of these plants, the generation in fact 'which 
 will then replace them and represent them, shall be 
 entirely of one type only, or of two types, or three types 
 in any required proportion. \By choosing which 
 parents shall leave offspring we can decide how the 
 species shall be represented on our stages with a certaintyV 
 almost as great as if the selection were made from plants 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 9 
 
 already grown. And similarly for fowls and many other 
 forms of life. Write Man for Primula or fowl, and the 
 stage of the world for that of the greenhouse, and I believe 
 that with a few generations of experimental br eeding 
 we should acquire the power similarly to determine how 
 the varieties of men should be represented in the 
 generations that succeed. 
 
 At a cattle-show I look at the splendid animals in their 
 pens, ranged breed by breed, and I look at the farmers 
 and the sight-seers passing by them in procession. They 
 too are of manifold types, men from all parts of the 
 country, often showing the characteristics of their race 
 plain and easy to recognize — big men, little men, men 
 who fill out or ' mature ' early, as they say in the meat- 
 market — spare men, that the farmers would call ' bad 
 doers ', tame men, vicious men, sharp and dull, dark and 
 fair — shepherds, stock-men, grooms, butchers, and sales- 
 men. ^Could they too be arranged breed by breed in 
 pens ?J A few most certainly could. (We might make a 
 pen of shepherds and we should not often put in a groom 
 by mistake.) Why could not all be sorted into breeds ? 
 The answer is obvious : because they are the offspring 
 of matings made almost at random — and for no more 
 recondite reason. 
 
 Many are disposed to imagine that the conditions of 
 life play a great part in producing the diversity of such 
 a mixed assemblage, but the more we learn of biological 
 fact the less do we find much evidential ground for that 
 opinion. The conditions of life provide opportunity for ^ 
 the development of characters, but they cannot increase 
 the original endowment. If the right opportunity be. 
 withheld the characteristic does not appear. If the 
 stout man had been starved from his birth, obviously his 
 disposition to stoutness might have remained unknown ; 
 
 B 
 
io BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 but the spare man, like the razor-back pigs of the Southern 
 States, will not fatten though he take five meals a day. 
 And so for qualities that may be regarded as more subtle. 
 A muscat grape will produce its aromatic flavour if it 
 have sun and a suitable soil, — the pretentious Gros 
 Colmar, with its fruits half as large again, is not worth 
 eating, though it be fostered with all the gardener's skill. 
 These qualities are, as we say, genetic, given to the 
 creature at its birth, brought into it on fertilization by 
 one, or by the other, or by both of the cells which united 
 to produce it. That the conclusions to which experi- 
 mental studies of animals and plants have led us apply 
 also on the whole to the descent of human faculty can 
 be doubted by no one who has studied the evidence. 
 
 If any one is not already convinced he should refer 
 to the accumulated proofs which Galton so successfully 
 collected, especially in Heredit ary Genius. Let him study 
 any biographical records of human achievement or con- 
 duct — such as a dictionary of painters or of musicians — 
 and observe the perpetual recurrence of the same names 
 in groups of two, three, or more ; or the geographical 
 distribution of illegitimacy, showing as it does the main- 
 tenance of ' local custom ' and morals under divers 
 conditions of occupation, soil, and climate ; or the pedi- 
 grees collected in medical literature showing the descent 
 of disease ; or if he look no further than the(distribution 
 of qualities among the families known to himself he 
 will be forced to the admission that, though the circum- 
 stances among which a man is born or thrust have some 
 influence in the development and direction of his powers] 
 yet the total contribution which circumstance makes 
 to achievement is of that subordinate kind which is 
 adequately described by the word ' opportunity '. 
 
 Men do not gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ; 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY n 
 
 and what is so clear for the budding branches of the 
 plant would be no less obviously true of the branching 
 generations of our species, were it not for the fact that 
 we each of us come from the union of two cells derived 
 from two parents. The fact that we arise by this sexual 
 process throws, however, but a thin veil of obscurity over 
 the laws of descent, and it is interesting to notice that 
 if only human or any other pedigree-tables had been 
 arranged to be read downwards instead of upwards, the 
 essential fact of Mendelian segregation must have been 
 long ago discovered in regard to many characteristics. 
 Genealogists have been accustomed to make a table of 
 descent as a fan, with its apex in the individual whose 
 origin they wish to display and its base widening as far 
 as possible into the ancestry, the parental stock of each 
 ancestor being represented by a pair. But to show how 
 a character really descends we require the table con- 
 structed with its apex in one original individual who 
 possessed the character, and from that apex to exhibit 
 the devolution of that character among the diverging 
 branches of his posterity. As the usual purpose of the 
 genealogist has been to contribute either to political 
 history or to family pride, rather than to natural know- 
 ledge, his mind has consequently been set on a demon- 
 stration rather of the origin and antiquity of his hero's 
 qualities than of their distribution or absence among the 
 collaterals. 
 
 I do not propose on this occasion to adduce facts 
 in support of the general proposition that human genetic 
 physiology follows in the main systems similar to those 
 discovered in animals, but rather, assuming that this 
 truth is admitted, to examine some phenomena of social 
 physiology as they appear in the light of this know- 
 ledge. 
 
12 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 May I clear myself at once of a possible misunder- 
 standing? You will think, perhaps, that I am about 
 to advocate interference by the State, or by public 
 opinion, with the ordinary practices and habits of our 
 society. There may be some who think that the English 
 would be happier if their marriages were arranged at 
 Westminster instead of, as hitherto, in Heaven. I am 
 not of that opinion, nor can I suppose that the constructive 
 proposals even of the less-advanced Eugenists would be 
 seriously supported by any one who realized how slender 
 is our present knowledge of the details of the genetic 
 processes in their application to man. Before science 
 can claim to have any positive guidance to offer, numbers 
 of untouched problems must be solved. We need first 
 some outline of an analysis of human characters, to know 
 which are due to the presence of positive factors and 
 which are due to their absence; how and in respect 
 of what qualities the still mysterious phenomenon of sex 
 causes departures from the simpler rules of descent, 
 and many other data which will occur readily enough 
 to those who are familiar with these inquiries. It is 
 almost certain, for instance, that some qualities are trans- 
 mitted differently according as they are possessed by the 
 mother or by the father, and it is by no means improbable 
 that various forms of conspicuous talent are among their 
 number. It should be borne in mind that we do not yet 
 know even which females among mankind correspond to 
 which males. In man sexual differentiation is generally 
 strongly marked. The case is almost like that of poultry. 
 If a breeder ignorant of the breeds of poultry were asked 
 to sort a miscellaneous assemblage of cocks and hens 
 into pairs according to breed, he would often be quite at 
 a loss to know what a given male type looked like when 
 represented in a hen, and conversely. He would thus 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 13 
 
 make many mistakes even when dealing with pure 
 breeds; and in man, as individuals pure-bred in any 
 respect are very rare, the operation would be far more 
 difficult. For these and other reasons I am entirely 
 opposed to the views of those who would subsidize the 
 families of parents passed as unexceptionable. Galton, 
 I know, contemplated some such possibility ; but if we 
 picture to ourselves the kind of persons who would 
 infallibly be chosen as examples of ' civic worth ' — the 
 term lately used to denote their virtues^the-prospect is 
 not very attractive. We need not for the present fear 
 any scarcity of that class, and I think we may be content 
 to postpone schemes for their multiplication. 
 
 As regards practical interference there is neverthe- 
 less one perfectly clear line of action which we may be 
 agreed to take — the segFegati6rro"f The hopelessly unfit. 
 I need not argue, this point. When it is' realized that 
 two parents, both of gravely defective or feeble mind, in 
 the usual acceptance of that term, do not have any 
 normal children at all, save perhaps in some very rare 
 cases, and that the offspring of even one such parent 
 mated to a normal generally contain a proportion of 
 defectives, 1 no one can doubt that the right and most 
 humane policy is to restrain them from breeding, and 
 I suppose the principle of the Act now before Parlia- 
 ment for the institution of such a policy will have general 
 approval. Under our present system the State exerts 
 
 1 From such pedigrees as I have seen I should nevertheless 
 hesitate to describe feeble-mindedness as a simple Mendelian 
 recessive. It is possibly due to an absence of some factor or 
 factors ; but there is strong evidence that the usual result of a 
 mating between normal and feeble-minded parents is a proportion 
 of feeble-minded children, and it is difficult to suppose that most 
 ostensibly normal persons are heterozygous in this respect. See 
 especially H. H. Goddard, Amer. Breeder's Magazine, 1910, i. 172. 
 
i 4 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 all the powers which science has developed for the 
 preservation of such persons from their birth, most 
 of whom would otherwise perish early. Brought to 
 maturity their destiny is not difficult to imagine. How- 
 ever ignorant we may be as to the several ingredients 
 which are required to compose a stable society, or of 
 the proportions in which they are severally desirable, 
 we are safe in preventing these^er^atures from repro- 
 ducing themselves. Some of the more advanced of the 
 American States are already going further, and even 
 such a representative of older ideas as the State of New 
 Jersey is, I am informed, introducing the practice of 
 sterilizing criminals of special classes. That appears to 
 me the very utmost length to which it is safe to extend 
 legislative interference of this kind, until social physio- 
 logy has been much more fully explored. 
 
 Beyond that if there is authority to go, it is not 
 drawn from genetic science. If a person who is born 
 with cataract, or develops cataract very early in child- 
 hood, has children, it is almost certain that half those 
 children will inherit the cataract, with varying degrees 
 of blindness. The prospect is more or less the same 
 for several other defects. Nevertheless, though from 
 these causes many remain grievous burdens to their 
 families, or to the public funds, and though they could 
 probably be eliminated after a few generations without 
 difficulty by legislative interference, that would be a very 
 dangerous course. They are not necessarily useless 
 persons, nor are their own lives necessarily miserable. 
 There are many healthy and active types which are 
 a far greater nuisance to their neighbours and reproduce 
 themselves with equal exactitude. Possibly, on a ballot, 
 few of us would be encouraged to perpetuate our like- 
 nesses! We all have grave defects, not least those 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 15 
 
 who contribute much to the happiness of the world. 
 The monogamous pigeons sitting on the barn roof 
 perhaps are scandalized at the polygamy of the fowls in 
 the yard. Such decadence, they hold, is disgusting and 
 should be stopped. The fowls no doubt would reply 
 that they may be polygamous and even polyandrous, 
 but as for decadence, they at least don't limit their 
 families to two. Such degeneracy is race-suicide and 
 they think it should be punished. And so the debate 
 might continue. 
 
 Seriously, let us remember that a polymorphic and mon- 
 grel population like ours descends from many tributary 
 streams. We are made of fragments of divers races, all 
 in their degree contributing their special aptitudes, their 
 special deficiencies, their particular virtues and vices, and 
 their multifarious notions otright- and wrong. Many of 
 us have, for instance, the monogamous instinct as strong 
 as pigeons, and many of both sexes have it no more 
 than fowls. Why should some be ambitious to make 
 all think or act alike ? It is much better that we should 
 be of many sorts, saints, nondescripts, and sinners. Pos- 
 terity is likely to discover that to eliminate sinners there 
 is only one way — that which St. Paul pointed to us 
 when he wrote that ' where no law is, there is no trans- 
 gression'. Science knows nothing of sin save by its 
 evil consequence. In all reverence she inverts the 
 ancient saying and proclaims that the sting of Sin is 
 Death. It is not the tyrannical and capricious interfer- 
 ence of a half-informed majority which can safely mould 
 or purify a population, but rather that simplification 
 of instinct for which we ever hope, which fuller know- 
 ledge alone can make possible. As science strengthens 
 our hold on nature, more and more will man be able 
 to annul the evil consequence of sin. Little by little 
 
16 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 the law will lapse into oblivion, and sins which it created 
 will be sins no more. 
 
 The great and noble work which genetic science can 
 do for humanity at the present time is to bring men to 
 take more true, more simple, and, if so inexact a word 
 can be used intelligibly, more natural views of them- 
 selves and of each other. With fuller knowledge of the 
 physiology of races, and of the intimate relation between 
 the physiological composition of the individual and his 
 vital possibilities, all the problems of social organization 
 show new aspects, and the vision is cleared of the 
 fancies with which subjective ingenuity has overlaid the 
 facts. How hard it is to realize the polymorphism of 
 man ! Think of the varieties which the word denotes, 
 merely in its application to one small society such as 
 ours, and of the natural, genetic distinctions which 
 differentiate us into types and strains— acrobats, actors, 
 artists, clergy, farmers, labourers, lawyers, mechanics, 
 musicians, poets, sailors, men of science, servants, 
 soldiers, and tradesmen. Think of the diversity of 
 their experience of life. How few of these could have 
 changed parts with each other. Many of these types 
 are, even in present conditions, almost differentiated into 
 distinct strains. In no wild species, not even among 
 the ants, so often quoted, do we find any polymorphism 
 approaching to this. I never cease to marvel that the 
 more divergent castes of civilized humanity are capable 
 of interbreeding and of producing fertile offspring from 
 their crosses. Nothing but this paradoxical fact prevents 
 us from regarding many classes even of Englishmen as 
 distinct species in the full sense of the term. In a 
 strident passage the acute Cobbett long ago expanded 
 this conclusion : 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 17 
 
 ' I am quite satisfied, that there are as many sorts of 
 men as there are of dogs. ... It cannot be education 
 alone that makes the amazing difference we see. 
 Besides, we see men of the very same rank and riclies 
 and education differing as widely as the pointer does 
 from the pug. The name, man, is common to all the 
 sorts, and hence arises very great mischief. What con- 
 fusion must there be in rural affairs, if there were no 
 names whereby to distinguish hounds, greyhounds, 
 pointers, spaniels, terriers, and sheep-dogs from each 
 other! And what pretty work, if, without regard to the 
 sorts of dogs, men were to attempt to employ them ! Yet 
 this is done in the case of men ! A man is always 
 a man ; and without the least regard as to the sort, they 
 are promiscuously placed in all kinds of situations. . . . 
 What would be said of the 'Squire who should take 
 a fox-hound out to find partridges for him to shoot at ? 
 Yet would this be more absurd than to set a man to 
 law-making who was manifestly formed for the express 
 purpose of sweeping the streets or digging out sewers?' 1 
 
 The problem which confronts the political philosopher 
 is to find a system by which these differentiated elements 
 may combine together to form a co-ordinated community, 
 while each el ement remains substan tially contented with 
 its lot. To discuss this mighty problem in itTfull scope 
 I have neither qualification nor desire. All that I can 
 venture to contribute are some reflections which must 
 come often to the minds of naturalists who contemplate 
 the facts. They may be familiar enough to those who 
 engage in the study of human affairs, but I have noticed 
 that among those natural divisions between the sorts of 
 men to which I just referred there are few more marked 
 than that which usually separates students of natural 
 knowledge from those who care nothing for it; and 
 with rare exception you will find that publicists of the 
 various denominations are almost always in this latter 
 
 1 W. Cobbett, Rural Rides, ed. 1853, p. 291. 
 C 
 
18 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 group. 1 Legislators, nevertheless, whether they know it 
 or not, are engaged in a practical experiment with living 
 things of a peculiarly intricate kind. 
 
 Many features of social phenomena evidently wear to 
 the legislator aspects entirely different from those which 
 they present to us. Lately, for example, the nation has 
 been debating the virtual abolition of the hereditary 
 Chamber— obviously a problem to the solution of which 
 biological data are essential. I did not see in the public 
 utterance of any statesman an allusion even to this aspect 
 of the matter. Yet such data are neither very difficult 
 to collect nor to interpret. 
 
 Let us think of the criminal law and consider how 
 a system can satisfy -the legislator which to the naturalist 
 is stupid and infamously cruel. Just now I spoke of the 
 polymorphism of mankind. No one trained in biology 
 is ignorant of that phenomenon. True we realize it 
 now as we never did before the study of heredity had 
 developed, and I doubt not that before many years 
 are past genetic research will have successfully repre- 
 sented the varying compositions of many at least of 
 the more aberrant types of men by irrefutable analysis. 
 If we have not yet these exact expressions, none of us 
 doubt they can be found. Yet ' in the sight of the law', 
 as the phrase goes, all men are equal ! Are they equal 
 
 1 Mr. Canning did not learn till late in life that tadpoles turn into 
 frogs, and thought that a schoolboy who gave him that information 
 was fooling him. Mr. Gladstone believed that twenty-eight was 
 the normal total for the human teeth. Portentous ignorance of 
 this kind is common among historians and legislators. In itself 
 perhaps a trifle, it is a symptom of detachment from the actual 
 world so complete as to disqualify a man from safely exercising 
 high functions of statesmanship, demanding, as they must, a dis- 
 cernment which can only come from wide knowledge of natural 
 fact. 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 19 
 
 in the sight of any one less blind than Justice ? We do / 
 not find them equal in the out-patient room, in the school, / 
 at the recruiting depot — why in the court of law? If! 
 a lawyer cares to know how criminal procedure looks to ' 
 biologists, let him read the sentence pronounced in 1 
 Erewhon 1 by the judge on the prisoner convicted 'of 
 the great crime of labouring under pulmonary consump- 
 tion '. After expressing the pain he felt at having to 
 pass a severe sentence on one who was yet young, and 
 had otherwise excellent prospects, he continued : 
 
 'You were convicted of aggravated bronchitis last 
 year : and I find that though you are now only twenty- 
 three years old, you have been imprisoned on no less 
 than fourteen occasions for illnesses of a more or less 
 hateful character ; in fact, it is not too much to say that 
 you have spent the greater part of your life in jail. It is 
 all very well of you to say that you came of unhealthy 
 parents, and had a severe accident in your childhood 
 which permanently undermined your constitution ; ex- 
 cuses such as these are the ordinary refuge of the 
 criminal ; but they cannot for one moment be listened to 
 by the ear of justice. I am not here to enter upon 
 curious metaphysical questions as to the origin of this 
 or that — questions to which there would be no end were 
 their introduction once tolerated, and which would result 
 in throwing the only guilt on the tissues of the primordial 
 cell, or on the elementary gases. ... I do not hesitate 
 therefore to sentence you to imprisonment, with hard 
 labour, for the rest of your miserable existence.' 
 
 A humane man— a lawyer too— after witnessing such 
 a scene, not in Erewhon but in London, said once to me 
 that he did think the judge might have noticed that 
 the prisoner's head was a different shape from anybody 
 else's in the court. The sickening cruelty of the courts 
 is, I am happy to think, abating somewhat, but there 
 will be no radical improvement until the functions of the 
 
 1 Erewhon, by Samuel Butler, 1872, p. 96. 
 
20 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 administrator of criminal justice are recognized as in the 
 main medical. The criminal may be and often is 
 hopeless; but if his case be one for treatment, let us 
 treat it with the only remedies capable of doing any 
 good. Give him occupation, distraction, change of 
 thoughts, if it be possible. These, and not solitary con- 
 finement, are the treatment we should prescribe for 
 ourselves when we fear temptation. 
 
 Take the two converse aspects of the question of 
 population. Infant mortality is conventionally regarded 
 by both statesmen and philanthropists as deplorable, 
 without further inquiry. 1 Do they consider from what 
 prospect most of these infants are delivered? Would 
 it be better that they should be preserved to fill the 
 workhouse infirmaries ? 
 
 Other public men profess indignation against the 
 practice, almost universal among the more intelligent 
 and more provident classes in civilized countries, of , 
 limiting their families to two or three children. Have/ 
 these patriots estimated what the pressure upon the/ 
 
 1 Such an infatuation does this idea become even with statistical 
 experts, that I find so careful a writer as Dr. Newsholme saying 
 without qualification ' that each member of the population, when 
 the balance between expense of subsistence and wages earned 
 through life is worked out, represents enormous wealth'. This 
 passage is introduced with the words ' It has been already pointed 
 out ' ; but even in the place where the subject is more fully treated 
 and Farr's calculations are given, the only reservation overtly 
 made is for the aged. Dr. Newsholme of course means that on an 
 average of the population there is a balance of profit, and on an 
 average of wage- earners a high profit, not that 'each member of 
 the population . . . represents enormous wealth '. Yet that section 
 of the population whose value is negative should be constantly and 
 explicitly mentioned ; for there is nothing to show that a reduction 
 in total population is incompatible with an equal or even greater 
 profit on the whole. (See Newsholme, A., Elements of Vital 
 Statistics, 1889, pp. 69 and 14.) 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 21 
 
 resources of the country would be if we mostly had six 
 to ten children, as our parents had? The naturalist/ 
 knows that a great part of the population of this country/ 
 ought not to exist at all under present conditions of 
 distribution. To add greatly to the number even of 
 the able and thrifty will not diminish the proportion of 
 the unfit or lighten the strain. What would be thought 
 of a breeder who tried to keep all his stock ? He wants 
 no more than he can do well; otherwise his stock 
 and he too will soon be ruined. The distinction which 
 Malthus drew between 'a redundant population and 
 one actually great ' is sound, biologically as well as in 
 economics. It is not the maximum number but the 
 optimum number, having regard to the means of dis- 
 tribution, that it should be the endeavour of social 
 organization to secure. To spread a layer of human 
 protoplasm of the greatest possible thickness over the 
 earth — the implied ambition of many publicists — in the 
 light of natural knowledge is seen to be reckless folly. 
 We need not more of the fit, but fewer of the unfit. 
 A high death-rate is often associated with a high birth- 
 rate, but happily a low birth-rate and a low death-rate 
 are quite compatible with each other. 
 
 In the gloom which shrouds the future of civilized 
 communities there is one fact which gives encouragement 
 and hope, the decline in the birth-rate, associated as it 
 now is with a decline in the death-rate also. 
 
 To most writers on these questions continual increase 
 of the population of a country is regarded as the normal 
 condition of things. This proposition is explicitly stated, 
 for example by Rumelin, 1 in one of the leading text- 
 
 1 '. . . so erscheint es nicht nur als empirische Tatsache sondern 
 als die Ordnung der Natur, dass die Geburten in jeder mensch- 
 lichen Gesellschaft einen Ueberschuss uber die Todesfelle ergeben, 
 
22 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 books. The naturalist knows, however, that such a 
 phenomenon can be but ephemeral. He is accustomed to 
 take longer views of the life of a species. In nature the 
 numbers of a species can only increase when it is taking 
 up fresh means of subsistence, in consequence of varia- 
 tion or otherwise. Parasites increase when they invade 
 a new host. The rabbits increased when they invaded 
 Australia, as did the sparrows in America. The popu- 
 lation of this country increased very slowly till the 
 latter half of the eighteenth century, when it began to 
 rise sharply, but it was in the first third of the nineteenth 
 century that the rate of increase became alarming, 
 culminating in the misery of the forties. 1 
 
 No one can doubt that the new means of subsistence 
 which made this rise in population possible was the 
 energy latent in the coal-fields. Nor have we to look 
 far for the variation which enabled man to begin thus 
 to devour the capital of the earth ; and I suppose the 
 coincidence of the first quick rise in population with the 
 activities of that remarkable mutation, James Watt, needs 
 
 somit die stetige Zunahme einer Bevolkerung als die Normale, der 
 Stillstand oder Riickgang stets als etwas Naturwidriges, als 
 eine krankhafte, durch ausserordentliche Umstande begrundete 
 Storung zu gelten hat.' Rumelin, in Schbnberg's Handb. Polit. 
 Oekon., 1890, i. 772. 
 
 1 Sir A. Alison, The Principles of Population, 1840, i. 520 : ' It is 
 in the midst of this prodigious manufacturing population that the 
 human race advances with alarming rapidity, and shoals of human 
 beings are ushered into the world without any adequate provision 
 existing for their comfortable maintenance. Such is the improvi- 
 dence, the recklessness, and the profligacy which characterize the 
 great bulk of the urban population in all the great cities of the 
 empire, that the rate of increase bears no proportion to the per- 
 manent demand for labour : but mankind go on multiplying, as in 
 the Irish hovels, with hardly any other limit than that arising from 
 the physical inability in the one sex to procreate, and in the other 
 to bear children.' 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 23 
 
 no special emphasis of interpretation. Sir William 
 Ramsay estimates that the coal of this country will be 
 exhausted in 175 years, and in his opinion it is in the 
 highest degree improbable that any comparable source 
 of energy will become available. 1 He limited his remarks 
 to this country ; but though there is no reliable means of 
 estimating the coal in the earth as a whole, it is probable 
 that within some period which is short as biology counts 
 time, our species will be once more limited to the energy- 
 income of the earth. We are in fact passing through 
 a phase which is quite exceptional in the history of 
 a species — exceptionally favourable if you will — and it is 
 in a decline in the birth-rate that the most promising 
 omen exists for the happiness of future generations. y 
 
 Professor Marshall, discussing not the consequences 
 of the exhaustion of coal, but another phase of the 
 population question, remarks : ' It remains true that 
 unless the checks on the growth of population in force 
 at the end of the nineteenth century are on the whole 
 increased (they are certain to change their form in places 
 that are as yet imperfectly civilized) it will be impossible 
 for the habjts^fjjjmfojrtjprevailing in Western Europe 
 to spread themselves over the whole world and maintain 
 themselves for many hundred years.' In a note to this 
 passage he estimates that if the present rate of increase 
 of human population continue till the year 2400 'the 
 population will then be 1,000 for every mile of fairly fertile 
 land : and so far as we can foresee now, the diet of 
 such a population must needs be in the main vegetarian \* 
 
 And now regarding the central problem of social 
 
 1 Presidential Address to British Association, Portsmouth, 191 1. 
 This estimate followed that of the Coal Commission in excluding 
 coal below 4,000 feet, which, if included, would prolong the period 
 for perhaps a century. 
 
 2 Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, third ed., 1895, p. 259. 
 
24 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 structure, the conditions of stability in the relations of 
 the human classes to each other and to the State, has 
 biological science any counsel of value to give ? Is there 
 any observation that naturalists have made, knowledge 
 acquired, or principles perceived in their study of the 
 manifold forms of life, which in this period of grave 
 anxiety they dare to offer as a contribution to political 
 philosophy ? Let us examine the physiological aspects 
 of that problem. Upon the data there is now an agree- 
 ment almost universal.(2Society consists of differentiated 
 elements, unlike in tastes, faculties, sex, health, and 
 ability of every kind. Some are strong, most are weak.J 
 If this complexity of civilization — the indispensable con- 
 dition of evolutionary progress — is to continue, such 
 differentiation, or some state approaching it, must be 
 preserved. How then, in an age when knowledge is 
 cheap and all know how the rest live, is any general 
 content to be secured ? Let us turn to the familiar 
 comparison in which the community is likened to an 
 organism with differentiated parts. The comparison is 
 as oldas Menenius Agrippa, or at least as Plutarch. 
 It was one, too, which Herbert Spencer especially de- 
 lighted to develop. Note next that to the biologist this 
 presentation of the phenomenon is not a mere analogy 
 but often a description of fact. The comparative anato- 
 mist cannot always draw a clear distinction between a 
 compound organism with differentiated parts and ar 
 social organism with differentiated members. 
 
 I lay stress on this aspect of the social problem be- 
 cause I have seen several times of late the claim put 
 forward that the teaching of biological science sanctions 
 a system of freest competition for the means of subsis- 
 \ tence between individuals, under which the fittest will 
 survive and the less fit tend to extinction. That may 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 25 
 
 conceivably be a true inference applicable to forms 
 which, like thrushes, live independent lives, but so 
 soon as social organization begins, the competition is 
 between societies and not between individuals. Just as | 
 the body needs its humbler organs, so a community 
 needs its lower grades, and just as the body decays if 
 even the humblest organs starve, so it is necessary for 
 society adequately to ensure the maintenance of all its 
 constituent members so long as they are contributing to 
 its support. The simple hydroids, such as Tubularia, 
 live alone, and no doubt compete freely against each 
 other ; but hydroids which remain united as compound 
 forms have to let the food circulate among those de- 
 graded components which never even develop mouths, 
 and all their lives function as tentacles. A body all 
 muscle would be as helpless as a nation of Sandows ; 
 nor would a nation of Newtons live much longer than 
 a brain removed from the skull. 
 
 From these considerations we may draw a conclusion 
 that some elements of the doctrines vaguely described 
 as socialism are consistent with, and indeed are essential 
 to, stability. Society would do well to restrain competi- 
 tion between its parts so far as to ensure proper food 
 and leisure for the lower grades of producers. How that 
 restraint is to be effected is a question for the practical 
 economist. Some such measures of restraint we have 
 already enacted : on the whole with good results. 
 Spencer, as every one knows, protested with vehemence 
 against this legislation, but I have never been able to 
 comprehend the biological grounds on which he based 
 his protest. For if society is in reality an organism, 
 society must apply restraints on the undue growth of its 
 parts analogous to that co-ordinating mechanism which 
 controls the growth of organs in the body. 
 
26 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 Apart also from actual restraint by civil authority, there 
 is happily hope of some effective restraint by change in 
 public feeling. 
 
 Formerly, cruelty to domesticated animals was de- 
 fended on the principle that 'a man may do what he 
 likes with his own'. Civilized humanity no longer 
 recognizes that defence ; and slowly, even in our deal- 
 ings with the weaker members of our own species, that 
 change in public feeling has begun to act in restraint of 
 oppression. 
 
 Motive for individual exertion must nevertheless be 
 preserved. It could be dispensed with only in a com- 
 munity in which the component members were in com- 
 plete co-ordination, as the organs of the healthy body are. 
 The only instinct in our race which is sufficiently 
 universal to supply this motive is the desire to accumu- 
 late property, generally as a provision for offspring. 
 Other instincts, such as emulation, the altruistic emotions, 
 or the mere love of activity, may all be strongly developed 
 in some, but they are permanent in very few individuals. 
 They are apt to weaken after adolescence, and to dis- 
 appear as middle age supervenes. But for the institution 
 of property the fibre of the whole community, as at pre- 
 sent physiologically constituted, would slacken, and decay 
 must immediately begin. Yet, admitting the principle 
 that if life held no prizes no one would compete, might 
 we not prohibit prizes of such magnitude as to jeopar- 
 dize the stability of the community ? To fix an upper 
 limit on accumulation would not greatly discourage 
 effort, for people will play hard, though the stakes be 
 limited. 
 
 Socialism is a state that Nature knows well and has 
 sometimes approved. Yet consider how this approval 
 has been won, Hive bees, for example, are socialists : 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 27 
 
 the individual worker amasses no property for herself. 
 They defend their hive. Every individual bee that 
 stings you dies in a few hours. But the success of this 
 socialism is founded in the instinctive, almost reflex, 
 devotion of the bees. 
 
 Among us we have individuals who develop such feel- 
 ings for a few years in early youth, and lose them later. 
 A few possess these instincts all their lives. They 
 sacrifice themselves, and but too often others also in 
 their course. Such casual devotion is no base on which 
 to form a social system. All permanent and stable 
 change of institutions is founded in the physiological 
 variation of instinct. In mankind we know a mysterious 
 variation which we call change in fashion or in public 
 opinion. It is to such a variation that constructive 
 socialism must look for its foundation. This is but a 
 slender hope; for that 'public opinion' must take the 
 form of an instinctive, mystic devotion to society, not 
 merely a passion to enjoy the fruits of other men's 
 labour. Of socialistic public opinion in that fuller sense 
 we see few signs. 
 
 Observe, too, how even the bees behave under sore 
 temptation. Those who have witnessed the phenome- 
 non of ' robbing ' are not likely to forget the experience. 
 If in August or September, when the honey-flow is 
 failing, the bee-keeper drops a comb near his apiary, he 
 knows what to expect. The bees find this honey unde- 
 fended, easy to seize. They become instantly demoral- 
 ized. They fight for it at random, stinging and tearing 
 each other to pieces. They charge promiscuously into 
 their neighbours' hives and indescribable pandemonium 
 begins. After such a scene the ground is littered with 
 dead bees in hundreds, and in the bottom of a hive 
 I have seen a layer of bodies an inch or more thick. 
 
28 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 Such is the instability of instinct even in the great 
 prototype of socialism, and can we hope that the sight 
 of undefended property would not similarly, in time of 
 scarcity, upset the stability of a socialist State ? 
 
 But there is still another side to the problem. If 
 nature gives some clear guidance as to the distribution 
 of the means of life, her teaching is even clearer as to 
 the distribution of political power. Socialistic she may 
 sometimes be, but democratic she is not. Turn once 
 more to the physiological facts. 'All men are equal', 
 say certain philosophers. ' That is not true ', replies 
 the naturalist. ' Proceed, then, as if it were ', urges the 
 statesman, and upon that course we have started. 
 Founded in natural falsehood, the principle of equal 
 rights is at length bearing fruits inevitable, though long 
 deferred. The gift of equal power did not at first disturb 
 the stability of society. Even the able seldom receive a 
 new idea after they are grown up ; for the foolish mass 
 that process is then impossible. 1 A generation passes 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer, in many of his strictures on the failure of 
 legislation to achieve its avowed object, makes far too little allow- 
 ance for the long latent period which often elapses before results 
 appear. Commenting on the fact that laws rarely produce as much 
 direct effect as was expected, and always produce indirect effects 
 (which is all perfectly true), he proceeds to the following illustra- 
 tion, which at the present date reads somewhat naively: 'It is 
 so even with fundamental changes : witness the two we have seen 
 in the constitution of our House of Commons. Both advocates 
 and opponents of the first Reform Bill anticipated that the middle 
 classes would select as representatives many of their own body. 
 But both were wrong. The class-quality of the House of Commons 
 remained very much what it was before. While, however, the 
 immediate and special result looked for did not appear, there were 
 vaster remote and general results, foreseen by no one. So, too, with 
 the recent change. We had eloquently-uttered warnings that 
 delegates from the working-classes would swamp the House of 
 Commons ; and nearly every one expected that, at any rate, a sprink- 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 1^ 
 
 and their children, who learnt of it when young, become 
 aware of the new power, with the consequences we are 
 about to witness. 
 
 Of abstract rights, biology knows little: of equal 
 rights, nothing. Philosophers have conceived men born 
 with rights as they are with livers or with spleens. 
 Perhaps they are ; but since all those birthrights which 
 can be expressed in terms of health or powers of mind 
 or body are unequal, we find it difficult to suppose that 
 there is some other kind of rights which we possess 
 equally. Some would reply that equal opportunity is the 
 right of all. But what use is equal opportunity to those 
 who cannot use the opportunity equally ? Either we 
 must waste our strength in creating opportunities for 
 those who cannot profit by them, or by aiming at the 
 lower grades of mankind we deny to the rest the only 
 opportunities which will enable them to develop. 
 
 All these familiar ideas will acquire new meaning in 
 
 ling of working-class members would be chosen. Again all were 
 wrong.' The Study of Sociology, ed. 1908, p. 270. 
 
 So again he speaks with great contempt of the legislative efforts 
 to suppress diseases among cattle, which (partly no doubt by the 
 development of greater physiological knowledge) have now been 
 very effective in most cases, and completely successful in many. 
 In 1873 he wrote (The Study of Sociology, p. 164) : ' Since 1848 there, 
 have been seven Acts of Parliament bearing the general titles of 
 Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts. Measures to " stamp out ", as 
 the phrase goes, this or that disease have been called for as im- 
 perative. Measures have been passed, and then, expectation not 
 having been fulfilled, amended measures have been passed, and 
 then re-amended measures ; so that of late no session has gone by 
 without a bill to cure evils which previous bills tried to cure, but 
 did not. Notwithstanding the keen interest felt by the ruling classes 
 in the success of these measures, they have succeeded so ill, that 
 the " foot-and-mouth disease " has not been " stamped out ", has 
 not even been kept in check, but during the past year has spread 
 alarmingly in various parts of the kingdom.' 
 
 d 3 
 
30 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 the light of the new knowledge of the definite composi- 
 tion of individuals ; and it would be well, perhaps, if 
 those who are now contemplating a great extension of 
 equal political power to still lower grades of our popula- 
 tion would consider how such a proposal reads when 
 translated into physiological terms. 
 
 The political reformer claims to raise the standard of 
 a population by thus providing opportunity in amelio- 
 rating the conditions of life, and it is worth noting the 
 sense in which his claim is physiologically justified. 
 The gardener by p'jdcking out his seedlings gives them 
 a chance of developing. Left crowded in the seed-pan, 
 none, or very few, will become decent plants. The few 
 successful, if there are any, may owe their success to 
 their special qualities, but more often than not it is 
 determined by mere accident of position near the tally, 
 or against the edge of the pan, where they get most 
 water or light. The botanist knows too that wild plants 
 growing in the competition of a turf or amongst brush- 
 wood are usually half-starved. Set out, clear of their 
 kind, or of weeds, many of them can grow to twice the 
 size. So with the crowded masses of humanity. They 
 may, so to speak, be ' potted on '. Given hygienic 
 conditions and better opportunities, they may develop 
 into decent specimens, but they will not turn into better 
 kinds. In the new countries the consequences of this 
 process of planting out can be seen on a very large 
 scale. The emigrants prosper. They are well fed. 
 Except in a few large cities slums do not exist. All can 
 develop ; and if we do not expect what the gardener 
 calls ' important novelties ' the result is admirable. 
 
 It is upon mutational novelties, definite favourable 
 variations, that all progress in civilization and in the 
 control of natural forces must depend. How will they 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 31 
 
 fare in a socialistic community ? What stimulus is left 
 to tempt them to exert their powers? In the born 
 discoverer the instinct to find out natural truth is a 
 strong passion, and those who have that feeling will 
 gratify it, just as the artist or the poet works when 
 rejected by the market ; but those who invent applica- 
 tions of discoveries are generally thinking of patent- 
 rights, and if none are to be had, they may take life more 
 easily. Is it not certain that all the forces of the community 
 will be invoked against men of extra power ? They will 
 be treated as a disturbing nuisance. The progress of 
 modification of a race composed of independent indivi- 
 duals can proceed by variation of individuals, but in a 
 community organized on the principle of equality — if it 
 can be imagined — an individual variation of any magni- 
 tude will be either without result or must produce 
 immediate disorganization and disruption. 
 
 The ideals therefore of socialism and of democracy 
 are incompatible with each other, and the incompati- 
 bility will appear when the period of destruction is over. 
 It is strange that the two words are so commonly asso- 
 ciated. ' Social democracy ' denotes not one ideal but 
 two. In order that the socialist community should 
 succeed it must have but one mind, as the bees apparently 
 have, not the uncoordinated resultant of all individual 
 minds, which is the ideal of democracy. Until these 
 two coincide, not occasionally only but in some perma- 
 nent fashion, destruction may proceed but construction 
 cannot begin. 
 
 The essential difference between the ideals of demo- 
 cracy and those which biological observation teaches 
 us to be sound, is this: democracy regards class dis- 
 tinction as evil; we perceive it to be essential. It is 
 the heterogeneity of modern man which has given him 
 
32 BIOLOGICAL FACT AND 
 
 his control of the forces of nature. The maintenance of 
 that heterogeneity, that differentiation of members, is a 
 condition of progress. The aim of social reform must 
 be not to abolish class, but to provide that each indi- 
 vidual shall so far as possible get into the right class and 
 stay there, and usually his children after him. Men rise 
 from below and fall from above, and the fact is sometimes 
 appealed to as evidence that such vicissitudes are a 
 normal and wholesome phenomenon. The naturalist 
 sees that the convection currents to which such dis- 
 placements are due must indicate special kinds of 
 disturbance. These disturbances are mainly due to 
 interbreeding between the social grades, and between 
 sections of the population formerly isolated. Such rapid 
 social diffusion must mean either that much original varia- 
 tion is happening, or that extraordinary changes are affect- 
 ing the conditions of life. There is no doubt that in the 
 case of our own age both phenomena can be recognized, 
 but the human variations in mental power are the primary 
 factor, and they have created the disturbance in the condi- 
 tions of life. Just as the numbers of the population tend 
 always to reach an equilibrium in which births balance 
 deaths, so do the differentiated elements of the population 
 tend always to find their particular level, near which they 
 would stop till the mass is again disturbed. 
 
 The fact that families or individuals rose into promi- 
 nence or dropped into obscurity when the great industrial 
 development of this country began, does not prove that 
 the strains from which they came ought previously and 
 in differing circumstances to have been in different 
 relative positions. In various circumstances various 
 qualities are required for success. It would be useful 
 to illustrate this by actual examples discussed from the 
 biological standpoint, but it will be sufficient to say that 
 
THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 33 
 
 as we have come to recognize that evolutionary change 
 proceeds not by fluctuations in the characters of the 
 mass, but by the predominance of sporadic and special 
 strains possessing definite characteristics, so in a society 
 may previously existing types find their opportunity in 
 the supervention of new social conditions. 
 
 When King David said, ' I have been young, and now 
 am old : and yet saw I never the righteous forsaken, nor 
 his seed begging their bread ', thus asserting the per- 
 manence and heritability of success, he is thought by 
 some to show himself singularly inobservant. But I 
 doubt whether in the Middle Ages or in any other 
 epoch when conditions were comparatively uniform 
 over long periods of time, he would have been regarded 
 as saying anything contrary to general experience. 
 
 However that may be, he is declaring what ought to be 
 true in an ideal State. We have abolished the Middle 
 Age conception of the State as composed of classes per- 
 manently graded, with the ladder of lords rising from 
 the minuti homines below to the king on his throne, and 
 yet to such stratification, after each successive disturb- 
 ance, society tends to return. 
 
 But those minuti homines, how are they to be con- 
 tented, for is it not the duty and the desire of all to 
 content them ? The first and greatest step towards such 
 contentment is taken when the grades find their right 
 places. At such a time as the present much of the 
 intensity of discontent is due to the fact that some are 
 at the bottom who should be higher, while some are 
 high who should be lower. For time is of the essence 
 of the proces s; and two generations have scarcely 
 passed since the great changes began. Then, strange 
 as it may seem, content is not so very rare after all. 
 There is a discontent which is caused not because 
 
34 THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY 
 
 something is withheld from us, but because we know 
 our own inferiority ; for that there is no cure. Decent 
 food and lodging, however, go far to satisfy minuti 
 homines in general. Very early most of us accept the 
 truth of Schumann's aphorism, that if every one were 
 determined to play first fiddle no orchestra could be got 
 together. 
 
 As a boy in Cambridge I learnt that if a man got a 
 first class he might be happy ; if he got a second class 
 he would be unhappy ; if he got a third class, nothing 
 but misery and a colonial life awaited him. When we 
 grow older we unlearn these simple propositions, and we 
 find that happiness is in many cases compatible with 
 weekly wages and even with a pass degree. Some will 
 have more than others. As in the body the heart is 
 arranged so that the best blood goes to the head, so 
 must and ought it to be with society. 
 
 Whatever is doubtful, this much I think is certain, 
 that we are fast nearing one of those great secular 
 changes through which history occasionally passes. 
 The present social order is too unstable to last much 
 longer, and he must be callous who greatly desires that 
 it should. What will emerge from the approaching 
 histolysis no one can predict. Let us hope, something 
 better : and to this end may those upon whom devolves 
 the duty of rearing that new organism, which is to 
 grow from the dissolved tissues of society, be guided in 
 their treatment, like physicians of the modern age, not 
 by nostrum merely, but by the facts of natural physiology. 
 
OXFORD : HORACE HART, M.A. 
 PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY