Part 21

The gregariousness of all our domestic species is, I think, the primary reason why some of them are extinct in a wild state. The wild herds would intermingle with the tame ones, some would become absorbed, the others would be killed by hunters, who used the tame cattle as a shelter to approach the wild. Besides this, comfort-loving animals would be less suited to fight the battle of life with the rest of the brute creation; and it is therefore to be expected that those varieties which are best fitted for domestication, would be the soonest extinguished in a wild state. For instance, we could hardly fancy the camel to endure in a land where there were large wild beasts.

_Selection_.--The irreclaimably wild members of every flock would escape and be utterly lost; the wilder of those that remained would assuredly be selected for slaughter, when ever it was necessary that one of the flock should be killed. The tamest cattle--those that seldom ran away, that kept the flock together and led them homewards--would be preserved alive longer than any of the others. It is therefore these that chiefly become the parents of stock, and bequeath their domestic aptitudes to the future herd. I have constantly witnessed this process of selection among the pastoral savages of South Africa. I believe it to be a very important one, on account of its rigour and its regularity. It must have existed from the earliest times, and have been in continuous operation, generation after generation, down to the present day.

_Exceptions_.--I have already mentioned the African elephant, the North American reindeer, and the apparent, but not real exception of the North American turkey. I should add the ducks and geese of North America, but I cannot consider them in the light of a very strong case, for a savage who constantly changes his home is not likely to carry aquatic birds along with him. Beyond these few, I know of no notable exceptions to my theory.

_Summary_.

I see no reason to suppose that the first domestication of any animal, except the elephant, implies a high civilisation among the people who established it. I cannot believe it to have been the result of a preconceived intention, followed by elaborate trials, to administer to the comfort of man. Neither can I think it arose from one successful effort made by an individual, who might thereby justly claim the title of benefactor to his race; but, on the contrary, that a vast number of half-unconscious attempts have been made throughout the course of ages, and that ultimately, by slow degrees, after many relapses, and continued selection, our several domestic breeds became firmly established.

I will briefly restate what appear to be the conditions under which wild animals may become domesticated:--1, they should be hardy; 2, they should have an inborn liking for man; 3, they should be comfort-loving; 4, they should be found useful to the savages; 5, they should breed freely; 6, they should be easy to tend. It would appear that every wild animal has had its chance of being domesticated, that those few which fulfilled the above conditions were domesticated long ago, but that the large remainder, who fail sometimes in only one small particular, are destined to perpetual wildness so long as their race continues. As civilisation extends they are doomed to be gradually destroyed off the face of the earth as useless consumers of cultivated produce. I infer that slight differences in natural dispositions of human races may in one case lead irresistibly to some particular career, and in another case may make that career an impossibility.

THE OBSERVED ORDER OF EVENTS.

There is nothing as yet observed in the order of events to make us doubt that the universe is bound together in space and time, as a single entity, and there is a concurrence of many observed facts to induce us to accept that view. We may, therefore, not unreasonably profess faith in a common and mysterious whole, and of the laborious advance, under many restrictions, of that infinitely small part of it which falls under our observation, but which is in itself enormously large, and behind which lies the awful mystery of the origin of all existence.

The conditions that direct the order of the whole of the living world around us, are marked by their persistence in improving the birthright of successive generations. They determine, at much cost of individual comfort, that each plant and animal shall, on the general average, be endowed at its birth with more suitable natural faculties than those of its representative in the preceding generation. They ensure, in short, that the inborn qualities of the terrestrial tenantry shall become steadily better adapted to their homes and to their mutual needs. This effect, be it understood, is not only favourable to the animals who live long enough to become parents, but is also favourable to those who perish in earlier life, because even they are on the whole better off during their brief career than if they had been born still less adapted to the conditions of their existence. If we summon before our imagination in a single mighty host, the whole number of living things from the earliest date at which terrestrial life can be deemed to have probably existed, to the latest future at which we may think it can probably continue, and if we cease to dwell on the miscarriages of individual lives or of single generations, we shall plainly perceive that the actual tenantry of the world progresses in a direction that may in some sense be described as the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

We also remark that while the motives by which individuals in the lowest stages are influenced are purely self regarding, they broaden as evolution goes on. The word "self" ceases to be wholly personal, and begins to include subjects of affection and interest, and these become increasingly numerous as intelligence and depth of character develop, and as civilisation extends. The sacrifice of the personal desire for repose to the performance of domestic and social duties is an everyday event with us, and other sacrifices of the smaller to the larger self are by no means uncommon. Life in general may be looked upon as a republic where the individuals are for the most part unconscious that while they are working for themselves they are also working for the public good.

We may freely confess ignorance of the outcome in the far future of that personal life to which we each cling passionately in the joyous morning of the affections, but which, as these and other interests fail, does not seem so eminently desirable in itself. We know that organic life can hardly be expected to flourish on this earth of ours for so long a time as it has already existed, because the sun will in all probability have lost too much of its heat and light by then, and will have begun to grow dark and therefore cold, as other stars have done. The conditions of existence here, which are now apparently in their prime, will have become rigorous and increasingly so, and there will be retrogression towards lower types, until the simplest form of life shall have wholly disappeared from the ice-bound surface. The whole living world will then have waxed and waned like an individual life.

Neither can we discover whether organisms here are capable of attaining the average development of organisms in other of the planets that are probably circling round most of the myriads of stars, whose physical constitution, where-ever it has as yet been observed spectroscopically, does not differ much from that of our sun. But we perceive around us a countless number of abortive seeds and germs; we find out of any group of a thousand men selected at random, some who are crippled, insane, idiotic, and otherwise born incurably imperfect in body or mind, and it is possible that this world may rank among other worlds as one of these.

We as yet understand nothing of the way in which our conscious selves are related to the separate lives of the billions of cells of which the body of each of us is composed. We only know that the cells form a vast nation, some members of which are always dying and others growing to supply their places, and that the continual sequence of these multitudes of little lives has its outcome in the larger and conscious life of the man as a whole. Our part in the universe may possibly in some distant way be analogous to that of the cells in an organised body, and our personalities may be the transient but essential elements of an immortal and cosmic mind.

Our views of the object of life have to be framed so as not to be inconsistent with the observed facts from which these various possibilities are inferred; it is safer that they should not exclude the possibilities themselves. We must look on the slow progress of the order of evolution, and the system of routine by which it has thus far advanced, as due to antecedents and to inherent conditions of which we have not as yet the slightest conception. It is difficult to withstand a suspicion that the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time may be four independent variables of a system that is neither space nor time, but something else wholly unconceived by us. Our present enigma as to how a First Cause could itself have been brought into existence--how the tortoise of the fable, that bears the elephant that bears the world, is itself supported,--may be wholly due to our necessary mistranslation of the four or more variables of the universe, limited by inherent conditions, into the three unlimited variables of Space and the one of Time.

Our ignorance of the goal and purport of human life, and the mistrust we are apt to feel of the guidance of the spiritual sense, on account of its proved readiness to accept illusions as realities, warn us against deductive theories of conduct. Putting these, then, at least for the moment, to one side, we find ourselves face to face with two great and indisputable facts that everywhere force themselves on the attention and compel consideration. The one is that the whole of the living world moves steadily and continuously towards the evolution of races that are progressively more and more adapted to their complicated mutual needs and to their external circumstances. The other is that the process of evolution has been hitherto apparently carried out with, what we should reckon in our ways of carrying out projects, great waste of opportunity and of life, and with little if any consideration for individual mischance. Measured by our criterion of intelligence and mercy, which consists in the achievement of result without waste of time or opportunity, without unnecessary pain, and with equitable allowance for pure mistake, the process of evolution on this earth, so far as we can judge, has been carried out neither with intelligence nor ruth, but entirely through the routine of various sequences, commonly called "laws," established or necessitated we know not how.

An incalculable amount of lower life has been certainly passed through before that human organisation was attained, of which we and our generation are for the time the holders and transmitters. This is no mean heritage, and I think it should be considered as a sacred trust, for, together with man, intelligence of a sufficiently high order to produce great results appears, so far as we can infer from the varied records of the prehistoric past, to have first dawned upon the tenantry of the earth. Man has already shown his large power in the modifications he has made on the surface of the globe, and in the distribution of plants and animals. He has cleared such vast regions of forest that his work that way in North America alone, during the past half century, would be visable to an observer as far off as the moon. He has dug and drained; he has exterminated plants and animals that were mischievous to him; he has domesticated those that serve his purpose, and transplanted them to great distances from their native places. Now that this new animal man, finds himself somehow in existence, endowed with a little power and intelligence, he ought, I submit, to awake to a fuller knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to assume a deliberate part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed, and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence, and kindly feeling to render its future progress less slow and painful. Man has already furthered evolution very considerably, half unconsciously, and for his own personal advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious duty to do so deliberately and systematically.

SELECTION AND RACE.

The fact of an individual being naturally gifted with high qualities, may be due either to his being an exceptionally good specimen of a poor race, or an average specimen of a high one. The difference of origin would betray itself in his descendants; they would revert towards the typical centre of their race, deteriorating in the first case but not in the second. The two cases, though theoretically distinct, are confused in reality, owing to the frequency with which exceptional personal qualities connote the departure of the entire nature of the individual from his ancestral type, and the formation of a new strain having its own typical centre. It is hardly necessary to add that it is in this indirect way that natural selection improves a race. The two events of selection and difference of race ought, however, to be carefully distinguished in broad practical considerations, while the frequency of their concurrence is borne in mind and allowed for.

So long as the race remains radically the same, the stringent selection of the best specimens to rear and breed from, can never lead to any permanent result. The attempt to raise the standard of such a race is like the labour of Sisyphus in rolling his stone uphill; let the effort be relaxed for a moment, and the stone will roll back. Whenever a new typical centre appears, it is as though there was a facet upon the lower surface of the stone, on which it is capable of resting without rolling back. It affords a temporary sticking-point in the forward progress of evolution. The causes that check the unlimited improvement of highly-bred animals, so long as the race remains unchanged, are many and absolute.

In the first place there is an increasing delicacy of constitution; the growing fineness of limb and structure end, after a few generations, in fragility. Overbred animals have little stamina; they resemble in this respect the "weedy" colts so often reared from first-class racers. One can perhaps see in a general way why this should be so. Each individual is the outcome of a vast number of organic elements of the most various species, just as some nation might be the outcome of a vast number of castes of individuals, each caste monopolising a special pursuit. Banish a number of the humbler castes--the bakers, the bricklayers, and the smiths, and the nation would soon come to grief. This is what is done in high breeding; certain qualities are bred for, and the rest are diminished as far as possible, but they cannot be dispensed with entirely.

The next difficulty lies in the diminished fertility of highly-bred animals. It is not improbable that its cause is of the same character as that of the delicacy of their constitution. Together with infertility is combined some degree of sexual indifference, or when passion is shown, it is not unfrequently for some specimen of a coarser type. This is certainly the case with horses and with dogs.

It will be easily understood that these difficulties, which are so formidable in the case of plants and animals, which we can mate as we please and destroy when we please, would make the maintenance of a highly-selected breed of men an impossibility.

Whenever a low race is preserved under conditions of life that exact a high level of efficiency, it must be subjected to rigorous selection. The few best specimens of that race can alone be allowed to become parents, and not many of their descendants can be allowed to live. On the other hand, if a higher race be substituted for the low one, all this terrible misery disappears. The most merciful form of what I ventured to call "eugenics" would consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races, and in so favouring them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that of the old one. Such strains are of no infrequent occurrence. It is easy to specify families who are characterised by strong resemblances, and whose features and character are usually prepotent over those of their wives or husbands in their joint offspring, and who are at the same time as prolific as the average of their class. These strains can be conveniently studied in the families of exiles, which, for obvious reasons, are easy to trace in their various branches.

The debt that most countries owe to the race of men whom they received from one another as immigrants, whether leaving their native country of their own free will, or as exiles on political or religious grounds, has been often pointed out, and may, I think, be accounted for as follows:--The fact of a man leaving his compatriots, or so irritating them that they compel him to go, is fair evidence that either he or they, or both, feel that his character is alien to theirs. Exiles are also on the whole men of considerable force of character; a quiet man would endure and succumb, he would not have energy to transplant himself or to become so conspicuous as to be an object of general attack. We may justly infer from this, that exiles are on the whole men of exceptional and energetic natures, and it is especially from such men as these that new strains of race are likely to proceed.

INFLUENCE OF MAN UPON RACE.

The influence of man upon the nature of his own race has already been very large, but it has not been intelligently directed, and has in many instances done great harm. Its action has been by invasions and migration of races, by war and massacre, by wholesale deportation of population, by emigration, and by many social customs which have a silent but widespread effect.

There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race. It rests on some confusion between the race and the individual, as if the destruction of a race was equivalent to the destruction of a large number of men. It is nothing of the kind when the process of extinction works silently and slowly through the earlier marriage of members of the superior race, through their greater vitality under equal stress, through their better chances of getting a livelihood, or through their prepotency in mixed marriages. That the members of an inferior class should dislike being elbowed out of the way is another matter; but it may be somewhat brutally argued that whenever two individuals struggle for a single place, one must yield, and that there will be no more unhappiness on the whole, if the inferior yield to the superior than conversely, whereas the world will be permanently enriched by the success of the superior. The conditions of happiness are, however, too complex to be disposed of by _à priori_ argument; it is safest to appeal to observation. I think it could be easily shown that when the differences between the races is not so great as to divide them into obviously different classes, and where their language, education, and general interests are the same, the substitution may take place gradually without any unhappiness. Thus the movements of commerce have introduced fresh and vigorous blood into various parts of England: the new-comers have intermarried with the residents, and their characteristics have been prepotent in the descendants of the mixed marriages. I have referred in the earlier part of the book to the changes of type in the English nature that have occurred during the last few hundred years. These have been effected so silently that we only know of them by the results.

One of the most misleading of words is that of "aborigines." Its use dates from the time when the cosmogony was thought to be young and life to be of very recent appearance. Its usual meaning seems to be derived from the supposition that nations disseminated themselves like colonists from a common centre about four thousand years, say 120 generations ago, and thenceforward occupied their lands undisturbed until the very recent historic period with which the narrator deals, when some invading host drove out the "aborigines." This idyllic view of the march of events is contradicted by ancient sepulchral remains, by language, and by the habits of those modern barbarians whose history we know. There are probably hardly any spots on the earth that have not, within the last few thousand years, been tenanted by very different races; none hardly that have not been tenanted by very different tribes having the character of at least sub-races.

The absence of a criterion to distinguish between races and sub-races, and our ethnological ignorance generally, makes it impossible to offer more than a very off-hand estimate of the average variety of races in the different countries of the world. I have, however, endeavoured to form one, which I give with much hesitation, knowing how very little it is worth. I registered the usually recognised races inhabiting each of upwards of twenty countries, and who at the same time formed at least half per cent of the population. It was, I am perfectly aware, a very rough proceeding, so rough that for the United Kingdom I ignored the prehistoric types and accepted only the three headings of British, Low Dutch, and Norman-French. Again, as regards India I registered as follows:--Forest tribes (numerous), Dravidian (three principal divisions), Early Arian, Tartar (numerous, including Afghans), Arab, and lastly European, on account of their political importance, notwithstanding the fewness of their numbers. Proceeding in this off-hand way, and after considering the results, the broad conclusion to which I arrived was that on the average at least three different recognised races were to be found in every moderately-sized district on the earth's surface. The materials were far too scanty to enable any idea to be formed of the rate of change in the relative numbers of the constituent races in each country, and still less to estimate the secular changes of type in those races.