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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

The Survival of the Fittest [Vol. 5. No. 19., February 1, 1884.]

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Unity Pulpit. Boston.

Vol. 5. No. 19.

George H. Ellis, Boston: 141 Franklin Street.

1884.
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The Survival of the Fittest.

"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."

Matthew xiii., 12.

The scientific theory of evolution is now universally accepted on the part of those who have given it adequate study, who are unbiassed and free to accept the truth, and who are competent to weigh evidence, and see which side of a disputed subject is proved. It is not necessarily accepted as set forth in its completeness in any one writer or theorizer, but in its general outlines. The central doctrine of this theory of evolution is summed up in the familiar words, "the struggle for life, and the survival of the fittest"; not necessarily a struggle for physical existence only, because it applies to institutions, to theories, to philosophies, to ideas, as well as to individuals either animal or human.

The struggle for life, the survival of the fittest,—a universal truth; and yet there are many to whom it seems a hard saying. It appears to them to be a summing-up of that theory, which they indignantly reject, that "might makes right,"—the theory of the strong hand and the hard heart. It appears, I say, at the first blush, to be this, only expressed in other words. There are many in the scientific world, who regard it as such, who nevertheless accept it stoically, and say, Since it is the truth, we must perforce take it for what it is, and make the best of it. There are others, in large numbers, religiously inclined, who think it perhaps true, so far as the natural world is concerned, the method of the mechanism of nature; but who yet feel that, in order to meet the demands of the human heart, the desire for sympathy, page 4 for tenderness, for love, something more is needed. As a scientific theory, it is good enough in the department of nature; but it must be supplemented by a supernatural revelation of divine love, by a gospel,—good news, such news as nature has not to give. They say we must have mercy, grace, tenderness, pity, love from some source; for these are in man, and are a part of the demand of human nature. Finding themselves in this attitude toward the scientific theory of evolution, they demand that it shall be pieced out and completed by something else, reaching into what they regard as a higher realm of thought and influence. Yet, if this be so, is it not a little strange? Bishop Butler, many years ago, wrote the most famous book of evidences that the world has ever seen,—a book attempting to establish Christianity by showing how the constitution and course of nature were analogous to the teachings of Christianity, corresponding to it, and parallel with it. They were two views of one complete whole. Must we in this clay reverse that line of argument? Must we admit that there is a duality in the universe, that God with one hand rules nature as a hard and fast merciless mechanism, and with the other hand dispenses mercy, tenderness, and grace? Is God divided? Is he one thing in religion, and another thing in the kingdom of nature? Let us beware, before we accept this theory, lest we lay ourselves liable to the statement of Jesus when confronted by the Pharisees, when he declared that a house divided against itself could not stand. So I believe a universe divided against itself cannot stand. Therefore, I do not believe that it is divided against itself. If, then, we shall find this to be a law in nature, we shall probably find it also the law in ethics, in religion, in this world, in all worlds.

Here, curiously enough, comes in this remarkable saying of Jesus,—a saying that I used to stumble over, not being able to understand it,—"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance : but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." This seems to be a curious foregleam, a premonition of truth, page 5 uttered before the world was wise enough to understand it. For is not here, in these words of Jesus, a terse, graphic summing-up of this very principle of which I am speaking ?

Let us see then, in the first place, whether this universal battle is going on, and whether, indeed, it is the fittest that survive. In other words, is this doctrine true? This is our first point.

It will not be long now, as the nights are growing shorter and the sun has already begun his journey homeward from the South, before, along the sides of the streets and under the fences in sheltered nooks, here and there, the grasses will begin to spring. You who are fortunate enough to have yards about your houses or to live in the country can see this process of nature going on,—the very old but ever new wonder of a reviving world. Picture yourselves then, on some beautiful morning, standing and looking over one of these freshly growing grass-plots about your house or in the field, and it will seem to you, as you think of it, that it is the very image of rural peace. Yet do you know that that is a battle-field, in which an inexorable warfare is being carried on,—a contest as merciless, as relentless, as was ever fought on the most crimson field of human warfare? A thousand blades spring up, and push their way through the sod. Then begins a competition for soil, a struggle for sunlight, for air, for dew and rain, for all the conditions of growth. Those that are in stony places, those by the wayside, those where the conditions are not favorable, will be defeated, and will die, going back again to the original dust, perhaps to have another opportunity granted them, when they may-achieve success, when they may win the life that they fail of attaining to-day. Meantime, this relentless warfare is going on. Those that survive will be the fittest to survive,—those properly circumstanced, those that secure sufficient food and sunshine and rain. Not only here, but among the roses, the lilies, among all things beautiful, the same competitive struggle is going on, and has been going on from the beginning of life on this planet till to-day.

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The same thing is true in forests, among the trees. The fittest survive: the rest must perish. So is it in every department of nature and of human life. The fishes in the sea, the beasts in the woods, and the fowls of the air,—among them all, this competition for life, this struggle for continued existence, for growth, is going on; and it is the fittest that survive. Thus it is, as the result of this conflict, that we have the pine tree in Maine, the palmetto in the Carolinas, and all the beautiful growths of the tropics, the edelweiss close up to the snow line of the Alps, and the richest productions of the most sheltered valleys.

This conflict is not only going on in the midst of what we call the natural growths of the world, but also amid nations, races, institutions, languages, forms of government, social organizations, among all the trades and occupations of the world,—a competition, peaceful it may be, and yet inexorable, on the part of all the business men in Boston. It is so between Boston and New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, and all the cities of the world. It is the same everywhere.

But is it true only here? No : it is true also in the realm of religion. How else does it happen that the few great religions that are dominant to-day over the world have sprung up, and have prevailed? Let us glance for a moment at the method of religious progress.

In the first place, the lowest tribes were fetich worshippers. Sticks, stones,—anything to which superstitious reverence became accidentally attached was to them a god. Ther, they worshipped the shades of their ancestors; and there came to be a multiplicity of gods, more gods almost than people. But this condition was not a permanent one; for, as we come along the line of human progress, we find, among the ancient Hebrews for example, not our modern monotheism by any means, although that is the popular idea, but Jehovah grown to supremacy over the other deities, so that the Psalmist speaks of him as King of kings and Lord of lords. Not that the other gods did not exist, not that the other page 7 lords were nonentities, but that he was supreme above them all. It was the same among the Greeks. Zeus, among the Hellenic gods, was the greatest at the Olympian court. Under the influence of these forces and according to the working of this law, someone of these ideals, or conceptions of divinity, came to be, as the people advanced, the one which satisfied them intellectually and morally. After this unconscious election, or selection, the rest of the deities were relagated to secondary places. Finally, monotheism became supreme, because the people had learned to recognize unity in the heavens above them and the earth beneath them,—one law, one life, one force; and, naturally, they could not endure the thought of two supremes. The idea of duality or multiplicity was not fitted to the intellectual stage at which man had arrived in the course of his development.

According to the working of this same law, there comes ever to be an elevation and purification of this ideal of the one God; and the harder, the less merciful, less tender, less moral conceptions of God die out, and fade away. The humane, the loving, the tender, the merciful, come to the front, and supersede all the rest. Why? For the simple reason that man himself has become humane, tender and merciful, forgiving, and morally superior to what he had been. The old ideals of God were not fitted to survive in these struggles between the different ideals. Trace this law anywhere you will,—in God, in human life, in government, in ethics, in religion,—this one eternal force is at work; and it is at work according to this one eternal method.

I wish here to interject one thought, that I may be perfectly clear. The survival of the fittest does not always mean, in the usual sense of that word, the survival of the best. It means the survival of that which is best adapted to the circumstances and the time, that which fits the place where it appears and grows.

This doctrine then is true, true everywhere. If true, what then? If true, we cannot afford to do otherwise than to accept it; to recognize it as the method of nature and life, and page 8 adapt ourselves to it. It seems to me very strange—and yet I find illustrations of it everywhere—that people should attempt to fight the inevitable, to pit themselves against the universe. I remember last summer, when I was crossing the Atlantic, there was at first an instinctive tendency on my part to resist the action of the waves and the movement of the great ship. I found myself unconsciously bracing against it, as though I could overbalance the storm. But I found only that it disturbed my brain, disordered my nerves, and made me intensely uncomfortable, while producing no effect on the universe. I learned how puerile and foolish it was, and gave myself up at last to this mighty movement on which I was tossed as a little thing, and then I found the great ship was my friend, and the storm itself took me in its arms and rocked me quietly to sleep.

The wisdom of adapting ourselves to the eternal truth in practical affairs was never more forcibly and tersely set forth than in that familiar story of Abraham Lincoln; and I know of no more wisdom concentrated in fewer words. Near the opening of the war, some of those who were a good deal troubled as to which side might win in the conflict came to Mr. Lincoln, and said, "Mr. President, Stonewall Jackson is a Christian, and he is praying for the success of his side; and so thousands of the people in the South are devout Christians, worshippers of the same God, and they, too, are praying with all their might for the success of the cause to which they have given themselves. Now, Mr. President, why do you feel sure, or do you feel sure, that God is on our side in the great struggle?" And Mr. Lincoln replied, with that quiet, homely smile of wisdom that so frequently played about his lips : "It has never occurred to me to be troubled at all as to how I can get God on my side in the war. The only thing I am anxious about is to find out where God is, and get on his side." There is the wisdom that we need to learn, not only in war, but in social life, in ethics, in religion. Find out where the Infinite Power is, and get that at your back and you are invincible. Stand up for some little pet page 9 notion or idea of your own against the universe, and you can only be tossed about like an eggshell, even if you are not dashed to pieces. This, then, is true, as I believe,—the law of the universe in all its range, in its whole infinite breadth, in its boundless depth, its measureless height.

Let us now see if it is this heartless, cruel, merciless, unfeeling, inhuman thing that it is so commonly assumed to be.

I want to ask you then to mark with me three great stages of human advance, and see how this principle works along these stages or transformations, and the results it produces.

There was a time when this earth first became the abode of life, when mere physical, muscular power was king, when the supreme forces on the planet were the gigantic forms of earthly and aquatic life,—those dragons, scaly and reptilian, that flew heavy-winged through the air. Those were the mightiest beings on the planet. Then, it was true, as Tennyson pictures it so graphically in "In Memoriam" that the "dragons of the prime tore each other in their slime." Then, it was true that nature was "red in tooth and claw with ravin." It was a battle between these gigantic animals and birds, and the battle went on for supremacy; and this muscular power was supreme.

But let us consider one or two things that should modify our view of this condition of affairs. It is sometimes assumed, and Mr. Tennyson in "In Memoriam" assumes it, that the gift of life, unless it is indefinitely prolonged, is not worth having. I do not agree with him. I long for the future life. I have an intense curiosity that I wish satisfied. I want to visit some other worlds. I want to see how things are going to look and be in a hundred years; and yet, if this be not accorded me, still I am glad every moment that I have had a glimpse of this marvellous scene.

The gift of life, then, is a possible gift of good, whether it be greatly prolonged or not. So I believe that the gift of life to the tiny insect that flutters for a day in the air, and goes out at night, is so much good conferred. And, if it is page 10 to be taken away, it may be done without any injustice; for we have no claim on the universe for things that have not been bestowed on us. But I believe that, in the lower planes of the animal world, there is no more merciful way for life to be taken than through this mutual struggle and conflict. I believe that the animals and birds that prey upon each other actually suffer less in going out of the world by this method than they would by old age or starvation. So we are not to look on this scene as one of cruelty, as it would be in our range of life.

Once more, we greatly err, when we assume that the animal world below us suffers in such a conflict as we would suffer in like circumstances. We cannot conceive of any organized creature as thinking until a brain is developed : therefore, we do not imagine an oyster as thinking. So it is unwise of us to imagine the animal world as capable of suffering until there is a nervous system developed. There may be a dim sentient germ; but there is a large part of this lower world where there is no possibility of such keenness of pleasure and pain as we are capable of feeling.

What is the result of the survival of the fittest? First, animal strength has been produced as the outcome of this long contest. Would it have been better for the weakest to survive? Surely, a lower type would have been the result. The swiftest have also been the victors in this contest. Therefore, the swiftest have propagated of their kind. So, too, the beautiful has been developed. This is wrought not only by the choosing of the fairest in mating in the animal kingdom, but it has been brought about even in the vegetable world. It is the most fragrant and most brilliant flowers that have been sought out by the bees and insects, and in this way the fructifying pollen has been carried here and there from flower to flower; and so the most beautiful and most fragrant kinds have been developed, while the others have been left behind in the struggle. And so, as a result of this in the animal and vegetable world, strength and speed, beauty and fragrance, have been progressively developed.

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But this is only the first step. There came a time when there was born into the midst of this internecine muscular struggle a mightier power, a larger development of brain, more mind, more thought. At first merely as cunning, that could more easily outwit or escape an enemy; and then, as thought, as foresight, as planning grew, a looking toward a controlling of the future, an organizing of separate forms and forces into unity, and so a controlling of the world. Muscular power was then discrowned, and took its place at the foot of the throne, while brain grasped the sceptre, and ruled the world. This, in its ultimate working, has wrought out as a result the brilliant stars of mind that stud the firmament,—such names as Homer and Virgil and Dante, and Shakspere and Milton, and Socrates and Plato and Bruno, and Newton and Darwin and Spencer. These men, selected in the struggle for life, have won the highest places, and been made kings of the world.

But brain even was not to be ultimate ruler of human destiny. And so there came a time when physical power was placed still lower, at the very foot of the throne, when brain stepped down and stood on the higher steps as prime minister, and when the moral ideal of the world mounted the throne and placed the crown upon its own head and seized the emblem of power. And to-day, mightier than all brute force, mightier than all cunning, mightier than all foresight of intellect, is the moral ideal of man. Under the working of this same law called heartless, merciless, cruel, inhuman, all the tenderness, all the love, all the pity, all the mutual helpfulness of man toward man, have become supreme,—supreme not because weaker, not because, in Bible phrase, God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, the foolish things to overthrow the wise, but because the moral ideal is actually mightier than any other force in the world; mightier, because it is in the heart of men and rules there; mightier, because having its throne in the heart it rules the brain and the thought of man.

Consider for a moment. What was it, on the field of Run page 12 nymede, that enabled those old barons to wrest from King John their Magna Charta, the foundation of English freedom? It was the ideal of freedom, mightier than the king. What was it in the days of Cromwell, that faced King Charles the First in the person of Cromwell and his Ironsides? It was not simply the strongest battalions, physically considered : it was the moral sense of England behind and in Cromwell, mightier than all the traditions of the throne. What was it that stirred like the rumbling of an earthquake under the ancient dynasty of France, until it tumbled into ruins and the French Revolution startled Europe? It was only the moral sense of France, outraged by centuries of oppression, lust, cruelty, and wrong, rising in its might, overthrowing the age-long despotism, that was only dust and chaff before it. What is it today that drives the Czar of Russia into his inner palace, and locks the doors and surrounds him with triple and quadruple guards, and makes him tremble at every noise for his own life? It is the moral sense of the people uprising, and demanding liberty, truth, freedom in their government, national reformation,—a power mightier than all his police, a power that laughs at his guards, that will yet prove stronger than his cannon. I do not contradict that famous saying of Napoleon, for I believe it is true, that Providence is on the side of the strongest battalion. Providence is on the side of the strongest battalion: only Napoleon, to his cost, failed to learn one part of his lesson, and that was that the strongest battalion is not always the one that has the largest and most numerous guns; that it is not always the one that counts the most men with bayonets over their shoulders; not the one disciplined by the most experienced officers. It is the one—many a battle-field has proved it—in which the moral sense of man is incarnated, so that one man is mightier than ten, so that the words of the old Scripture become true,—that one man sometimes chases a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight.

It is no contradiction to this law that the weak and poor and down-trodden, even the vanquished, sometimes prove page 13 themselves to be the victors of those who had overthrown them. It is rather in accordance with the very workings of this law. There comes in here this grand truth: that the spiritual, the moral, the emotional, the tender, the merciful, many a time become supreme. Take the case of Jesus, outraged, overthrown, crucified; or the martyrs of the Church, smitten down by pagans; or take again, on the other hand, the victims of the Church itself, like Bruno, or the victims of the orthodox, like Servetus,—those that have been trodden down by the onward march of the physical and the intellectual forces of their age. Again and again has it proved true that these have conquered, that they have risen in their spiritual might, and been greater than those who crushed them. So that the vanquished many a time have proved victors; and those that were supposed to be slain have been more alive than their slayers. As summing up this, let me give you a few lines from Mr. W. W. Story :—

"Speak, History! Who are Life's victors ?
Unroll thy long annals, and say,
Are they those whom the world called the victors,—
Who won the success of a day?
The martyrs or Nero? The Spartans, who fell at Thermopylae's tryst, Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates? Pilate or Christ?"

This principle, then, is true,—and, indeed, it would seem to be so true that anybody out of an asylum could understand it, if he stopped to think a moment,—that the stronger must win in the conflict. When two forces come into conflict, must not the weaker always give way? And, if one force does give way, is not that demonstration that it was the weaker? That the moral and spiritual do really conquer the physical and the intellectual, is not that in itself proof that they are the mightier in the conflict of life, and that their survival is the survival of the fittest? Not only is this true, then, as I have partly shown you,—and as I could show in every case, had I the time,—but, as the result of the working of this force and according to this law, the strong, the page 14 swift, the beautiful, the high, the fine, the lovely, the tender, the true, have been survivors in the battle of life. It is in accordance with this principle that all social organizations have been judged in the past, and must be judged to-day and in the future. It is in accordance with this that governments are judged, approved or rejected. It, is in accordance with this that all religions are tested. It is in accordance with this that all ethical ideas are tried. It is in accordance with this that this church must stand or fall; that you and I as individuals must be proved. If the church can fill its place and do its work, it will live. If not, it will die, and it ought to. If you and I can fill some worthy place in the world, serve our time and race individually, physically, morally, then we shall live and grow strong. If not, we shall give place to someone worthier than we, and we ought to. Who then dares to say that there is anything unjust, untender, unmerciful in this saying of Jesus,—"To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath "? In this, we read that incompetence of every kind, physical, mental, moral, shall be outgrown, and that the good shall ultimately triumph.

When Kepler read in the stars his three famous laws of planetary motion, he said in sublime, though familiar, words, "O God, I think over again thy thoughts after thee! "And so Darwin and Spencer of this modern world have only been more broadly and more deeply thinking over again the thoughts and methods and ways of this Infinite and Eternal Power that unfolds itself age after age, and under the uplifting influence of which all fine, sweet, true, noble things have come to be.

The one life thrilled the star-dust through,
In nebulous masses whirled,
Until, globed like a drop of dew,
Shone out a new-made world.

The one life on the ocean shore,
Through primal ooze and slime,
Crept slowly on from less to more
Along the ways of time.

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The one life in the jungles old,
From lowly, creeping things,
Did ever some new form unfold,—
Swift feet or soaring wings.

The one life all the ages through
Pursued its wondrous plan,
Till, as the tree of promise grew,
It blossomed into man.

The one life reacheth onward still:
As yet, no eye may see
The far-off fact man's dream fulfil,—
The glory yet to be.