isolation. The social being must not only care for himself, his own life and that of his mate and offspring, but he must help care for others also, his comrades, and in supplying his own wants must not interfere seriously with the like opportunity of others to supply their wants. Thus the liberty of each to develop and strengthen himself fully is limited by the necessity for a like liberty for all. Without obedience to this law social life is an impossibility. Even the lowest social group has some needs in opposition to the selfregarding desires of its members singly; and thus two inexorable natural laws-the law of adult life providing for individuation, and the law of society providing for the social welfare-are apparently in direct antagonism, the one to the other. From the pressure of these laws upon each social group, and the adjustment of their antagonisms, results the criminal class, the creation of ever more numerous forms of crime, and the persistent increase of criminality upon the earth. The most civilized and progressive states have the most crime, and more crime as civilization increases; and this seeming multiplication of evil is not a sign of degeneration and decay, but of prosperity and upward growth to higher planes of life, of love, and mutual helpfulness.

Progress always means greater strength, actual or potential. This strength takes many forms, from purely physical to intellectual and moral forces. Throughout the ages progress has in the main taken the direction of increasing power to fight well; at any rate it is most easily measured in such terms. For long the gain was chiefly, almost entirely in physical strength, and at first all progress was enormously expensive. The shallow seas swarmed with microscopic life, which has left records of its existence throughout the rocks of our mountains, and in the coral reefs of ocean.

1 Spencer, Justice, pp. 46, 60.

380

Development always Necessary

Myriads of undeveloped types perished. Practically helpless before external dangers, these low organisms were swept into destruction in whole groups by the crude natural forces around them. Some few survived for a season, growing strong through fortunate changes, in a more kindly environment. Of these, some learned gradually to modify their environment to meet their needs. A few have continued and prospered until now. Always development has been necessary; always growth into new strength has been demanded as the price of dominance upon the earth.

During the age of Reptiles the mastery went to creatures of great size and enormous physical strength, but with little intelligence. Natural selection seemed working along a low plane of individual self-interest. The first great primary law was shaping life and seemed to rule alone. But in united effort there is greater power than any gigantic brute can possess, and social life, with its mutual helpfulness against enemies and stimulation of mental development, became the prime requisite for success in the struggle for existence, the great means to the attainment of a higher, a more unselfish life. A higher type of strength was coming in, with boundless possibilities for the future along lines intellectual and moral. For with social life comes not only the development and the victory of intelligence and mutual aid over brutishness and self-sufficiency-it is also the beginning of the victory of altruism over selfishness, of the love of others over the love of self.

The most successful forms of life are gregarious; they have become social, and by the sharing of each other's dangers, joys and pains, have grown stronger, more intelligent, more loving. As intelligence develops, the period of youthful immaturity grows longer, the young are more helpless and need a more extended training, the demands of the primary law of self-sacrifice become larger and more exact

ing; but parental love cares for these things-obedience to this law of the family is so natural and customary that its neglect is rare. But the shield which social life casts around each individual member of the band preserves him in part, and more fully as life attains higher planes, from the immediate action of outer physical forces which have hitherto maintained the operation of the first great law-the law of earned benefits-securing the survival of the fittest. This fundamental rule of adult life is not abrogated, its strength is no wise lessened; but its immediate pressure is in part transferred from the individual to the social group. Thus society becomes, as it were, responsible to nature for the acts of all its members; for the danger immediately arises that the adult may no longer receive, in general, the good and evil consequences of his own character and conductthat those ill fitted to live, and either negatively or positively harmful to the community, will be preserved, causing the weakening and final destruction of the body social, and the death of the individuals composing it.

Herds of wild horses or wild cattle are stronger than the strongest of the solitary beasts of prey. When united they will not only defend themselves successfully, but will even trample their enemy to death. Only when through fear, or some other cause, the group ranks are broken and mutual aid ceases, can the lion kill his victim. Almost all that is best in life is cultivated directly by this communal living together, with its mutual helpfulness and mutual self-restraint. Society confers unnumbered benefits upon its members, but the individual must do his part; as more is given him, from him more is required. In a word, the social being must live up to a certain standard of right action; and since association has in part removed from him the pressure of crude

382

Educative Social Selection

natural forces, and these forces would now be utterly inefficient in producing the type of character requisite, society must itself compel its members to live up to this necessary standard at its peril, on pain of social and individual degeneration and destruction. This compulsion is fundamentally instinctive, and at first largely unreasoning, but it becomes with time a process distinctly willed and shaped by the social group. It is primarily, and for all time, an effort of nature to promote upward growth by a less wasteful process, using the awakened individual intelligence, combined with the inherited social instinct, to induce evolution from within the group, by encouraging useful variation from the average, thus producing the leader, and punishing harmful variation, -thus ultimately converting the mere malefactor into the criminal. Intelligent, educative, social selection is thus substituted more and more fully, by the workings of natural law, for the crude, destructive, physical selection which is at first exclusively dominant. Social pressure from within the group unites with the pressure from without to uplift and socialize the individual. One of the most important forms of this inner pressure is called among men criminal prosecution and punishment.

A social group is fundamentally a kindred group. Its members feel a resemblance among themselves, and a sense of safety and of pleasure develops. There is general likeness with individual variation. A social type is being formed. Divergence from this type is disliked, and antagonistic variation meets with conscious or unconscious persecution. "Relatively unintelligent though they are," writes Herbert Spencer, "inferior gregarious creatures inflict penalties for breaches of the needful restrictions, showing how regard for them has come to be unconsciously established as a condition to persistent social life. No higher warrant can be imagined," and therefore we may accept "the law of equal

freedom as an ultimate ethical principle, having an authority transcending every other."

Morality seems in its beginnings to have been social rather than individual, a morality of action rather than a morality of motive. The moral act, the good act, is that which conduces to the social welfare. The good individual is he whose conduct aids his social group. Morals, ethics, Sitten (German) all mean habits, customs, established ways. The moral act was originally the customary act. Among the lower animals, which possess not the moral sense-the knowledge of what is right and wrong, and consciousness of power to choose between them-the customary act is that which has been enforced by nature's inexorable laws. It is a right choice for them, but they do not know that it is right. We find moral actions before a perception of what is moral. Good and bad are insisted upon by stern processes of selection, and destruction of those which do not grow aright, by laws of nature and nature's God. There are no mistakes here. Not until human society is reached, and the moral sense developed with higher intelligence, do acts become regarded and named as good and evil, right and wrong. It is then that mistakes begin to be made by the social group, the good being called bad, and punished, and the bad, good, and rewarded. Ultimately nature judges and

Spencer, Justice, p. 61, and see Chapter II of this book. The claims of nature upon society, that the operation of its laws upon the individual must be maintained by human legislation, have often been recognized by the nations of mankind. As Sir Henry Sumner Maine well puts it: "The happiness of mankind is, no doubt, sometimes assigned, both in the popular and in the legal literature of the Romans, as the proper object of remedial legislation; but it is very remarkable how few and faint are the testimonies to this principle, compared with the tributes which are constantly offered to the overshadowing claims of the Law of Nature." Ancient Law, p. 79.

"In ancient times," writes Maine, "the moral elevation and moral debasement of the individual appear to be confounded with, or postponed to, the merits and offences of the group to which the individual belongs." Ancient Law, p. 127.