ECOLOGICAL BACKGROUND AND GROWTH BEFORE 1900 



31 



and Comte (1830) called it "altruism." 

 Such developments are reviewed sympathet- 

 ically by Lange (1865). It may be added 

 that Spencer argued both sides of the rela- 

 tion between egoism and altruism. In his 

 Principles of Ethics (1893, p. 201) he 

 said: "If we define altruism as being all 

 action which, in the normal course of 

 things, benefits others instead of benefiting 

 self, then, from the dawn of life, altruism 

 has been no less essential than egoism. 

 Though primariily it is dependent on ego- 

 ism, yet secondarily egoism is dependent on 

 it." 



With the growing perception in the last 

 few decades of the significance of cooper- 

 ative forces in nature, there has been a 

 reawakening of interest in Darwin's attitude 

 on the subject. As wdth other aspects of 

 evolutionary biology, Darwin was more 

 broadminded than many of his followers. 

 His recognition that insect castes can be 

 explained on the basis of natural selection 

 of the whole interacting insect social group 

 shows an appreciation of one distinctly 

 nonegoistic aspect of social hving. Weis- 

 mann (1893), in his controversy with Her- 

 bert Spencer over the importance of ac- 

 quired characters, forcefully elaborated this 

 point so far as the "all-sufficiency of natural 

 selection" is concerned. Weismann did not 

 grasp the more general implications that the 

 phenomena he discussed indicate a general 

 cooperative tendency in nature. He did see 

 clearly that cooperation between the parts 

 of organized wholes— whether the wholes 

 are individual animals, as in the evolving 

 proportions of the Irish stag, or are social 

 entities, as with the evolving neuters of an 

 ant colony— could come about by natural 

 selection of germinal variations. It is an 

 interesting question whether Darwin him- 

 self went further. 



Much can be and has been made of 

 Darwin's statement in the Origin of Species 

 regarding the struggle for existence in 

 which he says (Murray's library edition, p. 

 46): 



"I use this term in a large and metaphorical 

 sense, including dependence of one being on 

 another, and including (which is more impor- 

 tant) not only the life of the individual, but 

 success in leaving progeny . . . The mistle- 

 toe is dependent on the apple and a few other 

 trees, but can only in a far-fetched sense be 

 said to struggle with these trees, for, if too 

 many of these parasites grow on the same 



tree, it languishes and dies ... In these sev- 

 eral senses, which pass into each other, I use 

 for convenience sake the general term of 

 Struggle for Existence." 



Perhaps it would be the fairest possible 

 treatment to follow Geddes and Thompson 

 (1911, p. 167), who were friendly observ- 

 ers of Darwin and Darwinism and of the 

 point of view now under discussion. 



"Darwin's characteristic fundamental idea of 

 the intricacy of inter-relations in the web of 

 life, lies below the idea of the struggle for 

 existence, and therefore below the idea of nat- 

 ural selection. Unless we appreciate the 

 fundamental natural history fact of the web of 

 life, we cannot rightly understand how slight 

 differences can be of critical moment in deter- 

 mining survival. The entanglements are so 

 intricate that a slight variation may be of sur- 

 vival-value to its possessor," 



Our italics indicate a suspicion that even 

 Geddes and Thompson were much con- 

 cerned with the success of the individual, 

 an individual enmeshed, to be sure, in a 

 recognized and important web of life. Again 

 in the same book (p. 174), in speaking of 

 family and group selection, which they list 

 as one of several kinds of selection, they 

 summarize the matter thus: 



"Though Darwin did not wholly overlook 

 this (indeed in at least one notable passage 

 he expresses it) there is no doubt that the gen- 

 eral tone and treatment of Darwinism . . . 

 has been deeply coloured by the acute individ- 

 ualism of Darwin's and the preceding age. 

 We may therefore restate the concluding thesis 

 of our own 'Evolution of Sex' (1889) since 

 elaborated in various ways by Drummond, by 

 Kropotkin and others. It is that the general 

 progress both of the plant and the animal 

 world, and notably the great uplifts, must be 

 viewed not simply as individual but very 

 largely in terms of sex and parenthood, of 

 family and association; and hence of gregarious 

 flocks and herds, of co-operative packs, of 

 evolving tribes, and thus ultimately of civilized 

 societies . . . above all therefore, of the city. 

 Huxley's tragic vision of 'nature as a gladiatorial 

 show' and consequently of ethical life and 

 progress as merely superimposed by man, as 

 therefore an interference with the normal order 

 of Natvire, is still far too dominant among us." 



Representative of T. H. Huxley's atti- 

 tude. Caiman (1939) writes: 



"When Huxley wrote that among animals 

 and among primitive men, 'Life was a continual 

 free fight, and beyond the limited and tem- 

 porary relations of the family, the Hobbesian 



