IV 



Supplement to Nature, March 21, 1901, 



of the blind. Germany did not acquire its admirable 

 educational system by popular demand — nor does England 

 owe such institutions as the College of Chemistry, the 

 School of Mines, the Royal College of Science and the 

 national art schools and schools of design to political 

 agitators. Still less did the professional class of educa- 

 tionists help in either case — on the contrary, they 

 bitterly and fiercely opposed these new developments. 

 They are due in Germany to the Kings of Prussia ; in 

 England to the late Prince Albert. The only chance, it 

 seems to me, which this country has for a change in the 

 methods and aims of its education, and of its adminis- 

 tration, which largely depends on the education of its 

 administrators, is in the absolute conviction on the part 

 of a great statesman, or, I say it with the deepest 

 respect, of the King himself, that such change is of vital 

 importance and is the one step necessary for the future 

 welfare of the British nation. The crowd cannot guide 

 itself, cannot help itself in its blind impotence. Here is 

 the opportunity, the duty, of the greatest in the land. 



Prof Pearson's address was delivered at a time when 

 the nation was suffering from the stress of war in South 

 Africa. He has endeavoured to avail himself of the 

 temporary awakening of the English people from their 

 self-satisfied toleration of incompetence in order to press 

 home the national need for the better training of its 

 brains and the utilisation of the brains when trained. 

 That is well-timed and legitimate. But when Prof. 

 Pearson goes on to assert that the struggle between great 

 civilised nations for territory, for trade-routes and for 

 supremacy in manufactures — by warfare or by starvation 

 — is the necessary condition, the moving power of human 

 progress, he goes, I think, altogether beyond the con- 

 clusions which are warranted by our knowledge and 

 beyond the indications which strictly follow from the 

 application to this problem of the conclusions of bio- 

 logical science. He says : 



" This dependence of progress on the survival of the 

 fitter race, terribly black as it may seem to some of you, 

 gives the struggle for existence its redeeming features ; it 

 is the fiery crucible out of which comes the finer metal. 

 You may hope for a time when the sword shall be turned 

 into the plough-share. . . . But, believe me, when that 

 day comes mankind will no longer progress ; . . . man 

 will stagnate. . . ." 



I do not hesitate to state, with a full sense of the gravity 

 of the issue, that Prof. Pearson has no warrant in our 

 present knowledge of the laws of development of animal 

 societies or of human communities for this statement. 

 This is certainly not a conclusion which can be for a 

 moment pressed on popular acceptance as coming from 

 the standpoint of science. It seems rather to originate 

 in a hasty attempt to generalise from certain preliminary 

 results of biology to conclusions in regard to an enormous 

 unexplored field of human phenomena. I admit that 

 the struggle between communities of human beings has 

 resulted in the suppression of the more violent instincts 

 of the individual and has led to the development, as 

 an element of communal strength, of that quality which 

 we know as human sympathy, to the elaboration of 

 social instincts, of civic virtues, of pity and of prin- 

 ciples of conduct. The list is Prof. Pearson's. But it has 

 yet to be shown that there is any strict analogy between 

 the struggle for existence of the countless individuals in 

 NO. 1638, VOL. 63] 



each generation of a non-social species and the competi- 

 tion of great nations or great races of mankind. In the 

 former case an immense number of variations is continu- 

 ally presented, and a remorseless destruction of all but 

 the selected few. In the latter there is no great variation 

 among the competitors on a given area and there is na 

 destruction and consequent removal from reproductive 

 perpetuation of the less successful community. The 

 highly specialised communities of social insects might 

 perhaps be fittingly dealt with in such prophecies as Prof. 

 Pearson applies -to mankind. It is, on the other hand, 

 necessary to remember that the communities of human 

 beings are far less individualised than are those of the 

 insects referred to. One ant colony may utterly destroy 

 another ; one community of bees or wasps may exter- 

 minate its neighbour. But in the struggles of human 

 communities in these later days the conquerors absorb 

 and do not annihilate their competitors in those cases 

 where there is any similarity of race. In these later 

 days the struggle is for the supremacy of a special form 

 of political organisation, and not for the extinction or the 

 survival of a breed. Moreover, the new and strangely 

 significant factor of oral and written tradition is operative 

 in civilised communities, so that a race, though dead or 

 merged in other races, yet continues to speak in the 

 works of its greatest men. 



Further, it seems to be beyond doubt that that progress 

 of humanity, which consists in the production of those 

 splendid individuals who have blessed their race by great 

 discoveries in science and by great creations in art, is not 

 in any way promoted, but is, on the contrary, hindered 

 by the diversion of the energies and resources of the 

 community to warfare and aggressive struggle. Just as 

 the race of the jungle-cock cannot develop a nine-foot 

 tail-feather when fighting its fellows as a struggling 

 breed, but when removed from the restricting influences 

 of natural selection bursts out in the Japanese poultry 

 yards into such magnificent " sports," so humanity can 

 only develop that " sport " which we call genius when 

 it has reached social conditions of security and freedom 

 from the demands of international warfare. Those 

 nine-foot sports of the human brain which we know 

 as Shakespeare, Newton, Raphael and Mozart were 

 most certainly not traceable to the struggles of their 

 native communities with other communities for terri- 

 tory, trade-routes or commerce. Rather, it would seem, 

 were they and others like them only possible as the 

 outcome of conditions when defence and offence were 

 occupying but little of the strength and thought of 

 their own and neighbouring nationalities. And there is 

 this to be noticed by those who, like Prof. Pearson, 

 would apply particular conclusions of biological science, 

 without discrimination or reserve, to human society — 

 viz. that whereas the corporeal " sports " of animal stock 

 can only affect subsequent generations by the physical 

 process of reproduction, the sports of the human mind — 

 and, indeed, all individual minds and characters which 

 rise above the herd— have, in consequence of the per- 

 fection of our records, an enduring influence upon vast 

 numbers in the later generations, not only of one, but of 

 all civilised communities. 



I, for one, do not despair of humanity; I see no 

 reason to suppose that what might be called " progress " 



