388 



NATURE 



[September 



impression. Every word, liowever, is a siiorthand ex- 

 pression of a vast sum of experience, and by using words 

 as counters it becomes possible to increase enormously the 

 power of tile nervous system to deal with its own experi- 

 ence. Education now involves the learning of these 

 counters and of their significance in sense experience ; and 

 the reactions of the highest animal, man, are for the most 

 part carried out in response to words and are governed 

 by past education of the e.xperience-content involved in each 

 word. 



The power of speech was probably developed in the first 

 place as a means of communication among primitive man 

 living in groups or societies ; as a means, that is to say, 

 of procuring cooperation of different individuals in a task 

 in which the survival of the whole race was involved. But 

 it has attained still further significance. Without speech 

 the individual can profit by his own experience and to a 

 certain limited extejit by the control exercised by the older 

 and more experienced members of his tribe. As soon as 

 experience can be symbolised in words, it can be dis- 

 sociated from the individual and becomes a part of the 

 common heritage of the race, so that the whole past ex- 

 perience of the race can be utilised in the education — i.e. 

 the laying down of nerve tracts — in the individual himself. 

 On the other hand, the community receives the advantage 

 of the foresight possessed by any individual who happens 

 to be endowed with a central nervous system which trans- 

 cends that of his fellows in its powers of dealing with 

 sense impressions or other symbols. The foresight thus 

 acquired by the whole community must be of advantage 

 to it and serve for its preservation. It is therefore natural 

 that in the processes of development and division of labour, 

 which occur among the members' of a community just as 

 among the cell units composing an animal, a class of 

 individuals should have been developed, who are separated 

 from the ordinary avocations, and are, or should be, main- 

 tained by the community, in order that they may apply 

 their whole energies to the study of sequences of sense 

 impressions. These are set into words which, as summary 

 statements of sequence, are known to us as the Laws of 

 Nature. These natural laws become the property of the 

 whole community, become embodied by education into the 

 nervous system of its individuals, and serve therefore as 

 the experience which will determine the future behaviour 

 of its constituent units. This study of the sequence of 

 phenomena is the office of Science. Through .Science the 

 whole race thus becomes endowed with a foresight which 

 may extend far beyond contemporary events and may 

 include in its horizon not only the individual life, but that 

 of the race itself as of races to come. 



Social Conduct. 



I have spoken as if every act of the animal were deter- 

 mined by the complex interaction of nervous processes the 

 paths of which through the higher parts of the brain had 

 been laid down by previous experience, whether of pheno- 

 mena or of words as symbolical of phenomena. The 

 average conduct, however, of the individual, determined 

 at first in this way, became by repetition automatic — i.e. 

 the nerve paths are so facilitated by frequent use that a 

 given impulse can take only the direction which is set by 

 custom. The general adoption of the same line of conduct 

 by all the individuals of a community in face of a given 

 condition of the environment gave in most cases an 

 advantage to those individuals who were endowed with 

 a nervous system of such a character that the path could 

 be laid down quickly and with very little repetition. Thus 

 we get a tendency, partly by selection, largely by education, 

 to the establishment of reactions which, like the instincts 

 of animals, are almost automatic in character. As 

 MacDougall has pointed out, the representations in con- 

 sciousness of automatic tendencies are the emotions. Moral 

 conduct, being that behaviour which is adapted to the 

 individual's position in his community, is largely deter- 

 mined by these paths of automatic action, and the moral 

 individual is he whose automatic actions and consequent 

 emotions are most in accord with the welfare of his com- 

 munity, or at any rate with what has been accepted as the 

 rule of conduct for the community. 



Rise ill Type dependent on Brain. 



Thus, in the evolution of the higher from the lower type, 

 the physiological mechanisms, which have proved the 

 NO. 2082, VOL. 81] 



decisive factors, can be summed up under the headings of 

 integration, foresight and control. In the process of 

 integration we have not only a combination of units 

 previously discrete, but also differentiation of structure and 

 function among the units. They have lost, to a large 

 extent, their previous independence of action and, indeed, 

 power of independejit action, the whole of their energies 

 being now applied to fulfilling their part in the common 

 work of the organism. At first bound together by but 

 slight ties and capable in many cases of separating to 

 form new cell colonies, tliey have finally arrived at a con- 

 dition in which each one is absolutely dependent for its 

 existence on its connection with the rest of the organism 

 and is also essential to the well-being of every other part 

 of the organism. 



This solidarity, this subjection of all selfish activity to 

 a common end, namely, preservation of the organism, 

 could only be effected by a gradual increase in the control 

 of all parts by one master tissue of the body, the actions 

 of which were determined by impulses arriving from sense 

 organs which themselves were set into activity by coming 

 events. We thus have with the rise in type a gradually 

 rising scale in powers of foresight, in control by the central 

 nervous system, and in the solidarity of the units of which 

 the organism is composed. 



In the struggle for existence the rise in type has de- 

 pended therefore on the central nervous system and its 

 servants. Rise in type implies increased range of adapta- 

 tion, and we have seen that this increased range, from 

 the very beginning of a nervous system, was bound up 

 with the powers of this system. Whatever opinion we may 

 finally arrive at with regard to the types of animals which 

 we may claim as our ancestors on the line of descent, there 

 can be no doubt that Gaskell is right in the fundamental 

 idea which has guided his investigations into the origin 

 of vertebrates. As he says, " the law for the whole animal 

 kingdom is the same as for the individual. Success in 

 this world depends upon brains." The work by this 

 observer which has lately appeared sets forth in greater 

 detail than I have been able to give you to-day the grounds 

 on which this assertion is based, and furnishes one of the 

 most nofeworthy contributions to the principles of evolution 

 which have been published during recent years. 



We must not, however, give too restrictive or common 

 a meaning to the expression " brains " used by Gaskell in 

 the dictum quoted above. By this word we imply the 

 whole reactive system of the animal. In the case of man, 

 as of some other animals, his behaviour depends not 

 merely on his intellectual qualities or powers, to which the 

 term " brain " is often in popular language confined, but 

 on his position as a member of a group or society. His 

 automatic activities in response to his ordinary environ- 

 ment, all those social acts which we ascribe in ourselves 

 to our emotions or conscience, are determined by the exist- 

 ence of tracts in the higher parts of his brain, access to 

 which has been opened by the ruthless method of natural 

 selection and which have been deepened and broadened 

 under the influence of the pleasurable and painful 

 impressions which are included in the process of education. 

 All the higher development of man is bound up with his 

 existence as a member of a community, and in trying to 

 find out the factors which will determine the survival of 

 any type of man, we must give our attention, not to the 

 man, but to the tribe or community of which he is a 

 member, and must try to find out what kind of behaviour 

 of th» tribe will lead to its predominance in the struggle 

 for existence. 



Political Evolution. 

 The comparison of the body politic with the human 

 body is as old as political economy itself, and there is 

 indeed no reason for assuming that the principles which 

 determine the success of the animals formed by the aggre- 

 gation of unicellular organisms should not apply to the 

 greater aggregations or communities of the multicellular 

 organisms themselves. It must be remembered, however, 

 that the principles to which I have directed your attention 

 are not those that determine survival, but those which - 

 'irtrrmine rise of type, what I have called success. 

 Evolution may be regressive as well as progressive. 

 Degeneration, as Lankester has shown, may play as 

 great a part as evolution of higher forms in determining 

 survival. The world still contains myriads of unicellular 



