Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene [Reprint 2016 ed.] 9781512809046

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EVOLUTION, MARXIAN BIOLOGY, AND T H E SOCIAL SCENE

Other Books by Conway Zirkle

The Beginnings of Plant

Hybridization

Death of a Science in Russia

Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene CONWAY ZIRKLE Professor University

of of

Botany Pennsylvania

Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania Press

© 1959 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Published in Great Britain, India, and Pakistan By the Oxford University Press London, Bombay, and Karachi Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 58-11747

Printed in U. S. A.

Preface it fell to my lot to describe the destruction of genetics in Russia. (Death of a Science in Russia, Philadelphia, 1949). Incredible as it may seem, the Russians wiped out an entire science. But why they did—why they destroyed what they had been cherishing and supporting— was a question that could not be answered easily. T h e whole affair was very puzzling. Ever since the early 1920's, the Russians had been spending millions of rubles every year in educating geneticists and in supporting genetic research. T h e y had been relying on genetics—especially agricultural genetics—for improving their food plants and their domestic animals. Already their agricultural production had shown a marked increase, and new and improved varieties were being brought into cultivation. But, at the 1948 meeting of the Lenin Academy of Agriculture, a group of politically inspired charlatans attacked the Soviet geneticists and succeeded in liquidating Soviet genetics. Five geneticists recanted and denied their scientific knowledge, seeking, apparently, to secure their personal safety by confessing their ideological errors. T h e speeches at this meeting of the Academy were exceptionally revealing. T h e "line" taken by the winning coterie told the world a great deal about the Communists—about their beliefs and about their intellectual standards. It was made very clear that the Marxian dogmas extend far beyond the social and political sciences, and penetrate well into the biological. T h e orthodox Marxian Academicians not only denounced genetics and called it a reactionary science, 5

S

EVERAL YEARS AGO,

6

Evolution,

Marxian

Biology,

and the Social

Scene

but also discarded as heresies all the advances made in the study of evolution since the 1880's. As far as the Communists were concerned, the "correct" explanations of evolution were those that had been suggested before the time of Darwin. The Russian comments on Charles Darwin were particularly striking. While Darwin himself was hailed as a hero of science, as a man who had looked deeply into nature, and who had advanced biology in the right direction, his own great contribution to evolution was accepted only in part. The speakers at this famous meeting referred constantly to Darwin's errors and told how, time after time, he had to be corrected by the "Marxist classicists." They quoted Marx and Engels as authorities in biology, and derided and denounced as false every part of the theory of evolution that Marx and Engels had rejected. Obviously, one of the reasons why the Communists destroyed genetics, if not the chief reason, was the fact that it was incompatible with the biological doctrines of Marx and Engels. Thus, the search for the effective causes of the Russian destruction of genetics led directly back to the dicta of the very founders of communism. At this point, it would be well to call attention to a widespread misconception of the role played by Marx and Engels in spreading the theory of evolution. It is well known that they accepted evolution as a fact almost as soon as they read Darwin's great book, The Origin of Species. There is a story to the effect that Marx even wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin (but this was an honor that Darwin declined). Marx and Engles were evolutionists, and they rightly enjoyed the reputation of being on the side of the scientists in the controversy that arose when the theory of evolution was winning the support of the scholarly world. An actual examination of their writings, however, shows that they

Preface

7

accepted only a portion of the theory—only the fragments that were compatible with their collectivistic ideals. They drew a precise party line in the biology of their time and this line still persists in the Communist world. In 1948, it became an official doctrine in the Communist canon. When this occurred—when the Soviet Union created and supported an official science—evolution theory was crippled, and genetics was destroyed. Their places were taken by a truly Marxian biology. These dramatic events startled the civilized world. Scientists everywhere were brought face to face with the fact that an officially-supported quackery had displaced a science from nearly a third of the globe—an event unprecedented in the history of mankind. Tragic as this was, all was not loss. It served as a warning to the free world and it showed what could happen in the twentieth century. It brought out into the open the fact that a Marxian biology exists as a destructive, threatening, and well-organized cult. But in spite of the glare of publicity that played upon these happenings, a crucial fact was missed, that is, the fact that the Marxian distortion of biology has been in existence over three quarters of a century, in fact, ever since the Communist leaders first learned about evolution. It has also played an important role in shaping the Marxian ideologies. Moreover—and this has completely escaped the attention of our scholars and scientists—portions of this Marxian biology have penetrated into our own scholarly world. It has actually infected our own thinking on social and biological questions. Now, and perhaps for the first time, we are in a position to identify this Marxian distortion of a science and discover how it has influenced our own better thought of attitudes. Once we have traced its historical development we can show how it has modified the growth and development of our

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own beliefs and how it has pervaded our own thinking. Today, it is imbedded not only in the writings of socialist theoreticians and left-wing philosophers but in fields and disciplines that, ostensibly, are not Marxian at all. It has contributed to our present ideologies much more than appears on the surface. Today, our culture is exceptionally vulnerable to simplistic doctrines and, consequently, to misinformation in general; but this is not a unique phase in our intellectual history. T h e human race has always been more or less susceptible to error, and much of the history of ideas is devoted to notions that are now demonstrably false. T h e recent and enormous growth of our scientific information, however, has brought problems and dangers of its own. Our total knowledge is now practically out of control. It has grown to a point where no single person can grasp it. In order to handle it at all, we have had to divide it up—to fragment it into specialties—and the best of us are competent in no more than one or two of these specialized splinters. But to achieve even this limited competence we have to concentrate our interests, and expend so much of our time and brains that we are forced to acquiesce in a superficial acquaintance with—sometimes even a total ignorance of— the other splinters. As individuals, we absorb misinformation easily and our culture as a whole suffers. Our culture itself is easily infected both in the cracks between the specialties and in those complex fields where the pertinent data are scattered in the brains of different specialists. Thus, it is not remarkable that quackeries thrive among us and, at times, even hinder the spread of knowledge from one scholarly field to another. Our learning has become so compartmentalized that incongruous and even contradictory beliefs persist in neighbor-

Preface

9

i n g fields. For over three quarters of a century, the science of biology and its Marxian substitute have existed side by side. Moreover, until very recently, neither the scientific biologists nor those who accept the quack substitute for biology seem to have been aware of the other's existence. T h e biologists generally dismissed rather contemptuously those w h o they thought were just a few odd-balls on the fringe of their science, while those who accepted the Marxian line seem to have been unaware that their beliefs had been outgrown and rejected by the biologists. W e know now that the scientific biologists and the Marxian cultists had almost n o intellectual contacts. T h e y were very likely specialists in different fields, and their co-existence was fostered by the same sort of isolating mechanisms that separate our specialists. A n d these mechanisms are very effective! T o illustrate with one example: an almost complete breakdown in communication has occurred between the biological and the social sciences and this, incidentally, has made the latter especially vulnerable to Marxian biology. W e may even say that an asbestos curtain has descended between these two fields and that, until this curtain is pierced, a great deal of misinformation will go unchallenged. Of course, there are other factors that have contributed to the persistence of Marxian biology. O n the whole, it is in keeping with our humanitarian and altruistic urges, and it promises us (or our children) an easy escape from the unpleasant and perturbing complications of living in an imperfect society—of living in surroundings to which we are not completely adapted. T h e n , too, the Marxian doctrines have always attracted many sensitive and well-meaning people. But over and above these assets, the Marxian line in biology has an advantage that w e are only beginning to appreciate. It remained simple and understandable, while

10

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Biology,

and the Social

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the biology that it denounced grew complex and technicalwell beyond the grasp of the generality. Moreover, the Marxian rulings are authoritarian and absolute. No Marxian need ever be in doubt as to which biological doctrines are "correct," and which are in error. For those members of our species who crave certainty, such definitive rulings have long been available—rulings trimmed to fit an appealing ideology and thus comforting to all true believers. On the other hand, the science of biology has nothing really pleasing to offer. Indeed, no living, growing science can ever serve as a refuge for the intellectually weary. It can never attain the absolute or establish a completely stable creed. But even if honest scientists cannot attain absolute "truth," they can and do recognize misinformation (and this recognition is one of the major factors in the progress of science). And good scientists must, as a part of their professional duties, expose charlatans and refute quackery. But in spite of the intrinsic, human appeal of Marxian biology, it would hardly have infected our ideology to the extent it has, if it had not been supported—indirectly but nevertheless supported—by an active political group. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, powerful socialistic parties flourished in most of the advanced nations. Convinced socialists were active in almost all fields of human endeavor. Socialists were especially well represented in the intelligentsia. They made great contributions to art, letters, and even to science. Some socialists were exceptionally able and some of them made a marked impact upon our present, dominant, ideology. But in general, socialists were not acquainted with the technical advances in biology and so, perhaps unintentionally, they fostered and spread the biological doctrines that Marx and Engels had found acceptable. Over and beyond this incidental support by the socialists,

Preface

11

Marxian biology has recently acquired a new ally. It has received powerful aid from Communist propaganda. Ever since the Communists came into power, they have set out deliberately to explain away, or denounce as false, every fact, idea, or principle that does not fit into their own scheme of things. In the countries where they have political control, they have made Marxian biology an official doctrine, while in the rest of the world, they have devoted their propaganda apparat to advancing its principles. In disciplines isolated from biology proper, they have been unusually successful, for in these disciplines they have met with no real opposition. The extent to which Marxian biology has infected our culture and our learned specialties is truly startling. After all, the doctrine has been with us a long time, and it has never lacked an opportunity for invading the minds of the technically untrained. It did especially well during what has been called the "Age of Innocence." It is not feasible to trace here its entire course, for to do so would require writing not only a background history of evolution and genetics—the sciences it distorts and misrepresents—but also a history of all of our social sciences, of our humanities, and of those notions that we seem to absorb from the prevailing climate of opinion. Marxian biology is incorporated in much of our modern literature and, of course, in all Marxian philosophy. But to describe the complete course of its penetrance is, luckily, not the task of the present writer. Perhaps, some of the future historians of ideas will undertake the work. The following pages have a much more limited objective, but, even so, they have to cover a great deal of territory, enough in fact to raise some real auctorial problems. T o remain within a single and neatly integrated field is, of course, a desideratum of all well-brought-up writers, but no author can follow the peregrinations of Marxian biology

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and the Social

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even a little way and not wander a bit himself. Certainly, he cannot remain at h o m e in his own specialty. Nor would a description of M a r x i a n biology have any real meaning for anyone not a biologist if it did not include, as background material, some account of the biological sciences that the Marxians have misrepresented. B u t to cover all this in a single book strains the classical unities to the limit—perhaps it even cracks them. T h i s is too bad, of course, and we regret it, but the subject m a t t e r seems to d e m a n d a certain a m o u n t of wandering. T h e writer believes that the most economical achieving his objective of showing

way of

how a quackery

has

penetrated into our scholarly world, and how it has limited o u r information and affected o u r thinking is, first, to trace its history, point out the invading doctrines, and date their impact

on our ideologies.

But

to do

this

effectively—to

demonstrate the falsity of the doctrines—it is necessary also to trace a second history—a c o n c u r r e n t history of the sciences that have been misrepresented. In this way, the reader can be given the data that may enable him to make an informed judgment. Once we have these two histories, we are in a sound,

logical

position.

We

can,

by

using

them

as

co-

ordinates, locate and evaluate the quack notions n o m a t t e r where or in what disciplines they appear. Needless to say, both of the histories, elementary as they are, have to be traced according to the internal logic of their own development; and this means that they will contain many items that are not directly applicable to the numerous fragments of Marxian biology that are scattered throughout o u r scholarly specialties. In this connection, the writer can only ask the reader to be charitable and to bear patiently with the e x t r a and, perhaps, impertinent information. N o attempt is made here to follow the M a r x i a n line into

Preface

13

all of the fields that it has infected. For purely practical reasons, the coverage is limited rather sharply and somewhat arbitrarily to fields where the line is most easily identified and where the evidence of its existence can be presented most economically. T h e fields chosen for this survey include one from the humanities—English and American literature—and one from the social sciences—sociology. In the following pages, only passing reference will be made to the Marxian biology incorporated in other disciplines and to its impact on public opinion. In preparing this book for the press, I have not hesitated to impose on my friends and colleagues. Professor Ralph O. Erickson has read all of the chapters that deal with evolution and genetics, and has made many valuable comments. Professor Robert Spiller has given me the benefit of his criticisms on the first chapter and on the chapter that deals with belles lettres (Chapter IX). Four members of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Sociology, Professor R e x Crawford, Dr. A. H. Hobbes, Dr. Everett Lee, and Professor Dorothy Thomas, have read and criticized the chapter, "Marxian Biology and Sociology." I have found their comments very helpful, but I do not wish to imply that they are in agreement with all that the chapter c o n t a i n s . Dr. Elizabeth Flower has kindly read Chapter V and Dr. Jeannette Nichols Chapter VIII. I am grateful for their comments. I am especially indebted to my friend, Mr. L. Sprague DeCamp, who has read the greater part of the manuscript and has striven manfully to keep me from writing in "professorese." My wife, Helen Kingsbury Zirkle, as usual, has read the entire manuscript and made a number of valuable suggestions. I wish, finally, to acknowledge with thanks the financial assistance of a University of Pennsylvania Faculty Research Grant.

Contents Preface

5

1. Our Evolutionary Background

19

2. The Theory of Evolution ca. 1870

57

3. The Beginnings of Marxian Biology

81

4. The Development of Evolution Theory from 1870 to 1900

114

5. The Impact of Evolution on Society and on the Social Studies

146

6. The Machinery of Heredity, 1900-50

186

7. Evolution Theory in the Twentieth Century

217

8. Evolution and the Future of Mankind

249

9. Marxian Biology and Beautiful Letters

292

10. Marxian Biology in the Communist World

353

11. Marxian Biology and Sociology

416

12. Epilogue

481

Bibliography

501

Index

521

EVOLUTION, MARXIAN BIOLOGY, AND THE SOCIAL SCENE

L

Our Evolutionary Background §1

practically every educated man believes in evolution—believes that the two ar three million species that now inhabit the earth are descended from a few, or even from a single primordial source. T o this extent, evolution is incorporated in the thinking of our time. But the mere acceptance of evolution does not imply an understanding of it—certainly it does not imply an understanding of what brought it about or how it operates in producing new species from old. With the exception of a few highly specialized biologists, those who accept evolution seem to do so on a purely verbal level. A m o n g the educated, however, evolution is now an accepted fact, but as soon as its validity is admitted, it seems to be filed away in some otherwise unused compartment of the mind and placed, as it were, in dead storage. It is true that "evolution" has displaced "special creation" and this represents a gain, for it allows a natural explanation to displace a supernatural one. Otherwise, the theory of evolution has but little influence on our current canons of thought. Few, even among the educated, are concerned with its causes or its consequences, and almost no one outside of the biological fraternity seems to be aware of the fact that evolution is relevant to human beings and to human ODAY,

affairs. 19

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Biology,

and the Social

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Three generations ago, however, evolution was an exciting topic, but today it has dwindled into a mere "academic" subject, that is, to all except the professionals in the field. This, in spite of the fact that, during the last twenty years, a real renaissance has taken place in evolutionary research, and that new discoveries have again made evolution into a very lively science. All books on evolution over twenty years old are now obsolescent, and any thinking that is based on them only is incomplete and uninformed. T h e subject is alive and growing rapidly. Today, a number of first rate scientists are active in the field and they have made, and are making, basic contributions to our knowledge of the forces that have made all living things as they are. Obviously, if man himself has evolved, it follows that everything about him has evolved, his bodily structures and his physiological reactions, his moral and ethical standards, his cultures and his social organizations, and even his religions. Nearly everything that we have learned about the causes of evolution has a direct bearing upon the social and political questions that face us, and upon the answers that we find acceptable. Thus, the pertinent data from the field of evolution cannot be ignored in any valid interpretation of human behavior, or in any sound ordering of human affairs. This is not to argue, however, that the evolutionary or the biological aspects of human society should overshadow all others or that data of equal importance cannot be derived from other sources. T h e contrary is true. Man and his society form a complex interacting system—a system that no one simple doctrine can ever encompass or explain. Nor can the whole complex ever be observed from a single viewpoint. If we are ever to understand the system well enough to adjust ourselves to it rationally—to live with ourselves comfortably

Our Evolutionary

Background

21

—we shall have to utilize all of the knowledge that we can get from every source that is available—certainly from all the sciences that are relevant. T o ignore any pertinent data is to court disaster. It is especially dangerous to plan a new society for a better future while remaining ignorant of the biological potentialities and limitations of the creature for whom the future is planned. Those restless and creative minds, that have devised the almost countless plans for improving the lot of humanity, have all assumed that they had the data that they needed for designing a better world and that their altruistic projects were really immanent in Creation itself. As a rule, they were not aware of all the assumptions they made—most of their postulates were tacit—but they designed their reforms (or their Utopias) in the light of some current belief as to the nature of man and as to where he belonged in the universal scheme of things. They would have been on firmer ground, naturally, if they had actually known where human beings had come from, why they existed in the universe, and what had produced them in the first place. Needless to say, all of these would-be benefactors were men of great faith, and all were convinced that they knew the answer to the fundamental questions. But very few of them made their background assumptions clear or stated their postulates explicitly. T h e i r notions as to the kind of world they lived in, though, are implicit in the improvements they sought to effect. In a few instances, however, they stated their assumptions openly. In the middle ages, for example, when practically everyone believed that man was created by a special act of the Deity, it seemed obvious that anyone who wished to benefit mankind would have to know just what the designs of the Creator were—know what He had in mind when He created man—because any change for the better would, by the very

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Evolution,

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nature of things, have to be compatible with the Divine purpose. The famous revolutionary chant of the fourteenth century: When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? is an excellent illustration of this—of justifying a proposed reform by fitting it into the accepted belief as to the origin of the human race and, thus, into the overall plans of the Deity. By this couplet, the followers of Wat Tyler implied very reasonably that, as all men were really blood brothers, their separation into rigid feudal classes was a most unnatural arrangement. Another instance of the use of the supposed origin of man to justify a social order occurred in the sixteenth century, when a queer problem faced the Spaniards who had explored the New World. The Spaniards learned, somewhat belatedly, that they really had discovered a new world. The problem was: where had the Indians come from? Were they descended from Adam or were they true autochthons? The answer, of course, had both a practical and a theoretical application. If the Indians were descended from Adam, they had souls, and, like the rest of mankind, were guilty of original sin. Consequently, it was the duty of the Spaniards to baptize them and convert them to Christianity. The Indians then would be real human beings and should have all the privileges and duties of such. On the other hand, if they were autochthons, they would have no souls and would be only a kind of animal, and the Spaniards could very properly enslave and domesticate them along with the other useful mammals. Needless to say, the Spaniards decided that the Indians were descended from Adam and had souls which should be saved, and, because of this decision, they undertook their great mission work.

Our Evolutionary Background

23

Still another illustration is furnished by the controversy over slavery which arose in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Here, the biblical history of the human race was used to support a challenge status quo. In our Southern states, Negro slavery was sometimes justified by claiming that the Negro was descended from Ham, one of the sons of Noah. While this assumption made the slaves and their owners kin, about one-hundred-thirtieth cousins, it did not imply that they should have equal privileges or rights, for, according to Holy Writ, Ham had sinned and his progeny was to suffer the punishment of servitude. Negro slavery, thus, was held to be compatible both with Nature and with the wishes of Nature's God. Later in the century, when the theory of evolution was generally accepted, the basic assumptions as to man's origin shifted. Obviously, any discovery that shed light on where man had come from or what had made him would tell a great deal about the sort of a creature he was and about what would be good for him. Thus, the knowledge of what caused evolution became necessary and even urgent to those who were concerned with man's future. At first, not much was known about what made species evolve. All that was available was some important but incomplete data pieced out with a number of reasonable assumptions, but, even so, evolution offered great hopes to those who were seeking to improve the lot of mankind. The new doctrine was really exciting. This era, the latter half of the nineteenth century, was perhaps the most optimistic period in all history. Progress itself seemed to be a part of nature. Evolution had produced man from an ape-like ancestor and seemed bent on improving him still further until, ultimately, he would become a superman. The eugenic movement, as conceived by Francis

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Galton, developed logically in the spirit of the times. It actually proposed that man take over and direct his own evolution and make himself into a being worthy of the brave new world, the world whose advent appeared so imminent. Galton based his eugenic program upon the limited knowledge of evolution and heredity that was available at the time. He did the best he could with what he had, but others were not so conscientious. Some of his followers became true zealots and even sought to apply to the human race the selective breeding that had "improved" the domestic breeds. Competing ideologists also sought support from the newer knowledge, even though they could obtain the support only by picking and choosing among the new discoveries just those that were compatible with their long-held and well-loved doctrines. Karl Marx, for example, did not accept or reject biological theories according to the objective evidence of their validity but according to the way they fit into his schemes of social reform. Thus even at this early date, he established a party line in biology, for he insisted that his devotees should conform to his teachings. He was, as we know, never one to tolerate the slightest deviation in any of his followers. T h e biological principles which impinged on the Marxian Weltanschauung were those used to explain evolution. Later, when the new science of genetics contributed to our understanding of the subject, it also became revelant to the beliefs of the Marxians and, of course, it is still relevant. Today, the Marxian line in evolution and genetics is still followed by the Communists 1 and, surprisingly enough, is still respectable in a number of other quarters. 1 "In his time Darwin was unable to free himself from the theoretical mistakes which he committed. These errors were discovered and pointed out by the Marxists classicists." Lysenko, 1948.

Our Evolutionary

Background

25

As we have stated earlier, biology has advanced an enormous distance during the past century, and now most of the hypotheses of the early evolutionists have been tested thoroughly. Many of them were found to be inconsistent with the growing body of knowledge and have been discarded. Others have survived a most extensive experimental investigation and are now accepted as true—in the sense that anything is considered "true" in an experimental science. Because a growing science cannot be limited by dogma or by ex cathedra directives, the biology of today is completely at odds with the static biology of the Marxians. If we wish to learn the full extent of the present Marxian aberration, we will have to know something at least about human evolution, for it is in this field that the aberration started, and it is in this field that it deviates most from the science of today. §2 Human beings have been on earth about one million years. If the reader wishes to add or subtract a quarter of a million years to this period, he may do so and remain well within his rights. If he insists on adding or subtracting a half million years, no biologist could really object. One million years, however, is a fair approximation of the time our ancestors have been human and it is a period easy to remember. Of course, we must insist on the word "about" in the original statement, and we should call attention to the fact that a precise estimate of the time is impossible. We can agree that, at some time in the distant past, our ancestors were human and that, at another and still earlier time, they were prehuman. As our knowledge increases and our data become more precise, we can decrease somewhat the interval between the two periods. But we can never reduce the interval

26

Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene

completely because the change from a pre-human to a human status did not occur sharply or suddenly. Any attempt to state exactly when our ancestors became human would involve us in arbitrary and meaningless definitions. Our pre-human ancestors lived in trees and our human ancestors lived on the ground, and this change from an arboreal to a terrestrial habitat is obviously connected with their acquiring a human status. Certainly, the changes in habitat and in status overlapped. Indeed, the stimulus of a drastic alteration in our ecology might well have been the immediate cause of our great evolutionary advance. Before the change, our ancestors were tree living apes who foraged occasionally on the ground and after the change they were land living, but still ape-like creatures who climbed into the trees when they were menaced by the larger carnivores. Even today, our ability to climb a tree in extremis has saved many lives. The descent from the trees certainly changed our ancestors in many ways over and beyond the physical, anatomical adaptations to a life on land. For one thing, it gave them a much greater territorial range. When they were arboreal, their habitat was sharply circumscribed and, although they were very active, their mobility was poor. Even open glades or fertile prairies were barriers to their wanderings. They were confined to the tropical forests, and they could not pass from one forest to another with any facility. Wide rivers were uncrossable as were all mountains higher than the tree line. Drier regions, where the trees were sparse and scattered, were also uninhabitable. We can get a fair idea of how our ancestors lived at this stage of their development by observing the monkeys who are still living in the trees. The genus which evolved into Homo, like the genera of monkeys, was composed of a number of different species,

Our Evolutionary

Background

27

but the range of each species was limited to a small area. T h e number of individuals in each species must also have been small because the habitat provided only a limited amount of suitable food. Our ancestors could not eat the coarse vegetation as did the herbivores, nor could they obtain meat in quantity, for, at this phase of their evolution, they were not skilled hunters. As our ancestoral genus became better adapted for making short forays on the ground, its range expanded. It overcame some minor barriers to migration and it acquired more sources of food. The total population must also have increased but probably the number of different species, which lived within a given range, decreased. We can be fairly certain of this because the proliferation of species requires barriers—requires isolating mechanisms—and, as the genus Homo became terrestrial, the earlier barriers no longer served to isolate the breeding groups. This does not mean necessarily that the total number of hominoid species decreased, because, as our progenitors became better adapted to life on land, they extended their range enormously, and they soon had much more room in which different species could evolve. When we try to determine just where our ancestors lived at any one time, we are faced with a puzzle which has not yet been solved. The data are still too incomplete to help us much. Fossil remains of primitive human beings have been found from Gibraltar to China and from England to Java. Skeletons discovered in South Africa show that this continent must also be included in the range. W e do know that at one time or another primitive man wandered over the entire Old World, but we do not know just how far his range extended in any one era. It was certainly much less than the whole region he covered in all of his wanderings, but we can-

28

Evolution,

Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene

not limit him to the territory marked out by his remains. T o assume that he did not range where he left no fossils (or where we have found no fossils) is, of course, completely gratuitous. In the absence of barriers to migration, we are forced to assume that he wandered great distances, that he went wherever he could. H e had some limits, of course, for he could not live in the Arctic until after he had learned to sew and to make clothes of skins. At times, too, his range contracted. During the several ice ages, he had to retreat before the glaciers, but then he lived in regions which are now deserts but which were well-watered during the advances of the ice sheets. In his earlier terrestrial stages, man could not cross wide seas or straits, so when we find his remains on islands, we take it for granted that he arrived there when the islands were connected to the larger land masses. W e are safe in assuming that, during the million years we assign to our human ancestors, they expanded into all possible regions of the O l d World, migrated during the climatic changes, stopped temporarily before seas, deserts, and mountains, but passed on or around these impediments whenever the changing climates or topographies made the barriers passable. During the greater part of their existence as human beings, our ancestors probably lived in small, partially isolated breeding groups which were comparable in size with those of the other primates. Sometimes, the groups may have been no larger than single families, and the difficulties of obtaining food make it extremely unlikely that they were as large as the groups in which the more social monkeys live. As evolution progressed and as their skill in obtaining food increased, the groups naturally became larger until, late in the story, our ancestors lived in small tribes. During this whole period, inbreeding was prevalent but, as few groups

Our

Evolutionary

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29

were entirely isolated from their neighbors, a certain a m o u n t of cross-breeding also took place. This state of affairs is close to o p t i m u m for speedy evolution. T h e inbreeding itself had certain evolutionary advantages as it brought recessive defects out into the open where they could be eliminated by natural selection, while the genie migrations from neighboring groups brought in new factors, corrected the evil effects of inbreeding, and supplied a certain amount of variability to the stock—again a necessary condition for natural selection to be effective. T h i s brings us to the most surprising characteristic of h u m a n evolution and that is the almost incredible speed with which it took place—the speed with which our ancestors left the rest of the animal kingdom behind. 2 At the beginning of the period they were only one genus among many and not a particularly remarkable one at that. It is true that they had a certain amount of brains and were perhaps as intelligent as any of their competitors, as intelligent certainly as a good chimpanzee, dog, horse, elephant, or parrot. At the end of the period, they had no intellectual rivals in the entire animal kingdom and were truly in a class by themselves. Great as was this unprecedented increase in intelligence, it occurred in a very small portion of the evolutionary time scale. T h i s speed of our evolution deserves emphasis for it is of major significance. It is only mentioned here, but it will be discussed in detail later. Of course all of the h u m a n and near-human groups did not evolve at the same rate. Many of them, perhaps all that were isolated for long periods, became stabilized, but these need not concern us further. Here, we are interested not in the hominid groups which fell behind but in our own 2 Loren C. Eiseley, Scientific American,

189:6:65-72 (1953).

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ancestors. The rate of human evolution was not the average rate at which the breeding groups evolved; on the contrary, it was the maximum rate at which any group evolved. Moreover, this maximum rate was always exceptional. Perhaps, it was limited to groups in certain favorable regions, in lands where they were not completely isolated from other groups and where they could exchange genes with their neighbors. Evolution could proceed rapidly only where there were collections of related groups, because no group could evolve noticeably for any length of time if it were so isolated that it could not get advantageous genes from other groups. We can now picture the genus Homo as being spread thinly over a great deal of territory and divided into many —perhaps thousands of—breeding groups. Between many neighboring groups, the barriers were minor, and were crossed frequently. Many groups certainly amalgamated temporarily but split up again when they migrated in search of food. But this is not the whole picture. Major barriers, such as deserts, seas, and mountain ranges also separated the groups and prevented any universal migration of genes. In a widespread genus which was evolving rapidly, the conditions thus were ideal for rapid speciation. Before we can estimate the number of human species which existed at any one time, we shall have to remove purely verbal difficulties, and this means entering a field of controversy. Species are the most important single systematic category used by evolutionists. Darwin, himself, called his great book on evolution The Origin of Species. The writer wishes to record here his own ideas on the subject and states that he believes that species are objective units of organic forms, but that they are also subjective conveniences for those who would classify the various forms of life. This dual aspect has naturally led to some confusion. Systematists

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are still looking for a definition of species which will satisfy all specialists, but, naturally, they have not succeeded. A definition which is pleasing to an ornithologist will be wholly inadequate for a botanist, and one which suits a paleontologist may leave a geneticist cold. On the other hand, a definition so broad that it does not offend any of the disciplines is too indeterminate and vague to be of any real use. T h e difficulty may even be inherent in the subject itself. If we believe that species have evolved and are still evolving, it becomes impossible for us to define them in absolute terms. Without going into the matter further, we will merely record the fact that those who have specialized in studying human fossils give the word species one meaning while the zoologists, who work with living forms, give it another. We will use the term here in a sense close to that of the zoologists, but we will not accept the simple view held by many zoologists that, if two forms can be crossed and their progeny are fertile, they necessarily belong to the same species.8 Nor shall we adopt the other extreme. T o return to human evolution: At least in the beginning, the conditions under which Homo evolved were optimum for speciation, and, if these conditions had remained constant, we should expect dozens of different species to have evolved. Homo was a rapidly evolving genus, scattered over a great area, living in different climates, and becoming adapted to many new habitats. It was also divided into many populations separated by effective isolation mechanisms—all factors making for many species. T h e r e were forces, however, working in the opposite direction. As our ancestors grew more skillful in securing food and more people could live 3 Ernst Mayr, ("Taxonomic Categories in Fossil Homonids" Cold Spring Harbor Symposia, 15:109-118, 1950) gives an excellent account of the conflicting systematic conventions.

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in a given territory, the smaller groups tended to coalesce. T h e very speed with which certain groups evolved served to suppress or even exterminate their rivals. Increased human motility tended to eliminate the lesser barriers so that the isolated regions, suitable for species formation, decreased in number. Thus, it is possible that, at no one time, were there more than a very few species in existence. At last, toward the end of our pre-civilized period, a single species, Homo sapiens, overran the entire world and engulfed or exterminated all its rivals. Today, there is but one species of man. It might be well to insert here, parenthetically, the statement that many gaps remain in our knowledge of human prehistory. We cannot be sure that the overrunning of the human world by a single species was a unique event. T h e spread of Homo sapiens may have been only the last such occurrence. If some such event had happened earlier, it would have decreased the number of human species which existed at any subsequent period. Since historic times, all human beings have belonged to a single species but to a species which is separated into a number of varieties or races. Just how or when the different races arose, however, we do not know. We can explain the racial differences which exist today in at least two ways, but we have no crucial facts which would make us prefer one explanation to the other. Each hypothesis is a complete explanation, but as they are not mutually exclusive, they both may be valid in part. The first hypothesis assumes that Homo sapiens spread over the world and exterminated all other species or subspecies of man. This species then had the whole world to itself, and, living under many different conditions in many different climates, it evolved along divergent lines as it became adapted to its varied surroundings. This divergent

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evolution produced the existing races but, as sufficient time has not yet elapsed, the races have not yet evolved into different species. In general, this hypothesis pictures the evolution of Homo sapiens as starting along a path similar to that which the genus Homo itself had taken. T h e second hypothesis assumes that, when Homo sapiens overran its neighbors, it hybridized with them and thus absorbed a certain number of genes from the species (or subspecies) which it submerged. T h e differences between the present races could then be explained by assuming that their sapiens ancestors acquired their foreign genes from different species (or sub-species) and that, in different regions, they acquired them in different amounts. As far as we can tell, the net effects of two such methods of race formation would be the same, so we cannot accept one method and reject the other. This brings up the interesting question as to what is apt to happen when two or more species or varieties of man make contact. T h e answer is not hard to find—what happens is that human beings do practically everything that they are capable of doing. We have some fossil evidence as to what occurred when Homo sapiens made contact with Homo Νeanderthalensis. These two species met on a wide front, one extending several thousand miles. In western Europe, the skeletal remains show a clean break between those of Neanderthal man and those of Cro-Magnon, the representatives of the sapiens who supplanted him. Here, Neanderthal man was exterminated and the view was originally held that the "lesser breeds without the law" were simply liquidated by members of our more aggressive and higher species (Osborn, 1915). T h e lesser breeds were even supposd to be the prototypes of the gnomes and dwarfs of our folklore. Neanderthal remains discovered in Palestine, however, tell a different

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story. In the Carmel caves, a n u m b e r of skeletons have been found intermediate between the two species and the evidence is overwhelming that here, at least, Homo sapiens and Homo Neanderthalensis hybridized (McCown and Keith, 1939). As a consequence of the discovery of the Carmel skeletons, a competing view arose. T h i s view is that when h u m a n species or varieties come into contact they hybridize. T o express a personal judgment, each of these contrasting views seems to be too simple. W e have one excellent historical example of two different races making contact on a very wide front. Following the discovery of America, the white man and the American Indians met head on from Nova Scotia to Patagonia, and we know from our records that what happened in one region is no indication at all as to what happened in another. Along the entire front, the invaders both slaughtered the aborigines and hybridized with them, but which behavior pattern predominated varied from place to place. In some regions, the modern populations show no trace of the aborigines. In other regions, the modern populations are predominantly Indian. In parts of South America, the European soldiery took native concubines and begat hybrids, but subsequent migrations from Europe changed the population more and more toward the European norm. In other parts, however, the natives seem to have absorbed the invading Spanish and only a slight change took place in the pre-conquest stock. On the other hand, the English fought the Indians, took their land, and removed them to reservations. T h u s , where the English settled, the Indians furnished almost no genes to the new population. Certainly, no simple pattern of behavior can describe all that happens when two h u m a n species or races meet. T h e innumerable prehistoric migrations and

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conquests m u s t also have p r o d u c e d effects at least as variable as those which history has recorded. O u r history lists i n n u m e r a b l e instances of m i g r a t i n g peoples, of battles, wars, a n d conquests. Relatively civilized nations have c o n q u e r e d b a r b a r i a n s a n d colonized their lands. Barbarians have overthrown civilized countries a n d r e d u c e d the c o n q u e r e d to serfdom. T h e i n v e n t i o n of writing, which marks the d a w n of history, does n o t seem to have caused any s h a r p break in the overall standards of h u m a n behavior. W e are to some degree, at least, justified in e x t r a p o l a t i n g backw a r d the conduct patterns a n d ethical standards of early historic times. Perhaps, the best record we have of an early historic invasion is the account of the o n e led by J o s h u a into Palestine. I n this account, the ethical standards of the invadi n g nation are actually a p a r t of o u r own m o r a l heritage. H e r e , in the fifteenth century B.C., the highest possible A u t h o r i t y gave a specific directive to a m i g r a t i n g people—a directive which gives us an excellent sample of ancient h u m a n conduct. From D e u t e r o n o m y (20: 13-16): (13) And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: (14) But the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. (15) T h u s shalt thou do u n t o all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. (16) But for the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. H e r e , we find both hybridization a n d e x t e r m i n a t i o n prov i d e d for in a single invasion. At least, it solved the r e f u g e e p r o b l e m . Genocide is n o t a m o d e r n invention.

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§3 T h e preceding section is little more than a sketch, an elementary outline of human evolution. W e will have to treat one aspect of our evolution more intensively, however, even at the cost of pushing our inferences to the very limits justified by our data. This more intensive treatment is necessary because it deals with just that part of our ancient prehistory which is pertinent to an understanding of the biological factors which control our present and our future evolution. W e must also include these biological factors in any rational attempt to construct or maintain a healthy society. In brief, we will consider how we evolved so far that we left all other animals behind, and how Ave secured a status so different from that of our nearest non-human relatives. In emphasizing the difference between man and all other animals, the writer finds himself in some rather bad company, a company unseemly for any biologist to join, for it includes both Fundamentalists and Marxians. T h e Fundamentalists remove men from the animal kingdom and even deny that he evolved, and this, of course, is in keeping with their religious dogmas. T h e Marxians of today likewise remove man from the biological world and place him in a sociological one, and this removal aids them in evading the biology which is incompatible with their social doctrines. 4 Many sociologists also belong in this company for they emphasize man's uniqueness and ignore his likeness to the rest of the animal * "Soviet scholars categorically reject the attempts to apply biological laws to social life. The development of society is subject not to biological but to higher social laws. Every attempt to extend the laws of the animal world to mankind means an attempt to lower man to the level of the beast." Praesidium of the Academy of Science, U.S.S.R., December 14, 1948. William Jennings Bryan went further than this and denied in 1925 that man was a mammal.

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k i n g d o m , and this serves a useful function f o r it helps them a v o i d a n u m b e r of very p e r t u r b i n g complications.

Never-

theless, if w e make an honest evaluation of man's place in nature, w e must recognize that a great gap has opened u p between his intellectual d e v e l o p m e n t and that of any other l i v i n g creature, and this gap is much greater than any other break f o u n d anywhere else in the w h o l e evolution of intellect. W h i l e our k n o w l e d g e of evolution is n o w in a relatively satisfactory state, i.e., w e can explain how evolution has occurred in terms of known forces, 5 we shall still have to discover and evaluate the u n i q u e conditions in which the forces operated if we are to explain how man became u n i q u e in any m a j o r respect, in this case, in respect to his intellect. Anything exceptional or peculiar that can be f o u n d in his evolutionary history should be investigated intensively if w e are e v e r to find a clue as to what caused man to leave all of his relatives so far behind. T h e first odd fact about the evolution of the human intellect is the almost increditible s p e e d 6 with which it took place. T h i s speed itself furnishes the best inkling as to the conditions in which the factors of evolution operated. T h e e v o l u t i o n of the human intelligence obviously proceeded at a m a x i m u m rate, and, since a considerable amount is known about the conditions which are o p t i m u m f o r rapid evolution, w e should have little difficulty in i d e n t i f y i n g at least some of the conditions. T h e general subject of the time element in e v o l u t i o n has been given a very lucid and adequate exposi5 T h i s must not be taken to mean that we know all that is to be known about evolution or that new and unexpected discoveries will not be made in the field! Unlike the biologists of the nineteenth century, however, we do not have to postulate the existence of unknown principles to explain the known facts. Our explanation of evolution is complete, but a complete explanation, of course, docs not have to be true. β Loren C. Eiseley 1953, has emphasized this speed. H e even refers to it as " T h e Explosion of Brains."

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7

tion by Simpson, in a book invaluable for those technically equipped to understand it. T h e reader is referred to this work for a general treatment of this important subject. Here, we will consider merely the application to h u m a n evolution of the factors described by Simpson and, in addition to these, a factor which, to the best of our knowledge, has not been recognized or evaluated. W e would expect that o u r ancestors, in changing from an arboreal to a terrestrial habitat, would either become extinct or evolve very rapidly. In fact, this change may have been the m a j o r stimulus which started a species of ape on its evolutionary path which led to its becoming h u m a n . T o quote Simpson (p. 119), " I n small populations undergoing pronounced shifts in environment and ecology, much higher rates of evolution are possible and much greater fluctuation of rate is probable." T h i s statement is based on adequate evidence, b u t none of the copious data which Simpson gave will be cited here. W e will be concerned only with showing that, while the change of habitat of our ancestors was a factor in the speed of their evolution, it was not the only factor and probably not the most important one. T h e evolutionary changes caused by the new habitat would, of course, be adaptations fitting m a n k i n d for a life on land. These are not, however, the most i m p o r t a n t evolutionary changes which occurred in the h u m a n stock, n o r did they proceed far e n o u g h m a n is still badly adapted physically for a life on land. Anyone can check his own unadaptation by trying to catch a pet dog who insists on playing, or more simply, by going barefooted. W e need not belabor the point of our inadequate physical fitness for a life in "nature." W e have known for some time that something has checked o u r evolution along a 7 George Gaylord Simpson, Tempo Columbia University Press, 1944).

and Mode

in Evolution

(New York:

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path which would enable us to compete on even terms with other land animals using only our " n a t u r a l " equipment. W e do not have the speed of the cursorial animals who can outrun the larger carnivores. (As this is written, just fifteen men have run a mile under four minutes.) N o r do we have teeth and claws which would enable us to stand our ground and repel o u r enemies. Most of us, as very young children, have felt acutely our lack of good fighting teeth and nails. Actually, as land animals, our ancestors could neither run nor stand their ground and fight. T h e y were saved from extinction through their ability to evade their enemies by c l i m b i n g trees. T h e y were able to stand their ground and face the larger carnivores only after they had developed weapons. Certainly our great difference from all other animals was not caused by our descent from the trees, although this change may have been an important stimulus. W h a t evidence we have indicates the contrary—that this difference, expressed in our ability to invent weapons, has actually slowed up our direct physical adaptation. T h e n , too, we have additional evidence from other and related animals who also made the transition from the trees to the ground. O u r ancestors were not the only apes who became terrestrial. Several groups of baboons and their relatives also took to the ground and our nearer relative, the gorilla, followed. Yet neither baboons n o r gorillas, intelligent as they are, are on o u r side of the great intellectual gap. B e f o r e proceeding further, we should consider certain basic principles of evolution which bear directly on the problem. T h e net effect of evolution, of course, is to develop and conserve fitness. A species achieves an adaptation to its surroundings as a result of its evolution, and the degree of its adaptation becomes a m a j o r factor in the rate at which it continues to evolve. For example, a species which is perfectly

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adapted to its living conditions ceases to evolve. It has already achieved its goal. It is true that such factors as mutation pressure and, in small breeding groups, genie drift may cause it to deviate from its norm, but natural selection is always working toward maintaining and restoring its adaptation. At the other extreme, a species which is too unadapted also does not evolve. It becomes extinct. Evolution is possible only when a species is incompletely adapted to its environment, but its unadaptation must be within limits. T h e maximum rate of evolution can occur only when the amount of the maladjustment is optimum. When we consider the speed of our ancestors' intellectual evolution, we can be certain that there was some factor in their environment to which they were ill adapted and ill adapted to just that degree which was optimum for rapid progress. We will have to identify this factor if we are ever to explain the direction and rate of their evolution. Actually, the task need not be too difficult, for we already have a number of clues as to its nature. We also have a number of specifications which it must satisfy. We are even assisted in our identification of the factor by the necessity of resolving an apparent contradiction. We shall return to this point shortly, after we have considered the actual evidence for the unprecedented speed with which human beings have acquired their intellects. Evolution, of course, does not proceed at a constant rate. Sudden spurts are separated from each other by periods of relatively slow change. For close to two billion years, our ancestors evolved at the same rate as their relatives, the same rate as other members of their genus, family, and order. In fact, they often lagged behind their more radical competitors, although they did remain in the main line of evolution. During the Age of Reptiles, when the great saurians dominated

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the land areas, they remained small and relatively primitive. During the greater part of the Age of Mammals also, they were conservative and for a while they were left behind by most of their contemporaries. Even today, we show traces o£ this evolutionary backwardness, for our skeletons are much more primitive than are those of many other mammals, such as horses and cows. It is only very recently that our own unique evolution got under way, only during the last onetwentieth of one per cent of the time our ancestors have been in existence. But, when once this evolution started, it really spurted ahead and we left all other forms of life far behind. This spurt was, of course, almost entirely limited to the evolution of intellect, for our anatomical differences from our nearer relatives are still only superficial. Short in time as this spurt is—a mere million years—it did not itself proceed at a constant rate. What evidence we have indicates that it began slowly and acquired speed only during the latter fraction of its course. When we trace our progress from the more generalized monkey stock, we can distinguish three separate evolutionary stages. Only in the last stage is there any indication of a major increase in intellect. In the first stage, we were accompanied by the apes, both African and Asiatic, and our progress consisted of a marked increase in the length of our arms in proportion to the length of our trunks. During this phase, the anthropoid stocks evolved together. In the second stage, the anthropoid stock started to separate. T h e chimpanzees and gorillas remained conservative; the orangs and gibbons developed still longer arms, while our ancestors grew much longer legs (Schultz, 1950). In the third and final stage, our ancestors lost their apelike heads and acquired heads which were distinctly human (Washburn, 1950). It is worth emphasizing here that our bodies became man-

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like before our heads did. T h i s is shown by the fossils of Australopithicus, as this transitional form, a form very close to our direct ancestral line, seems to be almost a composite being. It retained an apelike head after its body had become human. Of course, we cannot equate the development of human intelligence directly with the development of human skulls, but we should note that human intelligence has been found thus far only in human skulls. As human heads came late on the scene, it appears probable that the greater part of the intellectual differences between man and the apes also came late—possibly within the last half million years. T h i s would, indeed, indicate a most rapid evolution. W h e n we try to account for the rate at which the human intellect evolved, we are confronted with an apparent difficulty in finding a maladjusting factor which could keep our unadaptation at the optimum, and which can account for both the speed and the amount of our u n i q u e evolution. If, at any time, the degree of our unadaptation was optimum for rapid progress, it would not be great enough to explain the whole extent of our evolution. A n d on the contrary, if it were great enough to explain our total evolutionary progress over and beyond the apes, it would have been great enough originally to have caused our extinction. T h i s is a real dilemma. W e can hardly conceive of even the most intelligent of our prehuman ancestors being able to take care of themselves in any of the present human environments. Yet, the factor of unadaptation must have existed in an optimum degree for many human ages. T h i s dilemma can be resolved, however, if we assume that the factor itself changed with the passage of time, that it itself evolved. O u r requirements would be met perfectly if the maladjusting factor's own evolution was intimately connected with ours, if we and it evolved together,

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so that w e were always u n a d a p t e d to just the right a m o u n t which w o u l d secure o u r c o n t i n u e d a n d speedy progress. W e can t h i n k of o n e i m p o r t a n t factor and, o n e only, w h i c h w o u l d m e e t these r e q u i r e m e n t s . W e n a m e it, however, w i t h the greatest reluctance, f o r the word is now in some intellectual d i s r e p u t e . T h e t e r m has been misused so greatly a n d has served so o f t e n as a means of evading u n w a n t e d biological complications that it has become, in part, m e r e cant. Its direct influence on h u m a n behavior and on h u m a n accomp l i s h m e n t s has been so exaggerated that its m u c h greater indirect role—its c o n t i n u i n g role in h u m a n evolution itself— has been ignored. T h e w o r d we refer to is " c u l t u r e " a n d w e shall try to show that o u r past c u l t u r e has been not only a f a c t o r in o u r biological evolution, b u t also the only f a c t o r which explains b o t h the speed of o u r evolution a n d t h e distance it has taken us f r o m all o t h e r animals. T h a t o u r c u l t u r e can i n f l u e n c e o u r biological evolution has been recognized by C o o n (1950, 1955). Dobzhansky a n d M o n t a g u 8 have noted the i m p o r t a n c e of o u r c u l t u r e as a selecting agent: T h e most important setting of human evolution is the h u m a n social environment. . . . Success of the individual in most h u m a n societies has depended and continues to depend upon his ability rapidly to evolve behavior patterns which fit him to the kaleidoscope of the conditions he encounters. He is best oil if he submits to some, rebels against others and escapes from still other situations. Individuals who display a greater fixity of response than their fellows suffer under most forms of human society and tend to fall by the way. Suppleness, plasticity and, most important of all, ability to profit by experience and education are required. . . . T h e survival value of this capacity is manifest, 8 T h . Dobzhansky a n d M. F. Ashley Montagu, "Natural Selection and the M e n t a l Capacities of M a n k i n d , " Science 105:587-590 (1947).

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and therefore the possibility of its development through natural selection is evident. W h a t the authors are saying indirectly is that intelligence has survival value in human evolution, a statement that few would challenge. T h a t it would have exactly the same survival index in all cultures, however, is questionable, but as the cultures increased in complexity, its value should increase. Exception, however, may be found in those civilizations where the not-quite-bright are cherished, and where they breed copiously. Other biologists have recognized both the speed of the evolution of human intelligence and the selective pressures of human culture. T o quote from Berrill, 9 " T h e brain expanded particularly toward the front, with almost explosive force compared with the slow changes of olden ages." And from page 83: "So it was that the brain expanded forwards under pressure, generation by generation, and that it did so rapidly suggests that the pressures were extreme; and if we are to have any hope of continuing the process from where it has left us, the nature of these pressures and the manner in which the brain and the whole being responded to them are of vital interest." Keith J . Hayes and his wife Catherine 10 who raised a baby chimpanzee in their home along with a human infant, stated: One of the most distinctive tasks imposed upon the human brain by Man's cultural way of life is the assimilation and storage of a tremendous amount of information. On the other hand, the chimpanzee's 400 gram brain seems to be fully capable of han»N. J . Berrill, Man's Emerging Mind (New York: Dodd, Mead 8c Co., 1955) p. 77. io Keith J . Hayes and Catherine Hayes, " T h e Cultural Capacity of Chimpanzees," in The Non-human Primates and Human Evolution, ed. James A. Gavin, (Detroit, 1955).

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dling all the useful information likely to be encountered directly by the individual. From this point of view, an increase in the size of the anthropoid brain would be of no advantage to its possessor so long as he continued to lead a non-cultural existence. We suggest the possibility that most of the four-fold increase in cranial capacity, from anthropoid to man, took place after the appearance of culture and language, and therefore after primate behavior had become essentially human. Of course, some sort of culture is a major ecological factor in the lives of all gregarious animals, and we should never underestimate non-human cultures and societies. Our own culture, however, is so much more complex and has evolved so much further than any other that we can consider both it and ourselves unique. We will be concerned here with only one aspect of human culture—how it conditioned our biological evolution. The evidence indicates that our ancestors have been gregarious as far back as we can extrapolate, but the evidence, while good, is indirect. Our brains have what were recently labeled speech centers, in fact, the best that have ever evolved, and such structures could hardly have evolved in the brains of non-gregarious animals. (Such speech centers do not have to evolve even in the brains of gregarious animals.) Even the more primitive monkeys live in groups, but in groups of moderate size. It should be emphasized that these groups, as they are breeding units, serve as basic units of evolution. Evolution can occur only when some change occurs in the hereditary potentialities of such groups, or, to express it in modern language, when changes occur in the gene frequencies within the breeding groups that make up a species. Of course, our culture was altered as our habitat changed from arboreal to terrestrial. This change, while important, was not the only one which separated our culture from that

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of all our relatives. O u r ancestors' cultures had a fundamental characteristic which all other animal cultures lacked, i.e., its extraordinary ability to store up knowledge in quantities far beyond that of all other cultures. T h i s ability is almost certainly a consequence of the development of a verbal factor in the human cerebrum. W h i l e other animals can undoubtedly communicate by means of sound or even words, n o n e of them have anything like our ability to talk. It might not be amiss here to re-emphasize the Logos: as far as humanity itself was concerned, the beginning was the " W o r d . " 1 1 T o quote further from Hayes and Hayes (op. cit.): In this cultural setting, language acquired a value it did not have before and began to develop on the foundation of a few sounds such as chimpanzees are able to use. With the appearance of language, selection occurred in favor of the individuals with strong drives toward vocal and linguistic play, so that successive generations learned more language and learned it more easily. As the misrepresentation of natural selection has been one of the goals of Marxian biology and as the attainment of this goal has been greatly facilitated by a rather careless use of words, we should explain just how natural selection applies to man. Such phrases as " t h e struggle for existence," " n a t u r e is red in tooth and claw," etc., have given the impression that natural selection progresses through some sort of gladiatorial contest, that it operates as a kind of informal tournament in which the winner takes all and the loser is slain. In fact, natural selection has often been presented as a sort of horror story used by propagandists to frighten the timid and repel the humane. Of course, in correcting this misinformation, we 11 William F.tkin ("Social Behaviour and the Evolution of Man's Mental Faculties," The American Naturalist, (88:129-142 [1954]) has expressed some very interesting thoughts on the conditions which led to the evolution of speech. Our ancestors obviously had to be living under conditions where the ability to communicate had survival value.

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must not overlook the aspects of natural selection which we do not like. T h e struggle between prey and predator is never pleasant to observe; many species do stage gladiatorial contests during the rutting season; conflicts between human groups result in countless tragedies; the overproduction of young does insure an enormous death rate, but natural selection also operated in many more subtle ways. Where human beings are concerned, it operates on several levels and often very indirectly. W e should never assume that all was sweetness and light within a human breeding group, yet it is perfectly obvious that no group could exist at all if all within it were in discord. Both discord and concord, then, are found both in human and in other animal groups. "Birds in their little nest" do not "agree"; many starve to death because of the activities of their more vigorous brothers and sisters. Also, all human groups produce some inadequates, misfits, individuals who are unable to get along or prosper in their dealings with their companions. Today, we have institutions for such people, but in more primitive societies they probably had relatively short lives. Certainly, they had few children. But in spite of all such misfits, there had to be enough concord in the group for it to function as a social unit, and once the social unit or breeding group came into existence, evolution would have to occur within the group. Within the group, it would come about through changes in gene frequencies, and changes in gene frequencies are produced by a differential reproduction rate of the individuals who make up the group. We have plenty of evidence that, in early times, all men were not equal and certainly they all did not have the same number of wives. We know that they did not all have the same number of children who reached maturity. Nor did every woman contribute equally to the next generation.

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Our problem now is to show how our ancestral culture became a major factor in altering the gene frequencies of our ancestral groups, and how what we may now call our social or cultural heredity interacted with our biological. We can readily admit that, as our culture grew, it evolved along pathways determined by the logic of its development and thus it acquired some autonomy—a limited autonomy, however, which could at no one time advance beyond the biological potentialities of those who bore the culture. At present, it is still fashionable to ignore any biological limitations to culture 12—although even the most expert ignorers do not claim to be able to establish a civilized nation of chimpanzees, which should not be a difficult task if the biological factor did not exist. For our culture to speed our biological evolution, it is necessary that it have some attribute which would allow it to grow rapidly, to preserve and accumulate knowledge. Once 12 Leslie A. White (Scientific Monthly, 66:235-247, 1948) has emphasized the autonomous nature of culture. In fact, he has described it almost as a primum mobile, as uncaused cause, as existing without any biological base. T h e following scattered quotations do not misrepresent his views: "This means that when a baby is born into a cultural milieu he will be influenced by it. As a matter of fact, his culture will determine how he will think. . . . No people makes its own culture; it inherits it ready-made from its ancestors or borrows it from its neighbors. . . . We are now approaching a point in modern thought where we are beginning to suspect that it is not man who controls culture but the other way around. . . . Before we can go very far, we discover that we must disregard man entirely in our own effort to explain cultural growth and cultural differences—in short, culture or civilization as a whole. Man may be regarded as a constant as far as cultural change is concerned. . . . And he has undergone no appreciable evolutionary change during the past 50,000 years at least. We may therefore regard man as a constant both with regard to the races extant today and regard to his ancestors during the past tens of thousands of years. . . . You cannot explain variables by appeal to a constant. . . . Plainly we can not explain cultures in terms of Man. . . . Thus, in a very real sense, culture makes itself. . . . Thus, culture makes man what he is and at the same time makes itself."

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this point was reached, cultural evolution became possible. For our biological and cultural evolution to interact in such a manner that they stimulate each other and speed each other up by the interaction, it was only necessary that they get out of step and, for this evolution to continue indefinitely, that they remain out of step. T o state the proposition in another way: the individuals who were selected by the culture should be different from those who had brought the culture to its present state. Then, when the culture passed into the custody of those it selected, it would be altered in turn through their activities. If the changed culture in its turn selected still another type of individual, who would alter the culture further, both kinds of evolution would continue. When, however, the two evolutions got into step and a culture selected the type best suited for preserving it, the maladjusting factor so important to evolutionary progress would cease to operate and evolution would grind to a stop. Whenever this happened, the bearers of the culture, if isolated from other human groups, would settle into an age-long rest. Because the basic orientation of Professor White is so common and widespread among the social scientists, his whole essay would repay a very careful, logical, and semantic analysis and his tacit biological postulates should by all means be brought out into the open. He is himself obviously in the heredityversus-environmcnt cultural stage, and it would be hard to find a better illustration of how simple the basic problems appear to those who are in this stage than his question: "What determines the nature, the form and the content of this expression of energy in the cultural process, the human organism or the extrasomatic culture?" This is really a beautiful sample of a primitive "either-or" type of thinking. By contrast, Theodosius Dobzhansky has described very clearly the unity of our cultural and biological evolution in his Evolution, Genetics, and Man (New York, 1955). From page 374: "Biological evolution has produced the genetic endowment which has made culture and freedom of choice possible. But from then on, human evolution has become in part a new and unprecedented kind of evolution—evolution of culture and of freedom. This certainly does not mean that the biological evolution of man has come to a halt, as some writers like to suppose. T h e two kinds of evolution, biological and cultural, are combined in a new and unique process which is human evolution."

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Such a fate must have befallen thousands of isolated breeding groups who fell behind their evolving fellows until, at last, the isolating barrier which protected them broke, and they were either absorbed or exterminated by those who had evolved further. T h u s , in the long run, cultural backwardness would insure biological backwardness, but great caution is necessary in reaching definite conclusions in particular instances. W e must remember that both the culture and the biological potentialities of the cultured may be either improving or deteriorating, and that a considerable time lag occurs between the origin of the biological potentialities of a group and the full actual development of their culture. On the other hand, a biological degeneration may insure a deteriorating culture, but the degeneration may be far advanced before the cultural collapse occurs. At any one time, there were doubtless many groups who were inferior biologically but who enjoyed a superior culture and many superior biological groups who were still culturally backward. T h e overall picture, though, is one of culturally backward groups falling behind in their biological evolution. Any group isolated for ages from their fellows—such a group as the Tasmanians—could hardly maintain the breakneck pace of human evolution. T h e y could not enrich their genie reservoir with advantageous mutations that had occurred elsewhere. T h e i r society, too, cut off from cultural diffusion, would change more slowly and would be a less effective maladjusting factor for speeding up their biological evolution. T h e overall speed of human evolution, it should be remembered, was the speed of the most rapidly evolving groups—the speed of those with the higher cultures. T h e r e were really many factors which insured the overall advancem e n t of culture. O n e was the erratic occurrence of the so-

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13

called "Great Man." Here, we need not go into the role of the great man in history. W e need only recognize the fact that all of the individuals in a group do not add equally to its cultural heritage, and that Mendelian segregation every now and then produces extreme segregants. In some of the larger groups, in those enriched by a genie drift from their neighbors, some man would appear occasionally, who had the rare and valuable combination of genes which furnishes the potentiality of genius. Genius is, of course, n o monopoly of posthistoric man, and many millennia ago men appeared— perhaps rarely, but they appeared—men who could add lustre to any academy of scholars or scientists. T o devise a method of producing fire by the friction of wood, to invent a wheel in a wheel-less world, to develop the bow and arrow required really great originality and a scientific ability of the first order. But chance genie combinations w o u l d also produce m e n of more than average ability but of less than genius potential. These men could also modify culture and, thus, keep biological and sociological evolution out of step. Later, when a diffusion of culture became possible, any real cultural 13 in an important and interesting book, The Facts of Life (New York: T h e MacMillan Co., 1955), C. D. Darlington has stated (p. 302): "Heredity may then indeed be said to 'respond' to tlic environment as the text books tell us. But it may be an active selection. We may even create to a greater or less extent the environment we want. . . . T h e genotype of individuals begins to determine the environment in an absolute sense and to change the course of evolution. W h a t is the fourth order of individuals? T h e y are what we call in ordinary spcech the Heroes of former ages, the Great Men of o u r own. Let us by all means agree with Tolstoy and distrust, disparage, or dislike great m e n . Let us admit, too, that they are often great less by virtue of their copious talents than of their appropriate limitation. Best men, they sav, are moulded out of faults. But let us not doubt that they change the course of history or that the character which enables them to do so is genetically determined. Particular individuals—individuals resulting from the exploitation of the uncertainty of genetic recombination—have had immense effects on man's recent history, ever since the invention of speech. And it is this fact that gives the dazzling unpredictability to the changing course of h u m a n events."

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advance in any group would spread to other groups and have far-reaching biological consequences—consequences well beyond the confines of the group in which it originated. Thus, the "Great Man," the cultural hero, may have been one of the major factors in our biological evolution. He may have made no direct biological contribution by having children, but indirectly he may have altered the genetic endowment of his tribe by adding to and altering culture and thus establishing new norms for natural selection. (See also page 254 ff.) This interaction of cultural and biological evolution constitutes a feedback mechanism. (See diagram.) Moreover, it is DIAGRAM OF I N T E R A C T I O N O F C U L T U R A L AND BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

C,, C 2 , . . . C 5 represent successive cultural stages, and the arrows between them the internal logic of cultural development. B„ B 5 , . . . B 6 represent successive stages in our biological evolution and arrows between, the dependence of each stage upon its predecessor. Q - ^ B j , C,—»B 2t etc. indicates the biological selectivity of human culture. B,—>Cν Β2—>C, etc. represents the fact that culture always passes into the custody of those it selects and that its growth is conditioned by their abilities and activities.

a positive feedback and thus it is a system which produces great instability. Nothing less than a positive feedback can explain the speed with which certain groups evolved. The basic factor in this evolution need not have been the average individual within the group but the ability of the group to produce uncommon individuals. Such groups should evolve

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more rapidly both culturally and biologically than groups which lacked the genes for producing extreme variants. 14 It should be emphasized at this point that different cultures selected differently just as different environments in general select differently. (This fact is emphasized here because it seems to have escaped the attention of the biologists who have recognized the role of culture in human evolution.) Within human groups, natural selection seems to have specialized on the quality of intelligence. There is no need for us to mention that all cultural changes did not result in biological progress. We have no evidence to indicate that all types which were favored biologically by a culture, i.e., those with the highest reproductive rates, were the best for advancing the culture or even the types best fitted for preserving it. Many hundreds of times, cultures must have advanced only to retrogress. In fact, many civilizations have developed only to collapse and remain prone until supplied with fresh genes from outside. There is no guarantee that progress is unlimited or automatic. Civilization itself may be an evolutionary hurdle which may require many attempts and much effort before we can surmount it. We can never know how many cultures failed during the evolution of humanity. For ultimate success, though, it is only necessary that one group should not fail. During the last hundred thousand years, our advancing culture altered the basic unit of evolution, i.e., the relatively small breeding group. Isolating mechanisms became less effective. T h e invention of the raft and of the canoe changed rivers and lakes from isolating barriers to highways of com14 Frederick E. Warburton ("Feedback in Development and Its Evolutionary Significance," American Naturalist, 89:129-140 [1955]) has summarized the important data on the role of the physiological, morphological, and linked systems of feedback in living systems. He dealt, however, with what we might call "negative feedbacks."

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m u n i c a t i o n . Improved weapons for h u n t i n g greatly increased t h e food supply, a n d thus m a d e it possible for populations to become denser a n d for the b r e e d i n g groups to become larger. Genetically, the larger a n d less isolated groups became more heterozygous, and thus their biological variability increased. E n o r m o u s differences in individual abilities appeared. T h i s variability greatly increased the rate of cultural development. In the larger and well organized groups, m a j o r c u l t u r a l changes could be m a d e by the cumulative contributions of a m i n u t e fraction of the people within the g r o u p . I n o u r c u l t u r e today, m a j o r changes come through the cooperative activities of perhaps less than one-tenth of one p e r cent of the total population. Even if the innovators or creators of c u l t u r e constitute as m u c h as one per cent of society, they w o u l d still be a small minority. As these benefactors are few in n u m b e r and are themselves Mendelian segTegants, heterΟ Ο '

ozygous for many genes, they could have b u t little direct genetic influence on o u r species—even if each were given a h a r e m . T h e i r influence on cultural change, however, is enorm o u s a n d o u r c u l t u r e is evolving faster today than ever before. T h i s introduces a basic disharmony in o u r evolution. O u r biological evolution seems to be lagging farther and farther b e h i n d o u r cultural. In fact, their m u t u a l interaction, which raised us above the apes, is in danger of breaking down. Culture, perhaps, was never created by the average individual, b u t , u p to the dawn of history, the average m a n seemed to have evolved rapidly enough to preserve such cultural advances as they were m a d e and given to him. As o u r cultural advance outdistances o u r biological, its position tends to become m o r e precarious. If its creation and preservation dep e n d m o r e a n d m o r e on extreme Mendelian segregants, it becomes extremely vulnerable to small adverse changes in

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the gene frequencies of the whole population. It is possible that, if these segregants fall below some critical proportion, or if some social upheaval would interfere with their efficient functioning, our whole culture might return to one of its earlier and simpler stages, one we were more fitted biologically to preserve. T h i s may be what has happened to the civilizations which collapsed and to the cultures which vanished. It is worth recording, however, that the collapse of a culture never goes all the way. O u r biological evolution has raised us to a point where some culture is secure whatever happens. T h u s , for example, when a civilization falls to pieces, the art of writing may be lost but not the art of speech; the political organization may fragment into gangs but some form of family organization remains. T h e fact that we are both culturally and biologically unstable, however, should surprise no one. It is simply the price we pay for our evolution, for the fact that we have left all other animals far behind. A completely stable species just does not evolve. In order to evolve, we must be unstable, to b e able to make any future advance we also must be unstable, but instability always carries with it the threat of deterioration. T h u s , the danger of deterioration always accompanies the possibility of progress. §4 I f the biological factors which cause evolution are channeled in large part to human beings through their culture, if biological and cultural evolution form an interacting unit, and if biological and social inheritance are interdependent, then the importance of our culture to our biological health becomes apparent. Likewise, the importance of our biological endowment to our culture should be evident. A knowledge

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both of the factors of evolution and how they operate in human society becomes necessary if we are to develop a sound social order. T h e positive feedback mechanism increases both the cultural and the biological variables, and the interaction of these variables makes for great instability. T h e interaction of two variables produces complications, however, some of which are apparently very unpalatable to those who have adopted some simple ideology or who are emotionally warped in favor of some escapist Utopia. Marx and Engels, for example, having devised their ideal society before Darwin established the theory of evolution, have set a party line in the theory of evolution. It is a natural consequence of this party line that those who follow them today look upon a great part of biology as heretical. So we shall see many of our own sociologists look upon natural selection, as developed by Darwin, as a reactionary and savage doctrine.

2. The Theory of Evolution ca. 1870 §1 1870's—was one of the most important periods in the history of biology. It was the time of calm which followed the Darwinian revolution. By this time, evolution had been accepted by practically all who were capable of accepting it, and f u r t h e r proof of its validity was accumulating with every new investigation. Moreover, the theory of evolution was in excellent shape as it could be explained by the operation of easily understood factors, and the biologists of the world found the explanation satisfactory. T h e early misunderstanding as to just what evolution implied had been cleared up, and the classic contributions to the theory were all in print and available to everyone. Darwin's Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life had been published a decade earlier, b u t the disturbance caused by this masterpiece had, to a great extent, died down. By 1863, two other important books on evolution had appeared, Sir Charles Lyell's The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man and Τ . H . Huxley's Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature. Ernst Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie was published in 1866, and it was clear from this work that evolution had found a great defender in Germany. Most important of all, in 1868, Darwin issued his second book in evolution, HIS DECADE—the

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Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication, and, except for his Descent of Man, which was not printed until 1871, his major contributions were all available to his colleagues and to the public at large. It is true that from 1868 to 1876 August Weismann was publishing the results of his technical researches, a series which, when republished in book form, would alter profoundly the generally accepted doctrines, but as yet this work did not disturb the general harmony of the evolutionists. T h e Marxian party line which we are concerned with in this book did not affect the contemporary picture in any way. T h e biologists as a whole seemed to be unaware that a line had been drawn in their science and a biological credo founded, a credo which later would cause considerable trouble. Marx and Engels actually added nothing to biological theory. They merely accepted that portion of biology which they liked and denounced those biological principles which they disliked, a course that would hardly impress good scientists. In fact, they had no influence at all on the subsequent growth and development of biology, although the importance of their ruling upon the biological tenets of their followers can hardly be exaggerated. T h e following description of the theory of evolution that was current when Marx and Engels were developing their doctrines will emphasize those portions which they noted and either absorbed or rejected. This should help us stress the points of difference between the Marxian and the scientific theories, and enable us to understand more precisely just what Marxian biology is. W e can present the evolution theory itself most economically by tracing its historical development in the published works of Charles Darwin and his contemporaries.

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§2 T h e story of how Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution has been told many times. When visiting the Galapagos Islands, he noticed that there were certain similarities between the species on the islands and those on the adjoining mainland, and this suggested that the island species had arisen through modifications of those on the continent of South America. H e was fully aware of the great changes that had been made in domestic animals by the selection of the better types for propagation, and he saw that even species themselves could be altered by selection—if there were a selecting agent in nature. In 1838, as a result of reading the Essay on the Principles of Population by T h o m a s Malthus, he got the idea as to just how Nature itself could be such an agent a n d thus how a factor which he called Natural Selection could explain evolution. H e did not publish his explanation of evolution at the time, but busied himself for the next twenty years in collecting and organizing the data which would prove the correctness of his theory. In the meantime, his younger contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, had reached an identical explanation of evolution, and Wallace, like Darwin, had been led to the discovery of natural selection by reading Malthus' Essay. T h u s , historically, natural selection developed as a logical corollary of the Malthusian doctrine, and Malthus himself became the acknowledged intellectual forebear of the two recognized discoverers of natural selection. T h a t Malthus should become, as we might say, the grandfather of natural selection, and thus be listed among the preDarwinian contributors to the theory of evolution, is an ironic historical accident. Darwin and Wallace did not know that other biologists had already described natural selection.

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T h e y got their concept of the doctrine purely as a consequence of their reading Malthus. T h i s incident, or rather coincidence, has caused the evolutionists to adopt Malthus as one of their precursors, a position he probably would not have enjoyed. Today, when we read his Essay we can see how very close he came to discovering natural selection himself, b u t we can see also how he failed to understand how selection could b r i n g about the evolution of new species. Malthus described very accurately both the "constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it" and the consequent enormous death rate which balanced the excess births. It was only necessary for him to take one more step and grasp the idea that the death rate might b e different for different types, and he would have had an explanation for evolution. H e was prevented from taking this ultimate step by what appears to have been his righteous indignation. H e was impelled to emphasize the limits of the effectiveness of all change when he undertook to r e f u t e Condorcet's doctrine of an unlimited perfectability of mankind. H e was thoroughly repelled by Condorcet's wishful thinking, for he could not tolerate the intellectual evasions of the unrealistic. In fact, his opposition to the escapism of the tender-minded was so intense that it limited both his outlook and his intellectual development. H e seems to have been confirmed in his conservatism through the fact that, for too long a time, he had had too many intellectual contacts with too many liberals. 1 1 T h e effect of William Godwin on Malthus is a matter of record. We can hardly blame Malthus when we read in Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (London, 1796), Vol. II, p. 518: "Three fourths of the habitable globe are now uncultivated. T h e improvements to be made in cultivation, and the augmentations the earth is capable of receiving in the article of productiveness, cannot, as yet, be reduced to any limits of calculation. Myriads of centuries of still increasing population may pass away, and the earth be yet found sufficient for the support of its inhabitants. It were idle, therefore,

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The role of Malthus in the development of evolution will have to be treated in some detail. Malthus did describe a most important factor in natural selection, a factor which aided greatly in its discovery, and in addition—and more pertinent for our purposes—he caused the first split between Marxian and scientific biology. Thus, he served as a focal point for the separation of the two doctrines. In fact, the misrepresentation or even the simple denunciation of Malthus is, even today, a most important component of the Marxian syndrome. Of course, this denunciation is only a single symptom, but, combined with the other characteristic markers, it is a great aid in identifying Marxian biology, especially in those instances when the doctrine is not properly labeled. As the Marxian misrepresentation of Malthus is so widespread and has led to so much confusion and misapprehension, we will have to present what Malthus really said if to conceive discouragement from so distant a contingency." From page 527: " T h e sum of the arguments which have been here offered, amounts to a species of presumption, that the term of human life may be prolonged, and that by the immediate operation of intellect, beyond any limits which we are able to assign. . . . "To apply these remarks to the subject of population. One tendency of a cultivated and virtuous mind is to diminish our eagerness for the gratification of the senses. They please at present by their novelty, that is, because we know not how to estimate them. They decay in the decline of life, indirectly because the system refuses them, but directly and principally because they no longer excite that ardour of the mind. T h e gratifications of sense please at present by their imposture. We soon learn to despise the mere animal function, which, apart from the delusions of intellect would be nearly the same in all cases; and to value it only as it happens to be relieved by personal charms or mental excellence. "The men therefore whom we are supposing to exist, when the earth shall refuse itself to a more extended population, will probably cease to propagate. T h e whole will be a people of men, and not of children. Generation will not succeed generation, nor truth have, in a certain degree, to recommence her career every thirty years. Other improvements may be expected to keep peace with those of health and longevity. There will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. Besides this, there will be neither disease, anguish, melancholy, nor resentment. Every man will seek, with ineffable ardour, the good of all."

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we are to correct the widely accepted and propagandized falsehoods. What Malthus actually did was to point out that the law of diminishing returns does not apply to the potentialities of biological increase. In reality, the exact reverse is true, for, the greater the population (or more specifically in human populations, the greater the number of women of childbearing age), the greater the number of babies that can be born. Malthus expressed this fact in words which demanded attention. He stated that populations growing unchecked 2 increase in an exponential series, such a series as 2-4-8-16-32, etc. T h e most common misunderstanding of Malthus is to take this to mean that he said that actual populations do grow at this geometrical rate in spite of the fact that he devoted about half of his book to showing precisely that they do not do so in general and cannot do so anywhere for any length of time. He showed that they do not increase at this rate because they were always checked. He found one population at the time (2nd. Ed., 1803), however, the population of the United States of America, which did grow without "natural" checks. He stated that in America, where land was not a limiting factor, the population grew in a geometrical series and dou2 Any population growing at a constant rate, no matter hou· low the rate may be, is increasing in a geometrical series. This is a truism, for it is inherent in the way we measure the rate of population growth. It follows that no population can grow at a constant rate for an indefinite period. In the light of modern studies of growth rates, the correctness of Malthus' statement becomes clear, and it makes no difference what type of growth is involved, whether of human beings in a new and empty continent or of bacteria in a fresh culture medium. When bacteria are introduced into a broth culture, their number increases geometrically for a few hours, then, under the influences of their own waste products, the growth rate decreases until, finally, the population ceases to increase. W e should point out that the strange refuta tions of Malthus based on an ignorance of what he wrote do not occur in scientific biology.

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bled every twenty-five years. H e was right, of course, in his example, and the American population continued to grow at about this rate from about 1700 until 1860. (From our first census in 1790 to the last one before the Civil W a r , 1860, our population doubled every twenty-three years, f o u r months.) Malthus noted, moreover, that all people were compelled to eat if they wished to remain alive and that the a m o u n t of food at any one time is not unlimited. Lack of food, he noted also, uhile rarely a direct check on population growth, was generally an indirect check and operated as a cause of the many unfavorable factors which hold populations down. H e also pointed out that it was quite useless to urge that h u m a n populations had not been checked in their past growth by lack of essential resources on the grounds that the world had always had plenty of untilled land, and that the science of agriculture was steadily increasing the yield per u n i t area. It is true, of course, that food production had been increasing for some time and would doubtless increase in the f u t u r e , but this was entirely irrelevant to the question of the existence and universality of population checks. Today, it is amusing to read "refutations" of Malthus by those who try to show that our natural resources are so great— that we have enough and to spare—and that the mere quantity of o u r resources invalidates Malthus' conclusions. O n e suspects the intellectual honesty of otherwise intelligent people who do not realize the irrelevancy of such arguments. As Malthus pointed out, a thousand million people could double their n u m b e r in twenty-five years as easily as could a single thousand. Thus, the exact point which marks the limit of a future food production is simply u n i m p o r t a n t . T o illustrate: it makes no difference to Malthus' basic views whether the world can feed one billion people or ten billion people. A human population growing unchecked would increase

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from one to ten billion in just eighty-three years and from ten billion to a hundred billion in another eighty-three years. T h e best estimate of the present world's population is 2.4 billion while the number of people the world can feed in the foreseeable future is about 3.3 billion. (To repeat: Malthus was doing his best to show that human population growth is checked.) T o refute Malthus, it would be necessary to prove that the available resources of the whole world could double every twenty-five years and that this doubling could continue without limit. In the absence of this unlimited doubling of resources, human population growth will always be checked. Malthus' conclusions can be given very briefly in his own words: (p. 23, Vol. I, 6th Ed.). 1. Population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 2. Population invariably increases where the means of subsistence increase, unless prevented by very obvious and powerful checks. 3. These checks which suppress the superior power of population and keep its effects on a level with the means of subsistence, are all resolvable into moral restraint, vice, and misery.3 Malthus, of course, was not the first 4 to discover the effects of population pressure or the evil effects of breeding up to the very limit of natural resources, nor was he the first to describe what happens when the checks on population are 3 Today some religions would add a fourth category, i.e., "immoral" restraint. 4 He was not the first to describe the potentiality which human populations have for increasing geometrically. Robert Wallace in A Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind (Edinburgh, 1753), had worked this out in detail, complete with tables, and even stated in a footnote, "It is not owing to the amount of prolific virtue, but to the distressed circumstances of mankind, that every generation does not more than double themselves; for this would be the case, if every man married at the age of puberty, and could sufficiently provide for a family."

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temporarily removed. H e acknowledged explicitly his indebtedness to Benjamin Franklin, who had published an important b u t generally overlooked essay in 1755 entitled "Observations Concerning the Increase of M a n k i n d and the Peopling of Countries." Before this essay of Franklin's, population pressure had been described by Sir Matthew Hale (1677) and Buffon (1751) and afterwards by Bonnet (1764), Monboddo (1773), Herder (1784), and Smellie (1790) among others. These writings, however, made little impression on those who were concerned in inventing ideal societies. T h e hostility of men like Godwin a n d of those who resented such unpleasant truths seems to have been concentrated against Malthus. T h i s may have been d u e to the fact that Malthus took pains to demonstrate just how incompatible h u m a n population pressure was with the various plans for the egalitarian Utopias which were so fashionable during the latter part of the eighteenth century. H e pointed out explicitly the impractibility of the notions of Condorcet and Godwin, and he showed how unrealistic and fantastic their schemes were. T h i s naturally started a controversy. Godwin, in particular, reacted with the illogical vehemence of an escapist who sees his evasions threatened and thus, even before Marx, the siage was set for a misapprehension of what Malthus actually stood for. Malthus was slandered as a man who set himself against all progress and who rejoiced in the "necessary" evils which afflicted m a n k i n d and kept their numbers within reasonable limits. T h e following quotations f r o m Malthus' famous Essay (Bk. 4, Ch. 11) may therefore present him in an unfamiliar light: As it is acknowledged that the introduction of milk and potatoes, or of cheap soups, as the general food of the lower classes of people, would lower the prices of labour, perhaps some

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cold politician might propose to adopt the system with a view of underselling foreigners in the markets of Europe. I should not envy the feelings which could suggest such a proposal. I really cannot conceive of any thing more detestable than the idea of knowingly condemning the labourers of this country to the rags and wretched cabins of Ireland, for the purpose of selling a few more broadcloths and calicoes. The wealth and power of nations are, after all, only desirable as they contribute to happiness. And in answer to William Paley, who had published in his Moral and Political Philosophy (1785) that such conditions as "that of a laborious and frugal people administering to the demands of a luxurious nation" were "most favorable to the population of a country and conducive to its general happiness," Malthus wrote: Nothing but the conviction of its being absolutely necessary, could reconcile us to the idea of tens of millions of people condemned to incessant toil, and to the privation of everything but absolute necessaries, in order to minister to the excessive luxuries of the other million. Thus, the picture of Malthus which we get from reading his own works is very different from the caricature presented by the Marxians and their dupes. T h e technique of smearing, of course, is not new. In the nineteenth century, the Communists used it skilfully, and the present practitioners of the art could still learn much from Marx and Engels.® β It is instructive to compare the above quotations with the following excerpts from Marx's Theories of Surplus Value (Vol. II, written in 1861-63): "Malthus took over this practical conclusion from Anderson because, like a true member of the English State Church, he was a professional sycophant of the landed aristocracy, whose rents, sinecures, extravagance, heartlessness, etc., he justified from the economic point of view. . . . "What characterizes Malthus is the fundamental meanness of his outlook: a meanness which only a parson could permit himself to display, a parson who looks upon human misery as the punishment for the Fall of man and stands in general need of an earthly vale of tears, but who at the same time,

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Incidentally, Malthus pointed out very precisely just what dangers were inherent in a population growth based on a single food crop, such as potatoes, and he described very accurately the famine which would depopulate Ireland if the potato crop should ever fail.

§3 T h e early evolutionists, of course, knew of what we call the balance of nature, that is, that under normal conditions the n u m b e r of individuals in a species is constant except for periodic

fluctuations,

seasonal changes, or, at times, a very

slow and gradual increase or decrease. W h e n the balance is upset, however, a species may practically disappear or, on the contrary, experience an almost explosive increase in numbers, such as happened to the rabbits that were introduced into Australia. T h i s constancy of natural populations, maintained in spite of their vast reproductive potential as described by Malthus, insures an enormous death rate, and it is this death rate that makes it possible for nature to select out of consideration for the benefices accruing to him, finds it most advantageous, with the help of the dogma of predestination, to sweeten the sojourn of the ruling classes in the vale of tears. . . . " B u t the contemptible Malthus draws from the scientifically established premises—which he always steals—only those conclusions which are acceptable and useful to the aristocracy as against the bourgeosie and to both as against the proletariat. He therefore wants production, not for the sake of production, but only in so far as it maintains or consolidates the existing order o' things and serves to further the advantage of the ruling classes. " T h e hatred of the English working class against Malthus—the 'mountebank parson,' as Cobbett rudely calls him—is therefore entirely justified. T h e people were right here in sensing instinctively that they were confronted not with a man of science but with a bought advocate, a pleader in behalf of their enemies, a shameless sycophant of the ruling classes. . . . "Since in actual fact it [Malthus' Essay on Population] sets out to impress only by means of its popular form, it is right that popular hatred should be directed against it."

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some individuals and eliminate others. Any differential selection, of course, will alter the type. This role of natural selection in evolution can be summarized very briefly in the following numbered propositions: 1. All organisms vary, no two are ever alike. 2. More individuals are born than can exist in the available space. 3. Consequently, there is a keen competition among the individuals of every species. 4. T h e weakest or the least fit are eliminated. 5. T h e fit or better adapted survive. 6. T h e survivors form a basis for new variations. 7. T h e variations selected long enough produce new species. T h e above is the concept of natural selection as it was presented by Darwin in the Origin of Species. In this famous book, Darwin performed a dual service. First, he presented the evidence that species were not completely stable units of living creatures but, on the contrary, that they changed in an orderly fashion, that is, they evolved. Second, he supplied an intellectually respectable explanation of this evolution, and his explanation made possible the rapid acceptance of the theory itself. Evolution, as a reasonably explained occurrence, was much more palatable than it would have been if Darwin had presented it merely as an interpretation of a great many observed facts. Darwin himself realized the dual character of his contribution, i.e., explaining evolution and collecting evidence that it occurred, and he knew that both aspects of it were important. At first, he thought that his explanation of evolution was the more important, but his personal estimate of their relative values changed, and as time passed and as evolution became the accepted theory, he thought his proof of the fact of evolution the more important.

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In spite of the opposition of a determined minority, the biologists quickly accepted evolution, so quickly, in fact, that some historians of science have concluded that evolution was, so to speak, in the air. T h e evidence collected by Darwin had been available to his contemporaries and many of them doubtless were acquainted with large portions of it. Evolution, of course, was always a reasonable hypothesis, a n d the possibility of its having taken place had been considered and discussed for the preceding hundred years. W e have evidence now that many of Darwin's contemporaries had really been evolutionists before the Origin of Species appeared but that they had remained silent on the subject. It is more reasonable to believe that evolution was not so much in the air at the time as it was underground. 6 Many biologists apparently had accepted evolution but had not advertised their views, and the reason for their hesitancy is now clear. T h e y were not intimidated to any extent by the opposition of a conservative orthodoxy, for, once Darwin had given them a respectable explanation for evolution, they fought for it openly. T h e reason for evolution being more or less underground was that, a half century earlier, it had been reduced from a serious hypothesis to a joke. It had been endorsed by Lamarck in such an absurd fashion that a belief in evolution simply invited ridicule. 7 N o doubt the biologists felt that it was m u c h easier to stand up and defy any ecclesiastical authority than it was to expose themselves to real heartfelt laughter. Even Darwin remarked in 1844, the very year he commenced his preliminary essay on evolution, β J . H . F. K o h l b r u g g e , " W a r Darwin ein originelle G e n i e ? " Biol. Centralb, 35:93-111 (1915). Τ For e x a m p l e , L a m a r c k had e x p l a i n e d how cattle evolved their horns in the following m a n n e r : the bulls lose their tempers easily a n d this causes a r u s h of fluids to their heads; these fluids deposit there some horny matter or horny and bony matter m i x e d . T h e s e depositions become horns.

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"Heaven forfend me from Lamarck's nonsense!" Actually, evolution had to be rescued from the plight in which Lamarck had left it before it could become a serious biological theory. This role of Lamarck in making the theory of evolution a laughable affair will be considered in detail a little later. We will first have to fit the concept of natural selection into the evolution theory of the time. T h e concept of natural selection is far older, of course, than Darwin's description of it. Even the role of population pressure as an instrument of evolution is older and was described by Wells (1813) and Matthews (1831). T h e struggle for existence was recorded by Al-Jahiz in the ninth century and later by Hobbs (1651), Hale (1677), Buffon (1751), Monboddo (1773), Kant (1775), and others. T h e original use of natural selection, however, was to explain the existence of adaptation and thus to serve as a competitor to teleology—to the view that existence of fitness or adaption in nature is brought about by some conscious design or purpose. In explaining the survival of the fit or better adapted, natural selection also explains the survival of the fitness itself. It was actually used to explain the existence of adaptation in classical times by Empedocles and Lucretius, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Diderot (1749), Maupertuis (1756), and Geoffrey St. Hilaire (1833). This role of natural selection should be emphasized here both because it was not appreciated sufficiently at the time of Darwin and because we realize now how important it is. Incidentally, this operation of natural selection may be independent of population pressure. For example, in marginal regions, only those animals and plants can survive which are adapted to the living conditions, even if all competition is lacking. Deleterious mutations, also, those which tend to destroy adaptation, are kept in check by natural selection, and we know

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now that this is one of its chief functions and is the only method nature has, as far as we know, for preventing the degeneration of all forms of life. Important as natural selection was in establishing the theory of evolution, the biologists soon realized that it had its limitations. There were certain facts about evolution which it could not explain. Although it could account very easily for the evolution of advantageous characteristics, given the original variations, and for the ultimate disappearance of disadvantageous characteristics, it could not explain the evolution of characters which were completely neutral. While many seemingly neutral or useless characters were later found to have some important function, many were discovered which really had no function at all, yet their existence had to be accounted for. Furthermore, no matter how essential any organ or part might be, natural selection could explain its evolution only if all of its developmental stages, even the most rudimentary ones, served some function and helped the organism to survive. Natural selection could not show how an organ could evolve through a useless phase in the process of losing its original function and acquiring a new one, and there were many known instances of this occurring. T h e blindness of certain cave fish also presented a problem. Granted that eyes were useless in total darkness and that, under such conditions, natural selection could not improve the eyes, we would still have to explain how blind eyes evolved. For natural selection to explain this evolution, we would have to assume that eyes which could not see under any circumstances were more conducive to survival in caves than were eyes which were blind only in the dark. Obviously, natural selection needed an ancillary doctrine if it were to account for evolution. Fortunately for the general peace of mind, one was at hand and waiting to be

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used. It was supplied by the anciently held belief in the hereditary effects of use and disuse, in what is now famous in the phrase "the inheritance of acquired characters." If the use of organs caused them to develop and if disuse caused them to wither away, and if such effects were inherited, the blind cave fish need no longer be puzzles. Natural selection together with the inheritance of acquired characters could explain evolution and all the odd details could be accounted for. T h e situation, thus, seemed to be well in hand and the evolutionists were satisfied at the time, because a n u m b e r of years were to pass before it was shown that acquired characters were not inherited. Meanwhile, Lamarck's idea of the inheritance of acquired characters, rescued and made respectable, was to play an important role in evolution theory. §4 W h e n we examine the life, work, and reputation of Lamarck, Ave are forced to admit that for once the Norns displayed a real sense of humor. Lamarck is far too improbable a character for any novelist to have created; he could only have been a product of nature. As a scientist, he was a duffer, as a rule unable to understand the discoveries of his contemporaries, but always capable of making himself ridiculous. In fact, he would doubtless have been forgotten long ago but for certain historical accidents and for his own surprising but very real virtues. H e was earnest and industrious, and, while he was so lacking in h u m o r that he never knew when he was absurd, he always had the dignity of complete sincerity. It was easy for his fellow scientists to expose his errors, and his errors were multitudinous. I t was easier still for them to laugh at him, which they did, but, in spite of all of his fumblings and his mistakes, he

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preserved his basic integrity and he did manage, in the most important case of all, to be right where those who criticized him most were wrong. At a time when species were looked upon as units which had been especially created, Lamarck held correctly that they were not immutable but were being altered continually and in an orderly fashion. H e was a real pre-Darwinian evolutionist. Today, he is one of the best known of the entire group of great Frenchmen who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His place is secure in the history of science and since the emergence of the new religion of Communism, in the newer theology as well. Lamarck was interested in the whole field of science. His systematic work in botany, while not important, is sound. O n the other hand, his classification of the invertebrates is both sound and important. His writings on meteorology mean little, and his geology plainly belongs on the lunatic fringe because he tied it u p with his total inability to understand chemistry. H e attacked the "pneumatic chemistry" of Lavoisier 8 a n d seemed to be unable to grasp even simple physics, as he denied that the air could convey sound. His ideas of physiology were equally odd and included a belief in the existence of a life fluid. T h e scientists who were his immediate successors respected his taxonomic work b u t laughed at his speculations concerning the instability of species. Today, his reputation rests on very different grounds, b u t even here there is a most ironic twist. T o the modern 8 "Lavoisier had conceived combustion as a process of oxidation; Lamarck finds this explanation absurd—the idea of oxygen's being an essential component of both water and air is in his opinion utterly irrational; no chemist has even seen it and nobody has ever been able to prove its actual existence And equally irrational is the theory of chemical affinity as a cause of chemical association between the elements: It is not compatible with reason and is therefore impossible." N'orderskiold (1934).

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biologist, Lamarck's name immediately brings to mind the phrase "the inheritance of acquired characters," indeed this type of supposed inheritance is now called "Lamarckism." Lamarck, however, did not invent this concept, nor did he help develop it. T h e inheritance of acquired characters was well known and had been almost universally accepted for more than two thousand years before he was born. In classical times, it had been endorsed by Hippocrates, Aristotle, Antigonus, Strabo, Pliny, Galen, and many others. All during the middle ages, it was the standard belief, and it survived the Renaissance. At least fourteen of Lamarck's contemporaries endorsed the belief before he did, and some hundred descriptions of the notion have been collected from the earlier records.® Lamarck did point out some unusual but logical implications of the belief and showed that it could explain evolution. H e published this in 1802 and 1809, but even in this, he was anticipated by Erasmus Darwin who had published in 1794. Lamarck accomplished something, however. He succeeded in bringing belief in the inheritance of acquired characters into some disrepute. T h e concept had lasted over two thousand years and had always shown a tremendous vitality, but it was definitely injured by Lamarck's endorsement. After 1809, more and more skepticism developed, for Lamarck had succeeded in making the belief absurd as no one else had done T h e following quotations from Lamarck will illustrate how difficult he made it for serious biologists to believe in evolution occurring through the cumulative effects of the inheritance of acquired characters. 8 Conway Zirkle, "The Early History of the Idea of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters and of Pangenesis," Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., 35:91-151 (1946).

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From his Philosophical Zoology (Edition of 1914, page 119) translated by Hugh Elliot: We find in the same way that the bird of the water-side which does not like swimming and yet is in need of going to the water's edge to secure its prey, is continually liable to sink in the mud. Now the bird tries to act in such a way that its body should not be immersed in the liquid, and hence makes its best efforts to stretch and lengthen its legs. T h e long-established habit acquired by this bird and all its race of continually stretching and lengthening its legs, results in the individual of this race becoming raised as though on stilts, and gradually obtaining long, bare legs, denuded of feathers u p to the thighs and often higher still.

From Systeme des animaux sans vertebres, page 14: We note again that this same bird wants to fish without wetting its body, and is thus obliged to make continual efforts to lengthen its neck. Now these habitual efforts on this individual and its race must have resulted in the course of time in a remarkable lengthening, as indeed we actually find in the long necks of all waterside birds. If some swimming birds like the swan and the goose have short legs and yet a very long neck, the reason is that these birds while moving about on the water acquire the habit of plunging their head as deeply as they can into it in order to get the aquatic larvae and various animals on which they feed; whereas they make no effort to lengthen their legs.

From Philosophical

Zoology, page 122:

Since ruminants can only use their feet for support and have little strength in their jaws which only obtain exercise by cutting and browsing on the grass, they can only fight by blows with their heads, attacking one another with their crowns. In the frequent fits of anger to which the males especially are subject, the efforts of their inner feeling cause the fluids to flow more strongly towards that part of their head; in some there is

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hence deposited a secretion of horny matter, and in others of bony matter mixed with horny matter, which give rise to solid protuberances, thus we have the origin of horns and antlers, with which the head of most of these animals is armed. It is interesting to note the result of habit in the peculiar shape and size of the giraffe (Camelo-pardalis): this animal's forelegs have become longer than its hind legs, and that its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe, without standing up on its hind legs, attains a height of six metres (nearly 20 feet). §5 It is easy for us to see how Lamarck was somewhat embarrassing to those who believed in evolution and how evolution itself became u n p o p u l a r during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even those who, like Sir Charles Lyell, believed in the inheritance of acquired characters found it necessary to criticize Lamarck severely. Darwin, as we have mentioned earlier, wrote in 1844, "Heaven forfend me from Lamarck's nonsense" and the same year he referred to Lamarck's book as "veritable rubbish" an "absurd though clever work," and he objected to Sir Charles classifying the book he was writing as a "modification of Lamarck's which is no more than any a u t h o r who did not believe in the immutability of species." 10 Lamarck, of course, was not the only writer who lowered the prestige of evolutionary concepts and m e n t i o n should be made of Robert Chambers whose Vestiges of Creation was published anonymously in 1844. As we have already stated, Darwin's Origin of Species performed a dual service, it gave evolution a reputable explanation a n d it collected proof of its actually having taken 10 John W. Judd, The Coming

of Evolution

(Cambridge, 1910).

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place. T h e r e is no doubt that Darwin originally considered the first of these as his real contribution to science. H e looked u p o n natural selection as his own original creation as he h a d derived the concept independently, except for an assist by Malthus. W h e n he learned in 1858 that Wallace had also discovered natural selection, he felt that his own delay in publication had cost him his priority. H e wrote to Lyell, obviously u n d e r some emotional stress, "So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if it ever has any value, will not be deteriorated as all the labour consists in the application of the theory." 11 W i t h the publication of the Origin of Species, however, the situation was altered drastically. T h e debates it stimulated were almost exclusively on evolution itself and not on natural selection. Natural selection was a most important factor in the debates, of course, an important psychological factor, because it helped a n u m b e r of people accept the doctrine. But the intense discussions brought to light a n u m b e r of points which undoubtedly helped to re-orient Darwin to his own work. T h e discovery was made that others had preceded him in the recognition of natural selection, Wells (1813) and Matthews (1831), for example. T h u s , Darwin did not have priority in the doctrine. T h e n , too, the intense criticism of evolution brought to light certain aspects which could not be explained by natural selection alone, e.g., blind cave fish, etc. As the inheritance of acquired characters would explain these cases, Lamarck became an ally of Darwin's and what we now call Lamarckism became, for the time being, a very valuable part of evolution doctrine. Darwin accepted and developed the idea further, and it was accepted also by Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, and many others. I i F. Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin

(London, 1887).

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In 1868, Darwin even attempted to visualize the means by which a c q u i r e d characters could be inherited, a n d devised for this purpose his f a m o u s "provisional hypothesis of pangenesis." T h i s hypothesis, though in much simpler forms a n d without the details given to it by Darwin, had really been in almost constant use since the time of Anaxagoras (498-28 B.C.), Hippocrates (ca. 400 B.C.), and other classical writers. In fact, some forms of pangenesis have always been available to explain the inheritance of acquired characters which, incidentally, have never had any other explanation. Needless to say, no biologist accepts pangenesis today. Darwin's hypothesis follows in his own words: But besides this means of increase I assume that cells before the conversion into completely passive or "form-material," throw off minute granules or atoms, which circulate freely throughout the system, and when supplied with proper nutriment multiply by self-division, subsequently becoming developed into cells like those from which they were derived. These granules for the sake of distinctness may be called cell-granules or, as the cellular theory is not fully established, simply gemmules. They are supposed to be transmitted from the parents to the offspring and are generally developed in the generation which immediately succeeds, but often transmitted in a dormant state during many generations and are then developed. Their development is supposed to depend on their union with other partially developed cells or gemmules which precede them in the regular course of growth. Why I use the term union will be seen when we discuss the direct action of pollen on the tissues of the mother plant. Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every cell or unit, not only during the adult state, but during all the stages of development. Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to aggregation either into buds or into sexual elements. Hence, strictly, it is not the reproductive elements, nor the buds, which generate new organisms, but the

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cells themselves throughout the body. These assumptions constitute the provisional hypothesis which I have called Pangenesis. T h e above passage illustrates how completely Darwin accepted the inheritance of acquired characters and how far he went in an attempt to give it a reasonable basis. Lamarck's doctrine had finally become acceptable to the contemporary evolutionists, and was fully incorporated in their doctrines. A very pertinent question, however, presents itself at this point. If the inheritance of acquired characters will explain evolution what is the need of natural selection? Could we not, using Occam's razor, simplify the picture by just dropping out natural slection, admitting, of course, that it had assisted in developing evolution into an acceptable belief? T h e answer is twofold. First, selection had been an observed factor in bringing about great changes in domestic stock, while, on the other hand, no controlled, unambiguous instance of the inheritance of acquired characters could be cited. Second, there were many aspects of evolution which the inheritance of acquired characters could not explain, and thus it was no better than natural selection as a single cause of evolution. W e will cite but a single example of its inadequacy, its inability to explain the highly specialized sterile worker caste in insects. A worker bee cannot inherit the characters acquired by previous generations of workers because she is not descended from them but from the queen. For her to inherit such characteristics would be like a girl inheriting the characteristics acquired by her maiden aunts. To summarize: In 1870, evolution could be explained if we accepted both the inheritance of acquired character and natural selection. Together these concepts furnished a complete explanation. T h e weakness of the explanation lay in

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the fact that only natural selection was a known process, the inheritance of acquired characters being, at the time, only a reasonable hypothesis. Today, the situation is different, for now evolution can be explained completely by extrapolating known processes, although there are undoubtedly many factors in evolution which we have not yet discovered and which Ave will have to explain when Ave do.

3 . The Beginnings of Marxian Biology §1 of genetics in Russia in August, 1948, informed the scientists of the world that a special Communist biology existed, a discipline very different from the biology with which they were familiar. T h e geneticists themselves were not too surprised, for they had known for some years that their science had been under attack by the Communist party. Ever since 1956, genetics had been on the defensive in Russia, and, even as early as 1926, attempts were made to establish and support an archaic form of the science. T h e fact that the Communists destroyed a science in 1948 was soon established, but the motives for the action were obscure. Many causes were found and a n u m b e r of contributary conditions were identified, but the real reason for the debacle was very elusive. 1 Here, we need not go into the matter except to call attention to the fact that the roots of what is now the official Soviet biology go back to the very origin of communism itself, back to the writings of M a r x and Engels. T h i s was made very clear by Academician T . D. Lysenko in 1948. In his presidential address to the L e n i n Academy of Agriculture, he showed that M a r x and Engels themselves had passed judgment o n HE

DRAMATIC

OUTLAWING

ι For a discussion of this aspect see Conway Zirkle, The in Russia (Philadelphia, 1949).

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evolution a n d h a d set t h e party line in biology. T o

quote

Lysenko: Highly regarding the significance of Darwin's theory, Marxist classicists at the same time indicated the errors allowed by Darwin. Darwin's theory, appearing indisputably materialistic in its basic features, contains within itself a series of substantial errors. T h u s , for instance, it was a great blunder for Darwin in introducing reactionary Malthusian ideas into his theory of evolution, side by side with its materialistic principle. In our time his great blunder is magnified by reactionary biologists. . . . In his time, Darwin was unable to free himself from the theoretical mistakes which he committed. These errors were discovered and pointed out by the Marxist classicists. I t is not at all difficult to trace the ancestry of Soviet biology back to the r u l i n g of M a r x and Engels. T h e Communists themselves have done all that they could to m a k e the connection clear. O t h e r trails, however, are harder to follow, particularly w h e r e the M a r x i a n connections are never mentioned.

Marxian

biology

has

actually

furnished

the

postulates that are accepted by many people who are n o t Communists, b u t , as Ave would expect, the postulates have n o place in biology itself. Perhaps only a very few biologists are even aware that the founders of c o m m u n i s m

passed

j u d g m e n t o n biological matters. T h e actual i n c o r p o r a t i o n

of M a r x i a n biology in

other

fields of thought, however, is still significant, even though it is, almost w i t h o u t e x c e p t i o n , hidden. T h u s , it becomes necessary for us to b r i n g M a r x i a n biology out into the open a n d to know precisely what it is if we are to evaluate its influence. Fortunately, the task is lightened by the fact that we can concentrate on those portions of the doctrine which

deviate

farthest f r o m the science as it is known today. W e may also ignore the i n c i d e n t a l o r trivial errors made by M a r x a n d

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Engels, provided the errors have not been enshrined in the thinking of their followers, e.g., such trivia as Engels' statement that, "K. Wolff, in 1759, made the first onslaught on the theory of permanency of species, proclaiming the doctrine of their development." Engels was simply ignorant of the history of biology. 2 There is one very important precaution, however, which we must take in tracing the course of Marxian biology. Many of the errors made by Marx and Engels were common to their generation, and, obviously, we cannot trace a mistake back to any particular person or blame anyone for holding it if the error itself was in no way peculiar to him. It happens that practically every single opinion which Marx and Engels published on biology was held by many of their contemporaries. It is clear from this that we cannot assume that all who happened to agree with Marx and Engels on one or two points were Marxian biologists or that they upheld the tenets of the whole system. We will have to evaluate the notions of an individual as a whole before we can classify him—before we can determine whether he follows the Marxian line. As an additional precaution, we will have to use the biological notions of individual Marxians with great care. Often these notions are merely personal aberrations, generally consistent with Marxian biology but not necessarily a part of it. If these notions have been disproved and rejected by scientific biology, however, and if, in spite of this, they are still cherished by the faithful, they do acquire a definite significance. 2 Die Evolutionstheorie das Grundproblem der modernen Biologie by Georg Schneider, Professor of Theoretical Biology at Jena, was published in 1950 in the Russian zone of Germany. It has the sub-title Ein Abriss des Entwicklungsgedankens von Kaspar Friedrich Wolff über Darwin bis Lysenko. Here Schneider gives Wolff the priority which Engels assigned him by the simple technique of citing none of his predecessors. Buffon's name does not occur in the book! The wording is very careful, however, and the author does not actually say that Wolff was the first to attack the permanency of species.

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T h e biology of Marx and Engels is easy to identify. So also is the biology which has been approved officially by the Central Committee of the Communist party. T h e two are not identical, of course, although the latter includes the former. T h e r e is a transitional period, however, where the identification of Marxian biology offers some difficulty. Biology made great strides late in the nineteenth century, after Marx had died and when Engels was growing old. Somewhat to the regret of their followers, they did not write on biological matters or indicate personally the correct line for their followers to take. For example, although Engels lived until 1895, he never once mentioned Weismann, so Bukharin (1935), a historian of Marxian biology, can only speculate as to what his attitude toward Weismann might have been. However, we are not entirely without guides as to this phase of the Marxian credo. Of necessity, it must be consistent with the pronouncements made by Marx and Engels, and it must not contradict the rulings made by today's Communists. If we take the usual precautions, our interpolations should be fairly accurate. Indeed, these interpolations have already been made for us by the Communists themselves. Our only real difficuly should be in dating accurately the Marxian attitude toward the biological subjects that became important after Marx and Engels wrote on biology but before the Central Committee of the Communist Party set the modern line—such subjects as Weismannism, eugenics, Mendelism, etc. In the remaining portion of this chapter, we shall quote a great many passages from the published work of Marx and Engels. These are the passages that contain their definitive rulings on matters biological. At first glance, some of the passages may not seem to be relevant to the Marxian line in biology, but, when we put them all together, we find that

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they fit together into a consistent whole. And when we examine them as a whole, it becomes clear that they form the basis of a distinctive biological cult. T h e following quotations show that: (1) Marx and Engels accepted the fact of evolution; (2) they rejected population pressure as a selecting agent and thus they accepted Darwin's natural selection only in part; (3) they rejected Malthus' contribution to the theory of natural selection and they attacked him personally; (4) they believed that adaptive modifications, due directly to the effects of the environment, were inherited and they held that these modifications were a cause of evolution; (5) they were complete environmentalists; (6) they accepted Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characters; (7) they accepted the inherited effects of a meat diet on h u m a n beings, and held that eating meat made those who ate it stronger and wiser; and (8) because of their environmentalism and belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, they held that races that had lived in poor environments were inferior races. (But this last point is now hidden under a camouflage of double talk.)

§2 Marx and Engels accepted evolution almost immediately after Darwin published The Origin of Species. W i t h i n a month, Engels wrote to Marx (December 12, 1859): "Darwin, whom I am just now reading, is splendid." Evolution, of course, was just what the founders of communism needed to explain how mankind could have come into being without the intervention of any supernatural force, and consequently it could be used to bolster the foundations of their materialistic philosophy. In addition, Darwin's interpretation of evolution—that evolution had come about through the

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operation of natural selection—gave them an alternative hypothesis to the prevailing teleological explanations of the observed fact that all forms of life are adapted to their living conditions. Actually, natural selection made it possible to drop teleology completely and, as a result, the scientists could explain the organic world in materialistic terms. T h i s seemed excellent to the founders of communism but there was one real flaw. Darwin had been stimulated into discovering the role of natural selection by reading Malthus, and, to Marx and Engels, Malthus was naturally the arch-adversary of all brave new worlds. Thus, their acceptance of natural selection was definitely limited. Marx was not quite so enthusiastic about Darwin as Engels was, for he wrote the latter nearly a year later (December 19, 1860): "During my time of trial, these last few weeks, I have read all sorts of things. Among others, Darwin's book of Natural Selection. Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view." A month later (January 16, 1861), Marx wrote Lassalle: "Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural selection for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies, not only is it a death blow dealt here for the first time to 'Teleology' in the natural sciences but their rational meaning is empirically explained." This endorsement of evolution led some of the nineteenth century evolutionists to look upon the Marxians as allies, probably because they learned of this endorsement during the period when some of the older biologists, together with the more conservative religious organizations, were openly hostile to the new theory. T o the progressive citizen of the late nineteenth century—to the man who was in the process

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of leaving the older orthodoxies behind—it might even have seemed that communism bore the same relation to the current economic system that evolution did to special creation. In some quarters, communism may even have acquired a certain innocence by association, and thus it may have received more of a welcome than it could have earned on its own merits. A rift between communism and science, however, was present f r o m the very start although, for some time, the discrepancies between Communist doctrine and evolution theory appeared unimportant—if they were recognized at all. It is obvious that even Marx himself did not foresee the basic conflict which was soon to develop. As the story goes, he even sought to dedicate his major work Das Kapital to Darwin, an honor which Darwin declined. T h e clash between Marxism and biology, however, was inherent a n d on J u n e 18, 1862, Marx included the following remarkable paragraph in a letter to Engels, a paragraph whose tone would not be out of place in Pravda ninety years later: I am amused by the statement of Darwin, whom I am reading now, that he applies the "Malthusian theory" to plants and animals also, whereas the whole point of Mr. Malthus lies in the fact that he does not apply his theory to plants and animals, but only to men—with geometrical progression—as opposed to plants and animals. It is splendid that Darwin again discovers among plants and animals his English society with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, 'inventions' and Malthusian 'struggle for existence.' This is Hobbes' bellum, omnium contra omnes, and reminds one of Hegel in the Phenomenology in which civic society is expressed as the "spiritual animal kingdom" whereas with Darwin the animal kingdom represents civic society. T h e above is not just an obscure, isolated passage which had no influence on the development of Marxian biology.

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It is still held to be authoritative by the Communists themselves and has been quoted recently by such Communist writers as V. L. Komasov ( M a r x and, Engels on Biology, New York, 1935) and Marcel Prenant (Biology and Marxism, New York, 1943). In this passage, Marx simply denounced Malthus and cited no data whatever to show how Malthus may have been wrong and, in so doing, he followed the style which is still fashionable in many quarters. H e did write enough, to make it probable, however, that he had never even read the work he was condemning. This, of course, reflects no credit on him, b u t the only alternatives are positively discreditable. If M a r x had really read Malthus, we would be forced to conclude either that he did not understand what he had read or that he had knowingly misrepresented what Malthus had written. But Marx's reaction to Malthus, uninformed as it was, seems to be a sample of the general thought patterns of the early nineteenth century liberals. T h e r e is the casual reference to geometrical progressions and to Malthus' "struggle for existence." T h e real misstatement of fact occurs in the sentence, " . . . whereas the whole point of Mr. Malthus lies in the fact that he does not apply his theory to plants and animals, but only to men—with geometrical progression as opposed to plants and animals." T h i s misstatement which serves no useful purpose and is quite unnecessary, would probably not have been made if Marx had been familiar with the very first chapter of Malthus' Essay (2nd Ed., 1803, and all subsequent editions) where he would have found the following passage: T h e cause to which I allude is the constant tendency of all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it. . . .

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This is incontrovcrtibly true. Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad Λν τ ΐtli the most profuse and liberal hand, but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. T h e germs of existence contained on this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, allpervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. T h e race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law; and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it. In plants and irrational animals, the view of the subject is simple. They are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species, and this instinct is interrupted by no doubts about providing for their oflspring. Even if Marx had never read Malthus, he apparently had no doubts as to what attitude he should take toward him. On January 24, 1865, he wrote a long letter to Schweitzer and referred incidentally to Malthus as follows: " T a k e , for instance, Malthus' book On Population. In its first edition it was nothing but a 'sensational pamphlet' and plagiarism from beginning to end into the bargain. And yet what a stimulus was produced by this libel on the human race." Somewhat later, on J u n e 27, 1870, he wrote to Kugelmann: Herr Lange (Die Arbeiterfrage, etc., second edition) sings my praises loudly, but with the object of making himself important. Herr Lange, you see, has made a great discovery. T h e whole of history can be subsumed under a single great natural law. This natural law is the phrase (in this application Darwin's expression becomes nothing but a phrase) 'the struggle for life' and the content of this phrase is the Malthusian Law of population or, rather, over-population. So, instead of analyzing the struggle for life as represented historically in different definite forms of society, all that has to be done is to translate every concrete struggle

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into the phrase 'struggle for life' and this phrase itself into the Malthusian population fantasy. One must admit that this is a very impressive method—for swaggering, sham-scientific, bombastic ignorance and intellectual laziness. T h e above sample of Marx's chaste and serene style illustrates very well how his attitude toward Malthus limited his understanding of natural selection as developed by Darwin. Natural selection, as has been stated previously, explains both the survival of the fit and the survival of fitness itself. It was only the latter which Marx accepted without reservation. Engels apparently was better informed, although his many published statements on the subject are not always consistent. He always referred to Malthus in a derogatory manner and at times, like Marx, he showed some misapprehension of what natural selection was. On other occasions, he did not hesitate to use population pressure as described by Malthus in explaining the functioning of natural selection in preserving the fit or the better adapted. His debate with Eugen Diihring furnishes an excellent example of this. Both before and after this debate, however, his treatment of natural selection approaches very closely to that of Marx. On March 29, 1865, he included the following in a letter to F. A. Lange: I too was struck, the very first time I read Darwin, with the remarkable likeness between his account of plant and animal life and the Malthusian theory. Only I came to a different conclusion from yours: namely, that nothing discredits modern bourgeois development so much as the fact that it has not succeeded in getting beyond the economic forms of the animal world. . . . Like all his other ideas, Parson Malthus had stolen this theory direct from his predecessors; all that belongs to him is the purely arbitrary application of the two progressions.

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§3 In 1866, an amusing and instructive dispute broke out between Marx and Engels over a book on evolution by Pierre Tremaux. T h e book itself is completely worthless. It had no influence on the biologists when it was first published, it has no historical significance, and it has been practically forgotten. On the other hand, the dispute is very revealing. It brought Marx's environmentalist bias out into the open— into very sharp relief—and it demonstrated his incompetence in biological matters better, perhaps, than did any of his more formal pronouncements. Engels, however, shows up much better. His first reaction to T r e m a u x was, in modern Communist parlance, "negative." As the discussion progressed, however, he softened his tone somewhat but he never accepted T r e m a u x at face value. Marx, for his part, remained impressed with the notions of T r e m a u x . In fact, he thought that Tremaux's book was far superior to Darwin's. On August 7, 1866, Marx wrote to Engels: A very important work which I will send you as soon as I make the necessary notes (but under the stipulation that you return it as it is not mine) is: P. Ττέτηαυ,χ, Origine et Transformations de I' Homme et des autres Etres, Paris, 1865. It is, in spite of all the deficiencies, which strike me, a very important advance over Darwin. The two chief arguments are: that cross breeding does not produce differences, as one believes, but on the contrary it produces the typical unity of the species. The earth's crust causes the differences (not by itself but as their chief basis). Progress, which is pure chance with Darwin, is necessary here on the basis of the developmental periods of the Earth. Degeneration, which Darwin could not explain, is simple here, so also are the quickly disappearing transitional forms compared with the slowness of the development of the species type, so that the gaps in the

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fossil record, which bothered Darwin, are necessary here. Also the fixity of a species develops as a necessary law, once it has been formed (disregarding individual variations). Here the difficulty of hybridization for Darwin is, on the contrary, the support of the system, since it is shown that a species is first constituted as soon as its crossing with others ceases to be either fertile or possible. In the historical and political application Tremaux is much more important and fruitful than Darwin. Here alone is found a natural basis for certain questions, as of nationality, etc. For example he corrects the Pole, Duchinski, whose concern over the geological differences between Russia and the West Slavs he otherwise confirms, but in this matter it was not as Duchinski thought, that the Russians were not Slavs being much more Tartars, etc., but that the prevailing geological formation itself tartarized and mongolized the Slavs. As he pointed out (he was in Africa a long time) that the common Negro type is only a degeneration from a much higher one. "Beyond the great laws of nature, the schemes of men are nothing but calamities witness the efforts of the Czars to make the Polish people into Muscovites. T h e same nature, the same faculties revive on the same soil. T h e work of destruction never persists, the work of reconstruction is eternal. T h e Slav and Lithuanian races have their true boundary with the Muscovite in the great geological line which extends north of the basins of the Niemen and the Dnieper. T o the south of this great line the capacities and types of men proper to this region are and will always remain different from those of Russia." Salutations, Yours, Κ. M.

W h e n we read the above letter, it is easy for us to understand why portions of Marx's work are censored in Russia and why, in modern Communist accounts of the biology of M a r x and Engels, the whole T r e m a u x affair is either slurred over or ignored. W h e n Engels received this letter from M a r x ,

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h e became interested in T r e m a u x a n d his work. O n A u g u s t 10, he w r o t e M a r x a n d asked f o r details a b o u t t h e book, w h e t h e r it was illustrated a n d how m u c h it w o u l d cost. H e stated that if it w e r e n o t too expensive h e m i g h t b u y a copy. O n A u g u s t 13, M a r x r e p l i e d giving t h e precise title of the book, t h e n a m e of the publisher, a n d the o t h e r details asked for. Engels a p p a r e n t l y b o u g h t the book, r e a d it at leisure b u t did n o t like it at all. O n O c t o b e r 2, h e w r o t e M a r x : I shall write shortly in greater detail concerning Moilin and Tremaux. I have not quite finished the latter, but I have arrived at the conviction, that there is nothing to his theory if for no other reason than because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary historical criticism. One could laugh oneself sick about his stories of the nigger 3 Santa Maria and of the transmutations of the whites into negroes. Especially, that the traditions of the Senegal niggers deserve absolute credulity, just because the rascals cannot write! Besides it is nice to blame the soil formation for the difference between a Basque, a Frenchman, a Breton, and an Alsatian; and of course, it is also its fault, that these people speak four different languages. Perhaps this man will prove in the second volume, how he explains the fact, that we Rhinelanders have not long ago turned into idiots and niggers on our own Devonian Transition rocks (which since long before the coal formation had not again been under the ocean). Or perhaps he will maintain that we are real niggers. T h e book is not worth anything, a pure fabrication, which defies all facts and would have to give a proof for every proof which it adduces. Best regards to the ladies, Yours, F. E. 3 Marx and Engels sometimes wrote of the Negroes as Negroes but generally referred to them contemptuously as "niggers." In the following passages, Marx and Engels will be quoted literally. T h e many references to Negroes or "niggers" will show their attitude toward the race.

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Marx was not the type of man to take such a severe criticism of something he liked and not defend it. On the very next day, October 3, he wrote Engels and reaffirmed his faith in Tremaux's conclusions: Ad vocem: Tr£maux: Your opinion "that there is nothing to his theory because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary-historical criticism" you can find almost literally in Cuvier in his Discours sur les Revolutions du Globe against the doctrine of the variability of species, where among other things he pokes fun at the German nature phantasts, who announced Darwin's basic idea completely, little as they could prove it. This, however, did not prevent the fact that Cuvier, who was a great geologist and, for a naturalist, also an exceptional literary-historical critic, was wrong, and the people who had announced the new idea, were right. (Although Tr£maux does not appraise, naturally, historical modifications of the influence of the soil; I myself consider among these historical modifications also the chemical change of the soil surface by agriculture, etc., also the different influence which under different methods of production, such things as coal deposits, etc., have.) Tremaux's basic idea on the influence of the soil is, in my opinion, an idea, which needs only to be announced, to secure for itself once and for all the right of citizenship in science and, at that, entirely independent of Tremaux's presentation. Salutations. Yours, K. Marx T w o days later on October 5, Engels replied. His adverse comments were a little more tempered but he held his ground in most points. He did admit that there might be something in Tremaux's idea but that Tremaux himself was not much of a scientist. Ad vocem Tremaux. When I wrote you, I had read, to be sure, only a third part of the book, and at that, the worst (the begin-

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ning). T h e second part, the criticism of the schools, is better by far; the third part, the conclusions, is again very bad. T h i s man has the distinction of having stressed the influence of the soil upon racial and, logically, species formation more than has happened so far. And secondly, of having developed more correct opinions on the effect of the crossing than his predecessors (though in my opinion very one-sided ones). Darwin, in one sense, is also right in his ideas on the transmuting influence of crossing; T r £ maux, by the way acknowledges it tacitly, wherever it suits him, by treating hybridization also as a means of transmutation, although in the end as a balancing means. Also Darwin and others have never failed to recognize the influence of the soil. And if it happened that they did not stress it especially it was because they knew nothing about it—what effect the soil has, etc.—except that fertile soil has a favorable effect and sterile soil has an unfavorable effect. And Tremaux does not know much more either. T h e r e is something tremendously plausible about the hypothesis that the soil becomes in general more favorable for the development of higher species in proportion to its belonging to newer formations. T h i s hypothesis may or may not be correct. . . . H e r e the m a t t e r ended, the a r g u m e n t died and T r d m a u x dropped o u t of sight. M a r x and Engels apparently kept t h e i r original opinions. T h e e x c h a n g e of letters, however, gives us some very revealing glimpses of the founders of c o m m u n i s m , t h e i r predilections and their limitations. T h e s e m e n are the " M a r x i s t classicists" who indicated the " e r r o r s " of D a r w i n , those " e r r o r s " from which D a r w i n c o u l d never free himself. T h e Marxist classicists, i n n o c e n t as they were of scientific standards, are still able to h o b b l e biology b e h i n d t h e I r o n C u r t a i n . T h e r e , they still have the power to decide what biological theories are correct. T h e i r status is well illustrated by the following passage taken f r o m a sample of the biology w h i c h is official in all of the lands which owe allegiance to the

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Kremlin. From the Selected Works of Michurin (1949), page 487: Only on the basis of the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin can science be fully reconstructed. T h e objective w o r d Nature—is primary; man is part of Nature, but he must not merely outwardly contemplate this Nature, he can, as Karl M a r x said, change it. T h e philosophy of dialectical materialism is an instrument for changing this objective world; it teaches us to actively influence Nature and how to change it; but only the proletariat is capable of consistently and actively influencing and changing Nature—this is what the teachings of Marx, Engels, L e n i n and Stalin—those unexcelled titanic minds—tell us.

§4 In 1875, Engels was confronted with a task which he found to be very unpleasant. It came about through the presentation to the world of a new socialist theory by one Eugen Dühring who, it developed, was a heretic. Diihring could not be allowed to go unanswered so, in spite of his reluctance, Engels had to do his duty. He wrote, however, "Nevertheless it was a year before I could make up my mind to neglect other work and get my teeth into this sour apple. It was the kind of apple that, once bitten into, had to be completely devoured; and it was not only very sour but also very large." Engels answered Diihring in a series of articles in Vorwärts beginning in 1877. These articles were collected later into a book which is now generally referred to as Anti-Dühring. T h e greater part of Engels' published views on biological questions is found in this book. W e must remember that in Anti-Dühring Engels was attacking a heretic, a left deviationist as far as his biology was concerned, and this very naturally made him veer somewhat

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to the right himself. Nevertheless, Engels still remained well within the complex of biological doctrines we call Marxian, and a little later on, in Dialectics of Nature, his stand swung back to its original position and became practically indistinguishable from Marx's own. There is one really fascinating aspect of this debate with Diihring, one which we should not overlook. T o anyone who has followed the recent rulings of the Central Committee of the Communist party, Engels seems to be arguing on the wrong side, and this raises an interesting question. Could it have been that some of Dühring's ideas have actually been incorporated into modern Communist orthodoxy without anyone's being aware of where they really came from? Is it possible that Engels' victory was, in part, ephemeral? But these are very technical problems, suitable for Communistic exegesis, and we cannot consider them further here. In the chapter in Anti-Diihring devoted to the Organic World, Engels defends Darwin's natural selection against all attacks, even against Diihring's preference for the ideas of Lamarck. From page 76: The main reproach levelled against Darwin [by Diihring] is that he transferred the Malthusian population theory from economics into natural science, that he never got beyond the ideas of an animal breeder, and that in his theory of the struggle for existence he pursued unscientific semi-poetry, and that the whole of Darwinism, after deducting what has been borrowed from Lamarck, is a piece of brutality directed against humanity. In the defense of Darwin, however, Engels gets himself into a logical dilemma. He uses and defends Darwin's concept of a struggle for existence, including the selective activity of population pressure. He even admits the existence of the cruel aspects of natural selection but he still considers the

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name Malthus as thoroughly bad. In the following passage, we have an excellent and early example of the Communist custom of separating a word from its meaning. Attention is here called to the use of "Malthus." From page 77: . . . Darwin then investigated whether there were not possibly causes to be found in Nature which—without conscious purpose on the part of the breeder—would nevertheless in the long run produce in living organisms changes similar to those produced by artificial breeding. He discovered these causes in the disproportion between the immense number of germs created by Nature and the insignificant number of organisms which actually attain maturity. But as each germ strives to develop, there necessarily arises a struggle for existence which manifests itself not merely as direct bodily combat or devouring, but also as a struggle for space and light, even in the case of plants. And it is evident that in this struggle those individual organisms which have some particular characteristic, however insignificant, which gives them an advantage in the struggle for existence will have the best prospect for reaching maturity and propagating themselves. These individual characteristics have furthermore the tendency to be inherited, and when they occur among many individuals of the same species, to increase through accumulated heredity in the direction once taken; while those individual organisms which do not possess these characteristics succumb more easily in the struggle for existence and gradually disappear. In this way a species is altered through natural selection, through the survival of the fittest. Against this Darwinian theory, however, Herr Dühring says that the origin of the idea of the struggle for existence, as, he claims, Darwin himself admitted, has to be sought in a generalization of the views of the economic theorist of population, Malthus, and the idea is therefore marked by all the defects peculiar to the parsonical views of Malthus on the pressure of population. Now Darwin would not dream of saying that the origin of the idea of the struggle for existence is to be found in Malthus. He only says

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that the theory of Malthus applies to the animal and plant world as a whole. However great the blunder made by Darwin in accepting so naively and without reflection the Malthusian theory, nevertheless anyone can see at the first glance that no Malthusian spectacles are required in order to perceive the struggle for existence in Nature—the contradiction between the countless hosts of germs which Nature so lavishly produces and the small number of those which ever reach maturity; a contradiction which in fact for the most part finds its solution in a struggle for existence which is often of extreme cruelty. And just as the law of wages has maintained its validity even after the Malthusian arguments on which Ricardo based it have long been exploded, so likewise the struggle for existence can take place in Nature, even without any Malthusian interpretation. For that matter, the organisms of Nature also have their laws of population, which have been left almost entirely uninvestigated, although their formation would be of decisive importance for the theory of the evolution of species. But who was it that gave the most definite impulse to work in this direction? No other than Darwin. In the above we see that a bad name like Malthus could b e discarded but that a good one like Darwin's was to be preserved. Engels was mistaken, however, when he stated that the laws of population of the organisms of nature had been left almost entirely uninvestigated. T h e y had been described by Hale (1677), Buffon (1751), Wallace (1753), Franklin (1755), Monboddo (1773), H u m e (1779), Herder (1784), and Matthew (1831). In the following passage (p. 79), Engels yields slightly in his defense of Darwin: . . . It is consequently not Darwin who sought the laws and understanding of all Nature's actions in the kingdom of the brutes—Darwin had in fact expressly included the whole of organic nature in the struggle—but an imaginary bugbear dressed up by Herr Dühring himself. T h e name: the struggle for existence, can for the matter be willingly handed over to Herr Düh-

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exceedingly m o r a l indignation. T h a t the fact exists also

a m o n g plants can be demonstrated to h i m by every meadow, every cornfield, every w o o d ; and the question at issue is not what it is to be called, whether "struggle f o r existence" o r "lack of conditions f o r existence and mechanical effects," but h o w this fact influences the fixity or variation of species. O n this p o i n t H e r r D ü h r i n g maintains an obstinate and " i d e n t i c a l " silence. T h e r e f o r e f o r the time being in regard to natural selection it w i l l certainly continue to be applied. But D a r w i n i s m "produces its transformation and differences out of n o t h i n g . " I t is true that Darwin, when considering natural selection, leaves out of account the causes which have produced the variations in separate individuals, and deals in the first place w i t h the way in which such i n d i v i d u a l variations gradually become the characteristics of a race, variety or species. T o

Darwin

it was of less immediate importance to discover these causes— w h i c h u p to the present are in part absolutely unknown, and in part can only be stated in quite general terms—than to establish a rational f o r m according to which their effects are preserved and acquire permanent significance. It is true that in d o i n g

this

D a r w i n attributed to his discovery too w i d e a field of action, made it the sole agent in the alteration of species and neglected the causes of the repeated individual variations, concentrating rather on the f o r m in which these variations become general; but this is a mistake which he shares in common with most other p e o p l e w h o make any real advance. T h e last s e n t e n c e of the a b o v e passage makes a s t a t e m e n t c o n t r a r y t o fact. D a r w i n d i d n o t m a k e his d i s c o v e r y t h e sole a g e n t i n t h e a l t e r a t i o n of species. T i m e a n d again, h e used Lamarck's

i n h e r i t a n c e of

acquired

characters as a

m e n t a r y hypothesis. E n g e l s c o u l d n o t h a v e b e e n

suppleunaware

of this, f o r h e h a d r e a d D a r w i n ' s Variations

in Animals

Plants

wherein Darwin

under

the Influence

of Domestication

and

h a d r e l i e d v e r y s t r o n g l y o n the i n h e r t a n c e of a c q u i r e d char-

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acters. Engels wrote to Marx in 1868, concerning this book, "Only the details are new h e r e and even in this respect it does not contain a great deal of importance." T h e following three excerpts have special interest as they touch on a new and most important aspect of Marxian biology, one which we have not yet treated, i.e., the role of Lamarckism. Engels believed in the inheritance of acquired characters, and this belief has developed into one of the real pillars on which Marxian biology now rests; it is its most easily recognized characteristic. I n the first passage (p. 80), Engels cites Haeckel's Lamarckism with approval: Recently—by Haeckel, to be precise—the idea of natural selection has been extended, and the variation of species conceived as the result of the mutual interaction of adaptation and heredity, in which conception adaptation is taken as the factor which produces variations, and heredity as the conserving factor in the process. This is also not regarded as satisfactory by Herr Dühring. In the second (p. 83), he accepts Lamarck b u t protests against Dühring's throwing Darwin overboard a n d keeping only Lamarck. T o Engels, both Darwin and Lamarck were basically sound. But enough of the peevish, contradictory grumbling and nagging through which Herr Dühring expresses his anger at the colossal impetus which science owes to the driving forces of the Darwinian theory. Neither Darwin nor his disciples among scientists ever think of in any way belittling the great services rendered by Lamarck; in fact, they are the very people who first put him again up on his pedestal. But we must not overlook the fact that in Lamarck's time science was as yet far from being in possession of sufficient material to enable it to answer the question as to the origin of species except in an anticipatory way, as it were prophetically.

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In the final excerpt (p. 84), Engels very sarcastically refers Diihring's attempts to belittle Darwin. . . . So after all, natural selection, though only second class; and along with natural selection also the struggle for existence, and with that also the parsonical Malthus' pressure of population! That is all, and for the rest Herr Dühring refers us to Lamarck. §5 Engels apparently wrote the greater part of the Dialectics of Nature between 1872 and 1882. As we would expect, it reflects much of the current scientific attitudes of the time. During any one period, of course, there are a n u m b e r of well-thought-of hypotheses that do not pass the tests of time and that later on have to be abandoned. U n d e r normal conditions, this does no damage at all; in fact, the disproving of hypotheses is one of the chief methods for improving scientific knowledge. But if any hypothesis, no matter how inadequate or incomplete, receives a really authoritative endorsement in any authoritarian system of thought, the amount of f u t u r e damage it can do may be very great indeed. T h u s , the errors of Engels, which are certainly excusable in a scientific layman in the 1870's, are not recognized even yet as errors by the faithful. In the Communist countries, Engels is still quoted as an authority, is still called u p o n to settle technical scientific questions, and is still used to silence any critical opposition to the current orthodoxy. A good example of this is to be found in Engels' casual remarks about the spontaneous generation of life out of inert, structureless protein (Protista, p. 179), remarks which, incidentally, were quite harmless at the time. Very recently, however, Professor Olga Lepshinskaya received a Stalin Prize, First Class, for the supposed proof that "egg albumen is not merely a lifeless

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nourishing medium but a living matter, capable of developing and forming cells," a notion made obsolete in the last century by the improvement in the microscope and in microscopic technique. We will be concerned here, however, only with Engels' position on evolution theory and heredity. In Anti-Diihring, he seemed to be a trifle to the right of Marx, but, as we have noted, this was probably because he was eliminating a left heretic. In the Dialectics of Nature, however, his position in regard to Malthus and Darwin and to natural selection is indistinguishable from Marx's own. T h e following excerpts need little comment. T h e setting up of straw men who are to be demolished, however, is an interesting technique. From page 208: The Struggle for Life. Until Darwin, what was stressed by his present adherents was precisely the harmonious cooperative working of organic nature, how the plant kingdom supplies animals with nourishment and oxygen, and animals supply plants with manure, ammonia, and carbonic acid. Hardly was Darwin recognized before these same people saw everywhere nothing but struggle. Nature, as we know, includes both harmonious cooperation and struggle; without cooperation there would be no balance of nature and no organic world, without "struggle" there could be no evolution. T h e next passage, beginning on the same page, is obviously only an echo of Marx's letter of June 18, 1862. The whole Darwinian theory of the struggle for life is simply the transference from society to organic nature of Hobbes' theory of bellum omnium contra omnes, and of the bourgeois economic theory of competition, as well as the Malthusian theory of population. When once this feat has been accomplished (the uncondi-

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tional justification for which, especially as regards the Malthusian theory, is still very questionable), it is very easy to transfer these theories back again from natural history to the history of society, and altogether too naive to maintain that thereby these assertions have been proved as eternal natural laws of society. Engels, of course, knew very well that "the whole Darwinian theory of the struggle for life" was not the simple transference from society to organic nature of Hobbes' theory of the war of all against all, as is shown by the following. From page 235; The Struggle for Existence.—Above all this must be strictly limited to the struggles resulting from plant and animal overpopulation, which do in fact occur at definite stages of plant and lower animal life. But one must keep sharply distinct from it the conditions in which species alter, old ones die out and newly evolved ones take their place, without this over population: e.g. on the migration of animals and plants into new regions where new conditions of climate, soil, etc., are responsible for the alteration. If there the individuals which become adapted survive and develop into a new species by continually increasing adaptation, while the other more stable individuals die away and finally die out, and with them the imperfect intermediate stages, then this can and does proceed without any Malthusianism, and if the latter should occur at all it makes no change to the process, at most it can accelerate it. It is quite evident that although Marx and Engels accepted Darwin's proof of evolution gladly they had an underlying resentment toward natural selection even though Engels accepted it and even defended it against the attacks of Dühring. In the following passage (p. 235), any workable substitute for natural selection was obviously welcome: Hence Haeckel's "adaptation and heredity" also can determine

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the whole process of evolution, without need for selection and Malthusianism. Darwin's mistake lies precisely in lumping together in "natural selection" or the "survival of the fittest" two absolutely separate things: 1. Selection by the pressure of over-population, where perhaps the strongest survive in the first place, but where the weakest in many respects can also do so. 2. Selection by greater capacity of adaptation to altered circumstances, where the survivors are better suited to these circumstances, but where this adaptation as a whole can mean regress as well as progress (for instance adaptation to parasitic life is always regress). O n e last parting shot taken, however, from early in the work. From page 19: . . . Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom.

§6 T h u s far, the m a j o r role which belief in the inheritance of acquired characters plays in Marxian biology has been touched on only briefly. At present, this belief constitutes t h e most spectacular difference between the biology of the free world and the biology of the Communists. It is a belief that promises so m u c h so quickly that it has always had an especial appeal for those who want to improve mankind in a hurry. T h e belief, however, can be used to identify Marxian biology only in connection with other recognizable symptoms, a n d then only after it had been rejected by the biologists who were free to reject it. In the early years of this century, a

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clinging to the belief may indicate no more than a bias in favor of liberalism or, in some cases, only an inability on the part of the believer to adjust to the increasing store of biological knowledge. It is easy to demonstrate the attractiveness of the belief to some of the Utopians who preceded Marx and Engels. Condorcet relied upon it to "perfect" mankind and in his famous Equisse d'un Tableau historique des progres de Vesprit humain of 1794 he wrote (English translation, 1795, p. S70): But may not our physical faculties, the force, the sagacity, the acuteness of the senses, be numbered among the qualities the individual improvement of which it will be practicable to transmit. An attention to the different breeds of domestic animals, must lead us to the affirmative of this question and a direct observation of the human species itself will be found to strengthen the opinion. William Godwin also accepted the belief and in The Enquirer of 1797 he wrote, " T h a t the accidents of body and mind should regularly descend from father to son, is a thing that daily occurs, yet is little in correspondence with the system of our philosophers." Lamarck, himself, seemed to have been an outstanding liberal and showed that he, too, could go the Utopians one better. It would be hard to beat the longing for equalitarianism shown by the following passage which he published in 1809. From the 1914 edition of Philosophical Zoology, page 361: I might show, for instance, that while man derives great advantages from his highly developed intellectual faculties, the human species in general suffers from them at the same time considerable disadvantages: since these faculties confer the means for doing harm as easily as good, and their general effect is always to the disadvantage of those individuals who make the

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least use of their intelligence, and this is necessarily the case of the greater number. It would appear therefore that the main evil in this respect resides in the extreme inequality of intelligence between individuals, an inequality that cannot be entirely destroyed. Nevertheless it may be inferred with still greater certainty that the thing most important for the improvement and happiness of man is to diminish as far as possible this enormous inequality, since it is the origin of most of the evils to which he is exposed. Engels, following in the same tradition, endorsed the inheritance of acquired characters in an essay which is very indicative of his evolutionary beliefs. It is entitled The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. T h i s was published as a chapter in his Dialectics of Nature. His endorsement of the belief is in no way remarkable, and the passages which record it will merely be cited in order. T h e y are, however, the pronouncements of a Communist authority and among the faithful, even today, they are practically sacred. From page 281: . . . But the decisive step was taken: the hand became free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity and skill, and the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from generation to generation. Thus the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, by inheritance of the resulting special development of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones as well, and by the ever renewed employment of these inherited improvements in new, more and more complicated operations, has the human hand attained the high degree of perfection that has enabled it to conjure into being the pictures of Raphael, the statues of Thorwaldsen, the music of Paganini.

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From page 283: In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to one another. The need led to the creation of its organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by means of gradually increased modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate letter after another. From page 284: . . . And the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labour. From page 287, (Brahmans please note!): . . . Just as becoming adjusted to a plant diet side by side with meat has converted wild cats and dogs into the servants of man, so also adaptation to a flesh diet, side by side with a vegetable diet, has considerably contributed to giving bodily strength and independence to man in the making. The most essential effect, however, of a flesh diet was on the brain, which now received a far richer flow of the materials necessary for its nourishment and development, and which therefore could become more rapidly and perfectly developed from generation to generation. From page 290: . . . Under artificial cultivation, both plants and animals are so changed by the hand of man that they become unrecognizable. T h e wild plants from which our grain varieties originated are still being sought in vain. One final quotation from Engels! It should lead to some denouement in the U S S R Academy of Science. Following the destruction of genetics in Russia in 1948, Professor H. J . Müller, the distinguished geneticist and Nobel laureate, resigned

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from this Academy. In his letter of resignation, he called attention to the fact that the inheritance of acquired characters had racist implications. Professor Muller wrote in reference to the faith of Lysenko and Prezent, who led the fight to outlaw genetics in Russia. . . . the inheritance of acquired characters must lead inevitably, and indeed by the admission of some of its adherents, to the same dangerous Fascistic conclusions as that of the Nazis: that the economically less advanced peoples and classes of the world have become actually inferior in their heredity. The Nazis would have the allegedly lower genetic status, a cause, while the Lysenkoists would have it an effect of the lower opportunity of the less fortunate groups for mental and physical development. T h i s statement of Muller's apparently stung the Party line scientists, for the Praesidium of the Academy of Science in accepting his resignation stated (Pravda, December 14, 1948): Profound indignation is aroused by the assertion of Muller to the effect that Michurin biology allegedly leads to racist conclusions, inasmuch as it allegedly follows that the living conditions of culturally backward peoples must determine heredity incapability of adopting a higher culture. This nonsense has nothing to do with Michurin science. ["Michurin science" is the name used in Russia for Marxian biology.] If Professor Muller wanted to, he could give the Praesidium some uncomfortable moments by pointing out that they were contradicting Engels. In Notes to Anti-Dühring, included in the Dialectics of Nature, Engels wrote (p. 314): . . . On the other hand, modern natural science has extended the principle of the origin of all thought content from experience in a way that breaks down its old metaphysical limitation and formulation. By recognising the inheritance of acquired characters, it extends the subject of experience from the individ-

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ual to the genus; the single individual that must have experienced is no longer necessary, its individual experience can be replaced to a certain extent by the results of the experiences of a number of its ancestors. If, for instance, among us the mathematical axioms seem self-evident to every eight-year-old child, and in no need of proof from experience, this is solely the result of "accumulated inheritance." It would be difficult to teach them by a proof to a bushman or Australian negro. This judgment of Engels as to the abilities of certain races needs emphasis, for the Communists of today never mention it; in fact, their writings seem to be designed to give the exact opposite impression of their views. Marx also esteemed the different races very differently; toward some of them, he was openly contemptuous and used, for example, the epithet "nigger" as a term of opprobrium. T h e occasion of this use of the word, cited below, was doubtless caused by his intense hatred of Ferdinand Lassalle. At the time, Lassalle was the very successful leader of the German socialists. He had recently entertained Marx in Berlin, and when he had occasion to visit London, it was only natural that he should become Marx's guest. At the time of his visit, Marx was cadging whatever money he could from whatever friends and acquaintances he could touch for a loan. On leaving for Berlin, Lassalle gave Marx £ 1 5 in cash and a promissory note for another £60. Marx accepted, of course, but he evidently wanted and expected more. H e expressed himself uninhibitedly in the letter dated July 30, 1862, which he wrote to Engels just after Lassalle left. T h e following quotations contain Marx's use of the term "nigger" to express contempt. Incredibly enough, he even seems to be not entirely free from AntiSemitism. 4 * See also the appendix to Ludwig Beuerbach and The Outcome of Classical German Philosophy, published by Engels in 1889. "Feuerbach wants sen-

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The Jewish nigger Lassalle, who fortunately left at the end of the week, has, again fortunately, lost 5000 Thaler in a bad speculation. The fellow would rather throw the money in the gutter than lend it to a 'friend' even if interest and capital were guaranteed. At that he gives out the impression that he must live as a Jewish baron or as a baronial Jew (probably through the countess). . . . Now it is completely clear to me that, as his head shape and hair growth prove, he is descended from the Negroes who joined Moses on the journey out of Egypt (if not, his mother or grandmother on his father's side crossed with a nigger). Now this combination of Judaism and Teutonism with a negroid ground substance must produce a wonderful product. T h e obtrusiveness of the fellow is indeed negroid . . . One of the great discoveries of our nigger—which he shared with me as a 'most trusted friend'—is that the Pelagians stemmed from the Semites . . . §7 When we examine the whole of Marxian biology, in the state of development it had reached in the 1870's, we are struck at once by the fact that no aspect of it was either novel or original. It had no unique positive tenets whatever; it was merely a part of the biology of the time. It differed from scientific biology only in that it rejected certain biological theories on doctrinal grounds. Thus, from its very beginning, it was a limited and incomplete doctrine. Its fundamental weakness lay in the fact that it was authoritarian and hence extremely conservative. Not only did it reject certain portions of its contemporary biology, it also, by becoming a suous objects really distinguished from the objects of thought; but he does not understand human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he sees only the theoretical attitude as the true human attitude, while practice is understood and established only in its 'dirty Jew' appearance. H e therefore does not comprehend the significance of 'revolutionary,' of 'practical-critical activity." "

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dogma, insured the future rejection of biological discoveries which were incompatible with its basic canons. Thus, as time passed, Marxian biology was compelled to deviate more and more from the growing, developing science. Moreover, this deviation was augmented by the fact that Marxian biology had to preserve and propagate those errors which were incorporated in it from the start. During its earliest period, when Marx and Engels were writing, Marxian biology was an easily recognizable deviant. We can summarize its content by the following numbered statements: 1. It accepted completely the fact of organic evolution. 2. It accepted completely one aspect of the theory of natural selection, i.e., that which, by explaining the origin of adaptation, offers a competing hypothesis to teleology. 3. It was self-contradictory in its attitude toward that part of natural selection which relied on population pressure to bring about evolutionary changes. Engels, in a number of passages, admitted the important role of population pressure, but both Engels and Marx deplored several times Darwin's "errors" in relying on the "Malthusian" principle as a selecting agent. 4. It condemned Malthus completely whenever he is referred to in connection with the evolution theory. The statements made by Marx and Engels in this connection show that they were misinformed about Malthus. 5. It always referred to Lamarck with respect and accepted completely the inheritance of acquired characters. At the time, this was no real distinguishing characteristic, but later it became a major point of difference when scientific biology abandoned the inheritance of acquired characters and Marxian biology retained the belief. 6. It tended to emphasize all environmental factors in ex-

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plaining human variability. There is some evidence of a difference of opinion between Marx and Engels, however, as to just how much of human inequality environmental differences explain. Marxian biology today differs in many respects from the Marxian biology of this earlier period. A number of our present concepts were unknown then and hence, at the time, no party line could be drawn in regard to them. But later developments in Marxian biology, progressing through the allowed channels, have passed some definite judgments on the advances in biology made during the last seventy-five years. At present, Marxian biology can be distinguished from the biology of the biologists not only by its original characteristics as listed above, but also by its ruling on such matters as eugenics and heredity differences within the human stock. It can be recognized also by its rejection of the contributions made by Weismann, Mendel, and modern geneticists. This latter development will be discussed later in Chapter X.

4. The Development of Evolution Theory from 1870 to 1900 §1 the books and papers written by the early evolutionists, we can hardly fail to notice their enthusiasm and even their excitement. A new field of research had suddenly been opened for exploration, and a newly activated science was invading the unknown and making new conquests. Almost automatically, the theory of evolution had arranged a great accumulation of facts into a new and reasonable system—into a scientific theory that would alter our entire outlook both on nature and on ourselves. In evolution, biological research had received its greatest stimulus, and new and important discoveries were being made with increasing frequency. All of the newly found data fit neatly into the evolutionary pattern, and soon the proof of evolution became so overwhelming that all competing hypotheses were abandoned. T h e evidence for evolution was found in many different fields. Darwin himself had been convinced of evolution by observing the distribution of animals and plants in the Galäpagos Islands. There, he had discovered that the different species were not merely scattered at random, but that there was order in their distribution, an order, moreover, which could be explained very simply if the HEN W E READ

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species were related to each other and were descended from a common ancestor. The naturalists who followed Darwin also found order in the way that species were distributed over the entire world, and so the field of animal and plant distribution furnished evidence for evolution. Evolution also brought system and meaning to the study of fossils, and, as a natural consequence, fossils were soon being collected and investigated at an unprecedented rate. Thus, evolution furnished a framework for the rapidly developing sciences of historical geology and paleontology but it did not stop here. In such fields as comparative anatomy and embryology, the accumulated knowledge fit into the general evolutionary picture, and even such anatomical puzzles as relics found an explanation in the concept of evolution. Relics are now defined as rudimentary, nonfunctioning structures that were useful in past stages of development but are now useless and in the process of being eliminated. During the preceding century, taxonomists had attempted to create a "natural" system for classifying animals and plants. T h e artificial systems which they had devised were both practical and useful but not satisfying intellectually. Evolution provided the first logical framework for the long sought natural system, and the classification of animals and plants could at last be based on relationship and common descent. Evidence for evolution also appeared in still another field, in the science of animal and plant breeding where artificial selection had already secured valuable hereditary changes. Here, the workers were greatly stimulated by the conviction that more and better changes could be obtained and that evolution itself might be channeled in a desirable direction. It was a good thing for the early evolutionists and for those who followed them that such a tremendous and harmonious mass of evidence had accumulated so rapidly. Otherwise, they

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would have been greatly discouraged, for an entirely unforeseen and unpredictable difficulty arose. The explanations of evolution, the only ones the biologists had or could think of, turned out to be unsatisfactory. It seemed paradoxical, but, just as the proof of evolution became evident to all competent scientists, the explanations of evolution became inadequate and, try as they would, the biologists could not agree on the forces which had brought it about. Thus the period which witnessed the complete triumph of evolution also saw a steady deterioriation in its rationale. In brief, the rapidly increasing knowledge of evolution brought the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters into question. The doctrine was examined carefully, tested thoroughly, and even fought over. Finally, as a result of a critical and prolonged evaluation of the evidence, it was abandoned. This defection of the Lamarckian doctrine threw the entire burden of explaining evolution upon natural selection, a burden which it could not bear by itself, and the very attempt to make natural selection explain what it could not explain emphasized its limitations. Before the end of the century, the inadequacies of natural selection as a complete and final explanation of evolution brought the whole concept into undeserved disrepute. The process of evolution was evidently not as simple as it had seemed to be in its earlier days. We should point out that our evaluation of the evolutionary thought of this period is made from the vantage point of the mid-twentieth century. Few, perhaps none, of the contemporary investigators would have agreed with what we have just stated. We have facts now which were unavailable to our predecessors, and we tend, perhaps, to regard their struggle rather smugly because we have learned at last the answers to the questions which puzzled them. This must not be taken to mean, of course, that we have discovered all there

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is to be known about the causes of evolution. Our problems and our unknowns, however, are on a different level from those of seven ty-five years ago. W e have our own disagreements and debates, but we are in practical agreement on the solutions of the problems which so bothered the late nineteenth century evolutionists. As we shall see, these earlier scientists often disagreed violently over the role and importance of the various factors of evolution. T h e y suggested many ingenious and logical explanations although, from our present vantage point, we can see how far-fetched some of their hypotheses were. W e can also see how very close some of them came to the truth. W e really owe the nineteenth century scientists a very great debt, and the more accurately we are able to judge them in the light of their own time, the more we have to respect their thinking and their work. T h e development of evolution theory during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century was very unkind to Marxian biology. Every single tenet peculiar to the doctrine turned out to be not in accord with the facts. Only where it did not contradict scientific biology, as when it accepted natural selection as preferable to teleology, did it avoid error. On its own merits, Marxian biology would have remained merely a minor episode in the history of lay reaction to a major scientific advance. Its persistence today and its ascendency in certain non-biological fields is perhaps our best illustration of the influence of political convictions on what should be impartial judgment. §2 T h e man who contributed more than any other to the demolition of the doctrine that acquired characters are inherited was August Weismann (1834-1919). Weismann was

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not the first to reject the doctrine nor was he the first to make the discoveries which are generally associated with his name. He did, however, collect all the pertinent data, and he did understand just what the data meant. Moreover, he was able to show that our growing knowledge in the fields of microscopic anatomy and embryology was incompatible with a belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and he published his findings in such a way that they could not be ignored. As a consequence, he found himself leading the fight against a belief which had been accepted almost universally since the time of Hippocrates. T h e fact that he succeeded in the fight insures him a permanent place in the history of science, and the added fact that he has been promoted to the role of a major villain in all the Communist countries keeps him from being dismissed as a mere historical figure. Today, Weismann is still very much with us. Of course, the true significance of the various discoveries, which undermined the belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, was not recognized at first. Indeed, for years, they seemed to have no relevance at all to the subject. Then, as they were better organized and their meaning emerged, the ancient doctrine which had been temporarily revived by the evolutionists found itself finally on the way out. Obviously, it is impossible to give here the entire history of these discoveries, and we are forced to be somewhat arbitrary in selecting those we describe. We can begin very logically, however, with a work which was published twenty years before Darwin's Origin of Species. In 1838, a botanist, M. J. Schleiden, and, a year later, a zoologist, Theodore Schwann, established what is now called the "cell theory." Cells had really been observed and pictured for a long time. Dutrochet (1824) had even described animals and plants as being built up of masses of cells, but the work

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of Schleiden and Schwann established the fact that all living creatures were constructed of the same basic units, and that living material was never found anywhere except in the form of cells. Many microscopic organisms consisted of but a single cell and large animals and plants of many cells, but nothing less than a cell could really be alive. Unfortunately, Schleiden and Schwann were mistaken in their ideas as to how cells originated. They believed that cells could be formed either through the division of pre-existing cells or through "free cell formation," i.e., through a development from non-cellular material. It was not until 1855 that Rudolph Virchow established the fact that cells were formed only through cell division (omnis cellula e cellula) and that "free cell formation" was a myth. A recent and most revealing development in Marxian biology can be traced back to the way this work of Schleiden and Schwann and Virchow was received by Frederick Engels. According to Khrushchov (1950): Friedrick Engels pointed out that the cell-theory developed by Schwann and Schleiden was, along with the discovery of the law of transformation of energy and the founding by Darwin of the theory of evolution, the great achievement of science by means of which the predominance of metaphysical and idealistic views concerning nature was brought to an end, and the way cleared for the dialectical Marxist explanation of the phenomena of nature. Schleiden and Schwann are thus acceptable to the Communists but Virchow is not, in spite of his great contributions to pathology and microscopic anatomy. Virchow, it appears, was a political conservative and in 1877 he opposed the teaching of Darwinian evolution in the German schools. T o quote Khrushchov further,

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Especially active in this direction was the German pathologist Rudolph Virchow, the originator of so called cellular pathology one of the most reactionary biologists and medical men of the 19th century, a professed anti-Darwinist who was most sharply criticized by Friedrick Engels. Thus, the highest Communist authority has pronounced Schleiden and Schwann good but Virchow bad. In consequence, the cell theory is secure in Marxian biology but the discoveries of Virchow are not, particularly his discovery that cells are formed only through the division of pre-existing cells. In 1950, Professor Olga Lepeshinskaya received the Stalin Prize, First Class, for announcing that she had proved that certain cells of the embryo had originated from yolk globules. Not long after the cell theory was announced, the biologists realized that it contributed to our understanding of the physical basis of heredity. Schwann had shown that the egg itself is a cell and is basically like all other cells. Two years later, R. A. Kölliker (1841) showed that the spermatozoan is derived from a cell and hence it was not just a parasite in the semen as some had thought. And, in 1865, SchweiggerSeidel and La Vallette St. George demonstrated that spermatozoa actually are cells. In 1875, Oscar Hertwig established the all important fact that the fertilization of the egg consists of its union with a single spermatozoan. Somewhat earlier, in 1868, Darwin had rejected such a view and had expressed himself to the effect that the entire mass of semen and not just a single spermatozoan fertilized the egg, a notion in keeping with his hypothesis of pangenesis. Darwin's conservative stand, however, had little influence, and soon our modern views prevailed. By the time Weismann entered the arena, fertilization was fairly well understood. Weismann's great service to biological theory can be de-

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scribed most simply if we begin with an account of reproduction in the simple unicellular animals and plants. Here, cell division and the multiplication of individuals take place together: the cells divide and separate and two individuals exist where there was only one before. This same simple relationship holds also for some of the more primitive multicellular forms, where, at the proper time, every cell divides to produce a new individual (e.g., in Pandorina). As evolution progressed, however, the cells began to specialize so that different ones performed different functions. Thus, in a little, spherical, multicellular flagellate called Volvox, which is barely visible to the naked eye, only certain special cells give rise to eggs or spermatozoa or (vegetatively) to new individuals, the rest of the cells ultimately die as a result of old age. This stage of evolution ushered "natural death" in the world. When all of the cells of an animal or plant divide to produce the next generation, there is no natural death, but only deaths through accidents. The same is also true of those cells which take over the specialized function of reproduction in the more highly evolved forms. They retain their potential immortality when they divide and produce the succeeding generations. Weismann brought out vividly the fact that, in all higher animals and plants, there are continuous lines of dividing cells which persist right through the series of generations. In animals, this line of cells is called the "germ plasm." In plants, it is more complex and consists of the meristem, spores, and a portion of the gametephyte. All other cells, descended from the fertilized, dividing eggs become differentiated and, in animals, develop ultimately into muscles, nerves, liver cells, etc., and in plants into xylem, phloem, etc. The general terms for such differentiated cells is "soma" and the soma is not continuous from generation to generation.

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T h e notion of "flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood" is simply false. We are not descended from the soma of our parents but from their germ plasm. T h e discovery of this introduced complications into the concept of the inheritance of acquired characters. Weismann was not the first to describe the germ plasm. H e himself cites his precursors, although, when he published his great work in 1885, he was unaware that others had practically anticipated him. As early as 1849, Sir Richard Owen had described a difference between the germ and body cells. Francis Galton expressed certain ideas very close to Weismann's in 1872 but later changed his mind in favor of Darwin's pangenesis. Gustav Jäger (1878) recognized two basically different types of cells which he called "ontogenetic" and "phylogenetic" and two years later Rauber (1880) noted that only a portion of the egg developed into the individual, or soma. Finally, Nussbaum (1880) described the continuity of the germ cells. Weismann (1885) cites this previous work but also calls attention to the fact that all went unnoticed and had little effect in the progress of scientific thought. Meanwhile improvements in the microscope and in microscopic technique disclosed a great many of the details of cell division. T h e nucleus, of course, had long been recognized, and as early as 1866, Haeckel had guessed that it provided for the transmission of hereditary characters. T h e nuclei of dividing cells were shown to contain a number of threadlike or rodlike bodies which were easy to stain and hence were called chromosomes. Flemming (1880) discovered that each chromosome split longitudinally as the cell divided and that the two halves of each chromosome went to different daughter cells. In 1883, William Roux pointed out that the entire chromosome material was halved exactly in cell division and halved in such a way that the two portions were both quan-

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titatively and qualitatively equivalent. He reached the conclusion, since, completely verified, that the heredity bearers were particles and that the hereditary particles were in the chromosomes. Within the next two years, a like conclusion was reached independently by Hertwig, von Kölliker, Strasburger, and Weismann. Weismann (1892) even concluded that the chromosomes carry the hereditary material and constituted the real germ plasm. T h e chromosome theory of heredity, however, is still denied by the Lysenkoids. Weismann performed another important service to biology in his direct challenge to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters. His own work had shown that there was no known mechanism for the transmission of such characters, and he urged very justly that those who believed in the doctrine should produce some positive evidence to justify their position. His challenge was accepted, and widespread and intensive investigations were undertaken. During the last seventy years, literally thousands of experiments, designed to test the doctrine, were completed. In spite of many claims to the contrary, not a single authentic instance of such inheritance has ever been found. No such claim has ever been substantiated, although some confusion has been introduced into the subject by applying to it the results of the work on unicellular organisms where, of course, there is no real separation of the germ plasm from the soma. Hereditary modifications introduced here are called dauermodifications (when they are not easily recognized mutations) and have been known to last a number of cell generations. This, however, is a very different problem. There is a certain amount of conscious misrepresentation of modern work on this subject by Communists in the free world. 1 1 T h e Governing Board of the American Institute of Biological Sciences hai even had to call attention to this misrepresentation publicly. See theii Statement published in Science, 110:124-25 (1949).

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Marxian biology still holds tenaciously to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters and an acceptance of this doctrine is now de rigueur in Communist countries. As we would expect, Weismann is not popular in such lands and the attacks upon him and upon his motives, which appear in the Communist press, make fascinating reading. One aspect of the attacks is worth recording here—they are all relatively recent. Engels wrote nothing about Weismann, and this silence on the part of the great biological authority of the Communist world did not go unnoticed. At least one of the Communist writers felt called upon to explain or excuse Engels' oversight. T h e following short excerpt is from Marx and Engels on Biology by V. L. Komarov (1935): . . . Engels, moreover, here expresses the firm confidence that a change in the kind of food brings with it a change in the chemical composition of the blood, and that the latter acts by effecting changes also on the construction and form of the body. What a lesson this is for those neo-Darwinians and geneticians for whom heredity is self-sufficient and quite independent of the influence of environment or of peculiarities acquired by the individual during his life. It is a pity, for example, that Weismann was all his life a man of the study and gave Engels no occasion to make even a short estimate of his teaching, which acknowledges natural selection as the only motive force of nature. The works of Weismann began to appear in 1881 but in the correspondence of Marx and Engels after December, 1882, his name is not once mentioned. This happened because Weismann's works only assumed general significance considerably later, particularly after 1902 when his Vorträge über Descendentztheorie appeared and his teaching became more completely defined. Engels would certainly have seen in his work, had he been acquainted with it, a step backwards. We

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Weismann's work was recognized immediately by the biological world, and no sooner was it published than it aroused an almost universal discussion. His best known writings appeared in 1885 and 1892—well before the death of Engels in 1895. In fact, in his work of this later date, Weismann described a chromosome mechanism which would later serve as the physical basis for Mendelian inheritance. Weismann is condemned today in the Communist lands, but he must be condemned without benefit of Engels. Ο §3 Needless to say, belief in the inheritance of acquired characters did not die easily. We would expect any belief which had been accepted almost universally for over two thousand years to have great vitality. Then, too, in the late nineteenth century, there were additional reasons for the belief's persistence because it was needed at that time to explain evolution. T h e discoveries, which were cited in the preceding section, could not in themselves disprove such inheritance. At best, they showed merely that the only mechanism ever advanced seriously to explain how acquired characters could be inherited was imaginary, and that the belief could not be accepted as a matter of course but only if actual proof for it could be found. Weismann's own direct experiments were somewhat trivial. H e cut off the tails of rats for several generations and found that such mutilations were not inherited. Such an experiment would have been of great importance if the results had been positive but, being negative, they were merely worth recording and filing away. T h e only importance of the experiment to us is that it is still being quoted by the Marxian biologists as the sole

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experimental evidence for the abandonment of the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters. T h e non-hereditability of mutilations had actually been known long before Weismann. Aristotle had recorded it, although he had believed in the inheritance of acquired characters. In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas had stated that some mutilations were not inherited, and Vincent of Beauvais had denied that any were. In the eighteenth century, Charles Bonnet (1763) denied the inheritance of mutilations even if they were repeated many generations, so Weismann at least had precedence for his conclusions. There was even a little precedence for his disbelief in the inheritance of acquired characters. Such disbelief had been expressed by Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) L.P., an anonymous scholar of Oxford (1695), Lord Karnes (1774), Immanuel Kant (1785), Charles White (1779), J . C. Prichard (1808), and William Lawrence (1819). (For detailed references see Zirkle, 1946.) A number of the leading post-Darwinian evolutionists remained faithful to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters. As late as the 1890's, Herbert Spencer insisted on the necessity of such inheritance as did G. J . Romanes. In Germany, Ernst Haeckel and Oscar Hertwig continued to uphold the belief and they were followed in this by some of their academic successors, men like Richard Semon (1859-1919) and August Pauly (1850-1914). In the United States, the great paleontologist, E. D. Cope (18401897), supported the Lamarckian doctrine vigorously, and in 1891. Henry Fairfield Osborn collected paleontological evidence to sustain it. In France, the native land of Lamarck, the doctrine has always been popular, and we need cite only the support given it there by Alfred Giard (1846-1908). T h e doctrine actually persisted well into the twentieth century,

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even after the significance of the work of Mendel and Johanssen was realized. T h e writer has personally known a number of distinguished biologists who remained Lamarckians. They were all among the older scientists, however, and none of them was born after 1870. While Weismann led the attack on Lamarckism, he did not destroy it. T h e doctrine was really demolished by those who supported it; it was given the coup de grace by its friends. Literally many hundreds of experiments were designed to test it; in fact, for almost a generation, the proof or disproof of the doctrine was one of the major activities of research in evolution. Any number of negative instances were recorded, as we would expect, but an absolute negative cannot be proven by a mere lack of positive evidence. T h e real disrepute into which the doctrine fell was due to the work of those investigators who reported positive results, to those who published data which they thought established it. When their work was examined critically, it was discovered that, without exception, it was defective. Many experiments had been designed so badly that the results were ambiguous and could be accounted for without the necessity of assuming that acquired characters were inherited. Practically none of the experiments had proper controls and most of the experimenters seemed to be unaware that controls were necessary. T h e really damning fact, however, was that, when the experiments were repeated, the positive results which had been reported could not be obtained. Non-repeatable experiments, of course, have no scientific standing. T h e story of these multitudinous experiments is fascinating for the historian of science, but the subject is too technical to be treated in any detail here. Obviously there was an extraordinary desire on the part of many of the workers to discover that acquired characters were inherited.

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T h e improvement of mankind would be so easy and so humane if such characters could only be passed on to future generations that many men of good will undoubtedly let their desires influence their judgment. Perhaps no other biological hypothesis has ever been tested so thoroughly and abandoned with such reluctance. Most of the investigators, in spite of their emotional predilections, were honest men and their mistakes were obviously honest mistakes, and hence they are forgivable. In some instances, however, there are definite evidences of chicanery. T h e most spectacular incident of fraud was exposed in 1926. Paul Kammerer, who had claimed to prove the inheritance of acquired characters in salamanders and in the midwife toad, finally, after seven years of successful evasions, had his experimental specimens examined. T h e "acquired" characters, the black skin color and black pad on the thumb, were found to be caused by India ink. Kammerer acknowledged the fraud but pleaded his own personal innocence in a letter he wrote to the Presidium of the Communist Academy in Moscow—the letter in which he announced his coming suicide. (See page 372) As we shall see later, the experimental results reported by Kammerer, in spite of their admittedly fraudulent character, were being cited in Russia as late as 1949 as authentic evidence of the inheritance of acquired characters. §4 It was inevitable that the controversy over the inheritance of acquired characters would influence the standing of natural selection. But even without this controversy, it was inevitable that both natural selection and Darwin would be attacked strenuously. T h e more conservative religions had resented the fact that natural selection lessened the need for

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Divine intervention in explaining adaptation in the organic world. While this resentment had little influence on the growth and development of biological theory, it was always present and it persists even today. As late as 1948, Robert E. D. Clark in Darwin: Before and After concluded, after examining Darwin's motives, that Darwin "was seeking for a way o£ escape from his religious convictions," and that his prolonged ill health was due to the fact that, in some vague way, he had sinned. Clark also states, "But it may be said at once that the trends of modern research have tended very greatly to lessen the force of the classical arguments for evolution, except insofar as they relate merely to selection between varieties" (p. 169). Clark, of course, is misinformed. 2 Darwin has also been attacked from the other side and these attacks have also persisted. Geoffrey West (1937) wrote an excellent factual and, in some respects, appreciative biography entitled Charles Darwin but it bore the subtitle " T h e Fragmentary Man." In the final chapter, West decided that Darwin was not a forward looker and was lacking in many of the attitudes which were to become fashionable in the 1930's. He wrote: On all such issues, indeed in everything outside his own work, he [Darwin] spoke and thought with the perfect simplicity of a 2 In a self-revealing essay on Darwin, Jacques Barzun (Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1941) wrote, "Darwin was not a thinker and he did not originate the ideas that he used. He vacillated, added, retracted, and confused his own traces. As soon as he crossed the dividing line between the realm of events and the realm of theory he became 'metaphysical' in the bad sense. His power for drawing out the implications of his theories was at no time very remarkable but when it came to the moral order it disappeared altogether, as that penetrating Darwinian, Nietzsche, observed with some disdain." Biologists interested in the time lag between their discoveries and a popular understanding of them should read this entire essay. Although published as late as 1941, it is completely innocent of twentieth century biology, and the author's evaluation of natural selection is as archaic as Mivart's.

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leading article in a respectable Victorian paper. He was a specialist getting on with his job, in a sociological, political and religious vacuum. It meant great achievement on one side and on the other an increasing desiccation, till he ceased to have any vital life outside his work at all, was just a nice, a very nice, old man. Werner Sombart has written of 'the fragmentary man' who is the type of the capitalist executive, seeing all in acquisitive terms, subordinating the whole to the part, making the quantitative aspect his total consideration till 'all else within him dries up' and 'everything about him becomes a wilderness, all life dries, all values disappear.' T h e resemblance of this fragmentary man to Darwin is evident, (pp. 328-29.) A third source of attacks u p o n Darwin and natural selection, on an even lower level than those we have cited, comes from the Communists themselves. T h e real nature of these attacks is concealed, however, by the peculiar way the Communists use words. M a r x a n d Engels had denegated the Malthusian aspects of n a t u r a l selection when they first met it. Modern Russian official biology has gone even further. T . D. Lysenko, the great biological authority in the Soviet world, denies that there is any intraspecies competition whatever, and consequently he claims that there can be b u t little natural selection in Darwinian terms. T h e name Darwin is still revered in Communist lands, however, and there evolution itself is labeled "Darwinism." T h e Communists have taken advantage of the fact that Darwin accepted Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characters and have listed this doctrine u n d e r Darwin's name. In fact, "Creative Soviet Darwinism" has no real resemblance to what is known as Darwinism in the rest of the world. Outside of the Communist countries, "Creative Soviet Darwinism" is called Lamarckism. T h e teleologists, as we would expect, were always opposed

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to natural selection and some of them fought it bitterly. St. George Mivart, in particular, was a persistent enemy of the doctrine and he carried on a r u n n i n g fight with his fellow biologists for many years. W h e n we read his works today they have such an archaic flavor, however, that it is difficult for us to realize that for many years he was taken very seriously and that he had a considerable influence and following. T o d a y it is difficult for us to realize that a biologist could dismiss natural selection on religious grounds, as "a puerile hypothesis" (Lessons from Nature). Another teleologist we should mention is the somewhat eccentric Samuel Butler, who wrote Evolution, Old and New in 1879. Butler also attacked Darwin with asperity a n d discarded natural selection as an evil doctrine. His teleology was of a peculiar brand, as peculiar as he was himself, for he had the evolving species design themselves through their ability both to remember and to inherit all changes each generation saw fit to make and to pass their memories on to their progeny. W e could dismiss Butler very easily as a mere oddity, and indeed biologists have so dismissed him, were it not for the fact that he was George Bernard Shaw's m e n t o r in matters biological. T h i s fact introduces a most serious consideration. Shaw was a good Marxian, and in all essentials, his biology was Marxian biology. H e believed in the inheritances of acquired characters and he denied natural selection vehemently. In fact, Shaw's frequent excursions into biology and his writings on evolution and heredity did much to develop the climate of opinion in which twentieth century Marxism could flourish. T h e presumptive sources of Shaw's biology might well have been the pronouncements of Marx and Engels, yet we know definitely that this is not the case. Shaw has made it perfectly clear that his notions on evolution

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were derived from Butler's, and we should note that Butler rejected the exact portion of Darwin's theory which Marx and Engels accepted completely. Shaw achieved a Marxian biology but he did not get it from the founders of Communism. It is important for us to realize that all groups, who accept the basic premises of Marxian biology, need not have gotten their belief directly from Marx and Engels. They may have achieved the same end results through a convergent development. Convergence in ideology is as much a problem for the historian as parallel evolution is for the biologist. Oscar Hertwig, unlike Butler and Shaw, was an able scientist but he also rejected and attacked natural selection. He did it apparently because he was unable to face its cruel aspects and because he was emotionally oriented toward the inheritance of acquired characters. He was especially aroused over the possibility that natural selection might be pertinent to ethical, social, and political affairs, and he looked upon it as a dangerous threat to all the traditional virtues. As late as 1916, he published Das Werden der Organismen in which he defended the inheritance of acquired characters. Another emotional reaction against natural selection which is worth recording is that of the anarchist, P. Kropotkin, who published Memoirs of a Revolutionist in 1899. Kropotkin attacked the cruel competitive aspects of natural selection and sought to substitute the idea that real progress was the result of co-operation. Actually, it had been known for a long time that the most successful animals are those who co-operate with others of their kind, and it had long been clear that gregariousness had evolved through the fact that it had survival value. T o judge Kropotkin fairly, we will have to put our minds back into the time in which we lived and view his evolution problems in the simple all-or-none fashion of the nineteenth

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century layman. If some looked upon evolution as a bloody struggle with "nature red in tooth and claw," it was only natural that others should look upon the process as being basically all love and kisses. T h e concept that individuals within species could both compete and co-operate with each other, and do it at the same time, was just a little too complex for many to grasp, as was the idea that the ability to cooperate had itself arisen through a process of competition, i.e., those who could gang up being able to defeat those who could not. Today, Kropotkin's notions are obsolete and have little scientific meaning, although his "sweetness and light" still has its emotional appeal to some escapists. We need cite only one more instance of hostility toward natural selection but one which is very revealing. Erik Nordenskiöld, the leading historian of biology, devotes a chapter (Ch. XVI) to the "Decline of Darwinism" and opens the following chapter with the sentence, " T h e history of biology might really close with the establishment of the dissolution of Darwinism." He then proceeds to bury the doctrine as he introduces the newer biology. T h e r e is nothing unusual about this procedure and about Nordenskiöld's attitude except that he published his "History of Biology" as late as 1920-24. English editions have appeared in 1935 and 1936, and the work is still the standard in the field. This late persistence of an adverse evaluation of natural selection in a standard work is worth recording as it helps to show how widespread and deep was the reaction against natural selection. §5 During the latter years of the nineteenth century, evolution theory was clearly in a very bad way. T h e inheritance of acquired characters could no longer be defended logically,

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and natural selection had proven to be inadequate and had come under a very heavy fire. Evolution was known to have occurred, but the biologists knew only a little about the forces which had brought it about. Under such conditions, it was inevitable that many would wander rather far afield looking for clues to the mystery. New hypotheses, of course, would be devised, hypotheses which were both ingenious and far-fetched. Obviously, the biologists could not let their explanations of evolution remain in such an unsatisfactory state. One of the best of these hypotheses was offered by William Roux (1850-1924). In fact, the more intensively we investigate the time in which he lived and worked, the better scientist Roux appears to be. Like Weismann, he had almost a genius for guessing right, but he was not so fortunate in devising his hypothesis, even though it was logical, clear, and useful. Later, it was shown to be entirely unnecessary. It did, however, influence the thought of the time. Roux was faced with the task of explaining the deterioration and disappearance of organs or parts of organs of those animals who lived under conditions where the organ could play no useful role, e.g., the eyes of fish who lived in total darkness in caves. Roux sought to make the degeneration understandable by extending the idea of selection and competition to the region within the animal body. Thus, according to his view, each part of the body would compete with all other parts for the nutrition which was available to the whole. Each separate part would thus be a drain on the whole organism even though it performed a useful function and was essential for the continuance of life. In spite of the drain upon the whole, however, useful organs had to be preserved but useless organs were merely a drain. Thus, natural selection might account for the blind eyes of cave fish, if the

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loss of sight sharpened the sensitivity of other sense organs or if the deteriorating eyes merely released more nutrition to their competitors within the fish. Obviously, Roux made a good try with what he had. When we consider another attempt to explain evolution, this time by means of a mysterious inner directive force, we need not feel so respectful toward the scientists who made the effort. Carl Wilhelm Nägeli (1884) and Theodor Eimer (1888) postulated such a force and thus, as a result of their assumptions, they held that evolution should progress in a straight line, just as the force directed. Probably, it would not be necessary for us to mention their speculations at all if it were not for the fact that Eimer coined a bright new word "orthogenesis" and used the word both to label an observable fact and to explain how it came about. T h e fossil record shows that evolution has frequently progressed for long periods in one particular direction and has done so in many periods and in many different lines. There are even indications that evolution may have taken some lines too far so that certain characteristics have actually been developed beyond the point of optimum usefulness. This appears particylarly striking in some of the extinct species. While this latter occurrence is not absolutely established, it is worth the most careful consideration. Thus far, however, no need for the existence of an inner directive force has ever been demonstrated. Orthogenesis, no matter what the final fate of the word may be, is just not an explanation of evolution. Orthogenesis had a temporary vogue but it was never very satisfying, and most biologists continued to search for something better. New discoveries, of course, were appearing in increasing numbers, but matters on the basic theoretical side were not improving. Most of the new data, instead of falling into a logical pattern, only added to the confusion.

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Unfortunately, this episode in the history of biology is too technical for its full humorous aspects to be appreciated by anyone except experts in the field. It seems almost as if nature herself were indulging in some rather subtle irony, encouraging every possible misinterpretation, but at the same time, allowing one very basic theoretical discovery to be made, but made, incidentally, where it did not exist. In brief, it was at this time that mutations were found to be a major factor in evolution but "mutations" were first investigated carefully in the evening primrose, Oenothera, a most peculiar genus, where what appeared to be mutations were, in the modern sense of the word, not mutations at all. From 1886 to 1899, Hugo De Vries investigated the species of Oenothera which had been named for Lamarck, O. Lamarckiana. This, it developed, is not a species in the usual sense—it has never been discovered in nature—but a hybrid which generally breeds true because if its peculiar chromosome behavior. Its peculiarity was not discovered and interpreted until the 1920's when R. E. Cleland really cleared up the matter, so when De Vries worked with it, its exceptional character was not recognized. De Vries grew nearly sixty thousand pedigreed plants over a thirteen year period and discovered nearly one thousand "mutant" individuals among them, mutants which fell into seven different classes and were classified as belonging to seven different true breeding species. Thus, it seemed to De Vries and others that species were formed in a single step and that evolution occurred as a series of jumps or saltations. Thus, the smaller variations on which Darwin had relied were looked upon by De Vries and his followers as non-heritable fluctuations which had no evolutionary value. Other biologists were also questioning the significance of the smaller regular variations. William Bateson, for example, had published a book in 1894

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in which he had described a great many instances where the variations did not form a complete series but were discontinuous. Many biologists were coming more and more to the opinion that evolution had come about by means of many erratic and unpredictable jumps. T h e very fundamental work of W. Johannsen (1903) also seemed to confirm this view. Johannsen had undertaken to study evolution quantitatively by selection—by measuring the effects of selection. He attempted to alter the size of beans. T h e bean flower is normally self-pollinated, and thus the individual bean plant is both father and mother of its progeny. Any organism which reproduces for a few generations in this fashion forms what is called a "pure line." Johannsen started with a population of beans of different sizes and he found that one generation of selection had a marked effect upon the size of the progeny, the larger beans, as he expected, having the larger descendants, the smaller beans the smaller. Further selection, however, had no effect whatever. His first selections had merely separated the different pure lines from the general population. In all subsequent generations, variations were selected within the pure lines, and these variations were found not to be inherited, the larger and smaller beans within each line having offsprings of the same average size—the size characterisitc of that line. These smaller variations were soon mislabeled "Darwinian variations." T h e i r non-heritability was in sharp contrast to the De Vriesian mutations, which were inherited. It was inevitable, under the circumstances, that evolution by mutation would be looked upon as an alternative to evolution by natural selection. T h e idea that new species appear suddenly, as mutants from older species is very ancient and can be found in Theophrastos, and in most of the classical and medieval

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works on botany. W e know now that such a formation of species actually does occur in those plant genera where the sister species have different chromosome numbers (form a polyploid series). Such evolution is not universal, however, and it occurs extremely rarely, if at all, in animals. W e know also that mutations do occur, that they are heritable, and that they are the building blocks of evolution, but the size of the mutations has nothing whatever to do with their heritability. If fact, most mutations have such a small effect that they cannot be recognized singly or by direct observation. Natural selection always acts as a sieve and determines which mutations shall survive and which shall be eliminated. T h e variations, which occurred within Johannsen's pure lines, it turned out, were not genetic but environmental in origin. T h e y were not Darwinian but Lamarckian and, as we would expect, they were not heritable. One discovery made in the last year of the nineteenth century was destined to put the theory of evolution on an entirely new basis. It had become evident that the problem of evolution was basically a problem of heredity as only those innovations, which were heritable, would have an evolutionary value. Intensive studies of heredity and of the literature of heredity led to the finding of Mendel's forgotten work of 1865. In 1900, Mendel's paper was discovered independently by De Vries, Correns, and Von Tschermak— modern genetics was born. T h e full bearing of Mendelism on evolution, however, would not be understood for another thirty years, but one application of it to evolution was immediately apparent. Darwin had admitted that the minor variations, which nature selected, might well be swamped when the variants bred back into the general stock and that, thus, the small advances, the small steps, might be lost. Mendel had discovered a mechanism of heredity which

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showed how even the smallest variant maintained its identity. It might be well to call attention here to an interesting incongruity in Marxian biology. Mendel is, of course, condemned completely in Communist countries. There, Mendelian inheritance is considered little better than a bourgeois plot designed to keep the workers enslaved, and Mendelism has now been outlawed in the entire Communist world. T o take the place of Mendelism, the Communists have had to erect their own doctrines of heredity and establish their own conforming leaders. Among these leaders is K. A. Timiriazev who, along with I. V. Michurin and T . D. Lysenko, has become one of the heroic founders of "Creative Soviet Darwinism,"—one of the real trinity of authorities in biology. Timiriazev, however, was more intelligent than his companions on Olympus and he saw the importance which one aspect of Mendel's discovery had to Darwinism. A speech he made in 1909 is very embarrassing to party line biologists, at least outside of the Communist countries where they cannot be protected from it by their censorship. Timiriazev said, "Mendel published a paper . . . showing that characters do not blend, but are preserved unchanged and are distributed between various descendants. Thus Mendelism removes the most dangerous objection which, in the words of Darwin himself, was made against his theory." It might also be appropriate to call attention here to the welcome given to De Vries by G. Plekhanov in his book, Fundamental Problems of Marxism, published in 1908. Lenin himself was a student of Plekhanov's and although he admired his teacher, he felt compelled to correct some of his "errors." Because of this, we cannot use Plekhanov as a real authority and can only refer to what he wrote as his own pious opinion which, of course, is not necessarily binding on orthodox Communists. While Plekhanov may be very

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close to the Communist Apostolic Succession, he is not actually in it. However, he helps fill the gap in Marxian biology which occurs between the last writings of Engels and the first directives of the Central Committee of the Communist party. Plekhanov objected to the concept, which many biologists still had, of a gradual evolution in nature, for he believed that this idea might corrupt some men into expecting a gradual evolution in society. De Vries, however, had stated that nature advanced by great jumps, and thus it appeared obvious that, if society Avas also to advance, it likewise would advance by saltations. T o Plekhanov, De Vriesian mutations were at least an argument for the naturalness of revolutions in society, and a great help in his refutation of those who merely wanted society to evolve gradually. Thus, nature herself indicated to Plekhanov that social changes in the right direction should and would be secured with all the proper violence.

§6 Only one more aspect of the development of evolution theory remains to be considered and it, strictly speaking, is not actually a part of the theory itself but rather an application of the theory to human beings. Even before Darwin had explained the origin of species by means of natural selection, the effects of artificial selection on domestic animals had been widely recognized. When it was finally admitted that man himself had evolved and that the mechanisms of evolution, of reproduction, and of heredity were the same in human beings as they were in the other mammals, it seemed only reasonable to conclude that the method which had been so successful in bettering the horses, cows, hogs,

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sheep, etc., could also improve man. 3 What nobler ambition could anyone have than to speed up human evolution and to ally art and nature in the task of improving the highest of all animals, man? T h e discipline which was designed to secure this laudable end was named "eugenics." T h e term "eugenics" was coined by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, and defined by him as "the science of being well born." It was realized, of course, that before any actual steps could be taken to improve the human race a very great deal had to be learned about heredity and even about how to investigate heredity. T o secure this knowledge, eugenic laboratories were established in both England, and America. Here, data on human inheritance were collected and a new science, that of statistics, was stimulated into making great progress until it was capable of interpreting the data. Such men as Galton himself and, later on, Havelock Ellis and Karl Pearson made intensive studies of human inheritance, and they and their assistants and students discovered a great deal about the transmission of both human defects and human abilities. During the earlier days of eugenics, of course, the investigations were greatly handicapped because practically nothing was known about the precise nature of the hereditary mechanism, and even after Mendel's paper was rediscovered in 1900, its bearing on the problems of eugenics was not realized. Actually the advent of Mendelism was the occasion of a very acrimonious debate 3 In this connection, it might be well to note that, while the project of improving the human race had to await the coming of evolution, the logical connection between animal breeding and the breeding of humans had been recognized for a long time. T h e great moralistic poet of the sixth century B.C., Theognis, wrote, " W e seek well-bred rams and sheep and horses and one wishes to breed from those. Yet a good man is willing to marry an evil wife if she brings him wealth; nor does a woman refuse to marry an evil husband who is rich. For men reverence money, and the good marry the evil and the evil the good. Wealth has confounded the race."

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between the biometricians, w h o were developing eugenics, and the biologists w h o were beginning to create the new science of Mendelian genetics. T h e attitude assumed by the Marxians toward eugenics is one of the best identifications we have of their peculiar biology, in both its overt and privy forms. W h i l e neither M a r x nor Engels expressed themselves on the subject, indeed, they seemed to be unaware of its existence, the modern Communists denounce it with the same degree of fervor they use in denouncing Malthusianism and Mendelism. In disciplines, where the influence of Marxism is covert, however, eugenics may be merely slighted or misrepresented and the data accumulated by its researches ignored. T h u s , when c o m b i n e d with the other symptoms of the M a r x i a n syndrome, the attitude taken by a group toward eugenics may be very revealing. Eugenics may also serve as a very elegant indicator of tacit and unsuspected attitudes among the biologists themselves. In the last few years, since population genetics has been developed, it has become possible to put eugenics on a quantitative basis. T h u s , today, there is no real excuse for an informed biologist either to belittle eugenics or to exaggerate its importance although, as we would expect, individuals can be found w h o react to it in both of these ways. Eugenics, of course, has a very personal impact as it impinges both u p o n our amour-propre and upon our most cherished political convictions. In extreme cases, it has become almost a religion to some biologists, while to others, it appears to be a reactionary and Fascist doctrine. It is not difficult to find geneticists w h o have lent their honored names to propagandizing both of these views. T h u s , when we read what many biologists write on the subject, we can learn about them as well as about eugenics itself. A t times, we are even able to

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recognize the influence, which the general climate of opinion in which they were raised, has had upon their development as scientists. (See also pp. 486 ff.) T o pass an accurate j u d g m e n t upon the accomplishments a n d concepts of nineteenth century eugenics, we must evaluate them in Mendelian terms, in a language which the eugenicists of the time did not have. We can see now that the early eugenicists were somewhat naive but they did have some positive accomplishments to their credit. When we examine their investigations honestly, we can see that they did demonstrate eighteenth century egalitarianism to be a completely unscientific doctrine. T h e y also helped to discredit a doctrine, popular at the time, called "social D a r w i n i s m , " a doctrine in which it was assumed that natural selection, operating within human society and taking the f o r m of business competition, improved mankind both by allowing the fit to prosper and by bringing the unfit to their destined end. In this connection, the eugenicists were able to show that social and biological success were not synonymous but, in nineteenth century society, were actually antithetical. It was easy to show that the rich got richer a n d the poor got children. T h e eugenicists also recorded a n d evaluated the disgenic effects of the prevailing differential birth rate, and they called attention very effectively to the ill effects of the constant reproduction of certain individuals with hereditary defects. Expressed in modern language, they showed that a differential reproductive rate within a heterozygous population would alter the gene frequency of the population a n d that this change in gene frequency would, in time, change the entire character of the population. In this latter instance, of course, they were merely describing a m a j o r factor in human evolution. T h e denial of any genetic effects of a differential reproductive rate in heterozygous

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population has become an article of faith to the Marxian biologists and also to many who do not appear publicly as Marxians. §7 During the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, the science of biology experienced an unprecedented growth. T h e theory of evolution was established upon well-tested data, collected from many different fields. T h e advance made in other sciences provided new and better equipment for biological research, and better instruments such as the improved microscope made it possible to investigate the structures and behavior of living things with an accuracy which could not be achieved in earlier times. Biological research flourished and the rapidly increasing mass of data provided new and crucial tests for the accepted theories and the current working hypotheses. As we would expect, a number of the older concepts had to be abandoned, and even though evolution itself was not doubted, the accepted explanations of evolution did not fare so well. T h e doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters had to be given up, and natural selection itself was subjected to a most searching criticism. Improvements in microscopic techniques revealed the broad outlines of the mechanism of heredity, and Weismann's theory of the "continuity of the germ plasm" won general acceptance. T h e occurrence of mutations was demonstrated and this, together with the discovery in 1900 of Mendel's forgotten paper, furnished a basis for the twentieth century developments in evolution theory and for the growth of genetics. During this same thirty years, the divergences of Marxian biology from the science itself became more marked. Although Marx and Engels did not express themselves on the

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newer discoveries, Marxian biology which had previously rejected the findings of Malthus, rejected also the contributions of both Weismann and Mendel—when at last the Central Committee of the Communist party became an authoritative body. Marxian biology adhered to the doctrine of Lamarck and continued to accept the inheritance of acquired characters. Eugenics, which had been promoted and studied by Galton and Pearson, later on became a heresy to the Marxians and was soundly denounced. There is a hiatus, however, between the last pronouncement of Engels on biological concepts and the first authoritarian rulings by the modern Communists. Although the twentieth century was well advanced before these latter rulings were made, practically all of the concepts, which separate Marxian biology today from the biology of the biologists, were in existence by 1900.

5. The Impact of Evolution on Society and on the Social Studies §1 AGO, when Darwin published his Origin of Species, the intellectual and educated world was very different from what it is now. It had a unity that it has since lost. Disagreements, of course, existed as they do in all societies, and controversial questions arose and were debated with vigor and even with acrimony. T h e disputants, however, all spoke the same language, a language that the educated classes could understand. Although at the time, the educated public was badly informed by our present standards, it was better acquainted with a greater part of the existing knowledge than we are today with the vast mass of technical information that has accumulated during the past hundred years. During the greater part of the nineteenth century, technical biology was not far removed from nature study, and scientists in other fields and educated laymen could understand it. Many scholars were interested in its basic discoveries and theoretical advances. Thus, Darwin's theory and its major implications were grasped very quickly and by a great many educated and intelligent people. CENTURY

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replacement for fallen angels, he was a rising ape. T w o and one-half centuries earlier, a revolution in astronomy had forced us to give up our geocentric universe and adopt the universe of Copernicus, and now, in 1859, the rapidly growing science of biology showed us that the homocentric planet would have to be abandoned in favor of the Darwinian. The human species learned suddenly that its ancestry was unspeakably more ancient than it had thought. T o some of the pious, human ancestry had become simply unspeakable, but, as a result of the newer orientation, human beings could no longer look back upon some golden age when the conditions of life were ideal and men were really men. All of the "elder heroes" lost stature, and before long they were reduced to human and even sub-human dimensions. Evolution, of course, was all-inclusive, and if it were true that man had evolved, it followed logically that all of his human attributes had evolved also—his instincts and habits, his customs, tastes and standards, his morals and ethics, and even his religions. T h e impact of evolution on ethics and on moral philosophy was soon evident even to those who were not philosophers. Actually, this impact was much more perturbing to the intelligent public than it was to the philosophers themselves, for, as we shall see, the philosophers were fairly well prepared for the blow. But when the general public realized the bearing of evolution on theories of right and wrong, they were in for a few mild shocks. This impact of evolution on ethical standards occurred in a very moral period indeed—a period when even the fashionable world endorsed morality. T h e virtues at this time met with almost universal approval, the vices were deplored by all and almost everyone was against sin. Moreover, the moral public was in good philosophical standing. It is true that, to the proper

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Victorians, the philosophers were more respected than understood, and Immanuel Kant's "categorical imperative" was little more than two polysyllabic words, but all the right thinking people of the time had gotten their ethical standards from the same pietistic background which had given Kant his—the background that had caused Kant to believe that the obligations of the moral law are unconditional and ultimate, outside of—and above reason (i.e., the categorical imperative). T o the enlightened reader of the Origin of Species, right and wrong seemed as much a part of the universe as gravitation, mass, or inertia. Like time and space, morality seemingly could not be resolved into simpler components. Indeed, it is very doubtful if any code of conduct could ever secure an almost universal acceptance anywhere, if it did not claim to be a part of—and to have the endorsement of—the Cosmos itself. At an earlier period, even the civil and criminal laws had claimed to have a more than human Sponsor, as we can tell from the acts of the earlier British parliaments. These judicial and legislative bodies would never have been guilty of such hubris as attempting to make a law; they met and debated only as means of discovering the law (Haskins, 1948). Times have changed—and how they have changed! Now legislatures turn out new laws almost as if they had been made on the assembly line but even so, almost no legislator today feels competent to legislate on all subjects, certainly not competent to alter or amend the Ten Commandments. T h e assumption that the moral law is universal and part of the knowledge of all normal people is still current as is shown by the fact that today the legal proof of one's sanity is to be able to know right from wrong, a test which certainly should not be applied to our professional philosophers. T h e theory of evolution raised a number of fundamental

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moral questions, so fundamental, in fact, that it has served as a basis for several systems of ethics. It cast grave doubt upon the authenticity of any absolute code of morals, and suggested that possibly all standards of cooduct have only a relative validity and a provisional usefulness. In 1859, of course, this was very unsettling for it implied that even the ethical ideas of the better people in the more advanced nations had not necessarily been endorsed by nature. Thus, the intelligent citizen coming face to face with some of the logical implications of evolution had to re-examine his thinking on ethical subjects. On the other hand, the professional philosophers could take the impact of evolution much more philosophically, as a number of them had already worked their way out of even a tacit acceptance of the "categorical imperative" and had done so without the benefit of knowing anything whatever about organic evolution. In fact, some of them had practically worked their way out of having any moral or ethical system whatever. As early as the thirteenth century, Duns Scotus and a little later his pupil, William of Occam, had denied any autonomy to ethical principles. Good, to them, was simply whatever the Deity wanted it to be. (In contrast to this, some of the leading philosophers of Greece had pointedly indicted their own pagan gods for unethical conduct.) In the sixteenth century, John Calvin endorsed the concept of Scotus and Occam, and held that what God wills is good merely because He wills it. A century later, Thomas Hobbes also denied the autonomy and even the validity of the orthodox virtues, although he did so from a philosophical position antipodal to Calvin's. He urged that, in a state of nature, moral good and evil, right and wrong, the virtues and the vices have no meaning whatever. In his Leviathan (1651), he described the struggle for existence very vividly, at least as far as it applied to human

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beings, a struggle which he held to be completely amoral. A century after Hobbes, Diderot, w h o had also glimpsed the concept of natural selection, expressed his scorn for the traditional precepts for virtuous living and held that self-gratification was, and should be, the aim of all intelligent creatures. T w o other outstanding philosophers, w h o flourished before the coming of evolution, also helped prepare the moralists for its impact. T h e first of these is Hegel, w h o was Marx's intellectual preceptor, and whose dialectic has been developed into a fetish by the Marxians. H e g e l followed right along in the tradition of Scotus, Occam, and Calvin; only he gave the tradition a twist which certainly must rank as one of the greatest distortions in history. H e substituted the State f o r the Deity, and this soon became a very p o p u l a r innovation, one that was accepted by the Fascists a n d the C o m m u nists, and one that still tempts the Statists of every kind. T h e State is capitalized by Hegel as "the actually existing, realized moral life. . . . All the worth which the human being possesses—all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State. . . . T h e State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth." Self-consciousness attains true freedom in citizenship, and the individual realizes his highest goal in his highest duty, as a member of the state. T h e state is not artificially formed by contract; it is rooted in the common lives of men and is the highest fruition of social character. 1 Logically, a description of the ethical standards of Karl M a r x might be included at this point. M a r x was a disciple of Hegel's, but a disciple w h o gave Hegel's philosophy a materialistic twist. T h e subject of Marxian ethics, however, is too c o m p l e x to epitomize a few words. Besides, a theoretical treatment of the subject is hardly necessary today, now that 1 Quoted from Radoslav A. Tsanoff, The Moral Ideas of Our Civilization (New York, 1942), p. 384.

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the behavioral standards of the Communists are too obvious to miss. The second and last of the philosophers whose thought is pertinent to the impact of evolution on society is Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1819, just forty years before the Origin of Species, he published a major work, The World as Will and Idea, a book in which he denied the autonomy of the traditional virtues. He held that the basic motive back of all conduct was the will to live. In fact, he described the struggle for existence most eloquently both in man, where it motivated his most fundamental conduct, and in animals, where it utilized the fighting teeth and claws, the poison of the snakes, the protective coloration of certain insects, the keenness of sense organs, and all forms of animal cunning. In devising his ethical code, he was undoubtedly reacting against the intellectual evasions of the pietists, among whom he had been raised, and he was probably concerned chiefly with subjecting himself to the catharsis of an unflinching facing of tragedy. He was convinced that nature herself was tragic. He compared the suffering of an animal being eaten with the pleasure of the animal doing the eating, and concluded that the suffering outweighed the pleasure. Schopenhauer is important to our understanding of the impact of evolution on moral standards because, intellectually, he fathered Nietzsche. We can readily see that certain philosophers had prepared the way for a changing orientation toward traditional ethics and also for the emergence of a newer ethics based on the implication of human evolution. It is well to note, however, that the attacks on the traditional virtues came from the philosophers and not from the biologists. The evolutionists, of course, would assign a very different source to the virtues from the one the traditionalists gave, but the virtues themselves would remain virtues. According to the best biological

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thought, they would actually have the same reason for existing that anything else had that had evolved, such as the livers and kidneys of animals or as the leaves of the trees. These things had all come into being and had persisted because they had survival value. A considerable group of thinkers accepted this view which came to be known as evolutionary ethics. This view, of course, was not new; evolutionary ethics actually did little more than to restate and endorse Kant's "hypothetical imperative" and to reject his "categorical imperative." Among the biologists, Darwin himself traced the evolution of morals in some detail in his Descent of Man (1871), and Herbert Spencer (1879), a leading evolutionary thinker, declared that the ethical codes represented the adaptation of human conduct to different conditions of living both in nature and in society. Of course, the evolutionists did not hold that every mode of conduct that was looked upon as virtuous or every type of behavior that was fashionable or approved by society had survival value. On the contrary, it was very easy to show that many customs were silly and that often the most highly thought of—and hence officially moral—procedures were basically detrimental, e.g., such primitive religious observances as temple prostitution, periodic debauches, or propitiating the Deity with human sacrifices. On the other hand, all forbidden conduct need not necessarily be harmful because many taboos were meaningless—even some of the most proper taboos of nineteenth century Europe. However, when society endorsed and encouraged the virtues, the net effects were advantageous, both to society as a whole and to its individual members. Those evolutionists who were concerned with the rationale of moral codes were also faced with another and related problem. They recognized that the virtues exist because they have

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survival value, but the vices also exist. Do they also have survival value? T h a t which is generally considered proper conduct, such as justice between man and man, mutual aid, etc., obviously tend to strengthen the family, the tribe, or even the race. On the other hand, egotistical, antisocial conduct tends to destroy the unity of the evolving group, and causes it to lose some of the advantages inherent in gregariousness. What causes such conduct to persist? Huxley (1888) attempted to answer the question but he did so only incidentally and while he was explaining the basis of the virtues. H e believed that in reality the vices were mere relics of the past, atavistic behavior patterns which represented the normal morals of our ancestors in a presocial stage. T o quote: Whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man—the member of a society of citizens—necessarily runs counter to that which the non-ethical man—the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the animal kingdom—tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal: the former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the struggle. In the Romanes Lecture of 1893, Huxley develops the point further: "In fact civilized man brands all these ape and tiger promptings with the name of sins; he punishes many of the acts which flow from them as crimes; and, in extreme cases, he does his best to put an end to the survival of the fittest of former days by axe and rope." We can see that Huxley made a good try but the facts seem to be against him. We must remember that our prehistoric and evolutionary time scale has lengthened tremendously since his day through the dating of geological and archeological remains by radioactivity and by the fluorine content of fossils. We know now that human beings have

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been on earth much longer than Huxley believed, and that they have been gregarious tremendously longer than he thought. Judging by the primates as a whole, we have reason to believe that our ancestors were gregarious long before they were human. In fact, all of our non-human relatives are gregarious to some extent and some of them are capable of altruistic and even heroic conduct, e.g., no young gorilla can be kidnapped from a group until the last adult in the group is killed, and this conduct of the gorillas is easier for human beings to admire than to imitate. T h e existence of the virtues are thus relatively easy to explain on an evolutionary basis, but the causes of the persistence of the vices present real difficulties. T h e problem is much more complex than Huxley thought. The vices certainly did not represent the normal conduct of an earlier and more primitive man. This point cannot be developed further here except to call attention to the fact that it has never been given a proper, modern treatment. Another consequence of the impact of evolution on society should be recorded, although few biologists were really concerned with it. In the optimistic nineteenth century, the possibility of further evolution promised so much that it seemed to offer almost the ultimate good. Belief in progress was practically universal, and evolution appeared to provide for almost unlimited progress. The old "perfectability of mankind," that Condorcet had believed in, returned to respectability but it returned under the new name of evolution. Before long, it was believed, the glorious future would compensate our species for all the trials and the imperfections of the present. "What is the ape to man? A joke or a sore shame? Even so will man be to beyond man!" Man was thought to be a mere transitional form which would soon evolve into something better and thus anything which

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speeded up the evolutionary process was, by definition, good. T o achieve this good, it was necessary only to discover what it was that made evolution take place and, whatever it was, to intensify its action. Natural selection was recognized, of course, as the chief factor of progress, and natural selection operated through the survival of the fit; hence, necessarily, it implied the nonsurvival of the unfit. If evolution was to improve our species, the unfit would have to perish, and if the acceleration of evolution was good, it became an act of virtue to help the unfit to perish. T h e unfit were also, by definition, the inferior, and thus the liquidation of inferior individuals and groups were necessary, although it might be a messy process and most unappetizing to humanitarians. It was simply the price we would have to pay for the glorious tomorrow. This involved, of course, a transvaluation of values and a discarding of the traditional Christian virtues, particularly the somewhat maudlin, pietistic virtues of the early nineteenth century. We need not point out here how completely inadequate the views are which we have just expressed. They overlook entirely the survival value of the traditional virtues—the virtues we have lived by for ages. It is true, of course, that the fit and the unfit are basically different, and evolution does come about through a differential in their reproductive and survival rates; but there is nothing absolute in either fitness or unfitness. T h e fit are merely those who survive under a particular set of conditions, the unfit are those who do not. Fitness consists of an adaptation to existing conditions, and when the conditions change, a different combination of characters constitute fitness. It is one of the tragedies of evolution that the conditions which select the fit often turn out to be ephemeral, and the result of the selection is to drive the

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species to making unprofitable adaptations, so unprofitable at times that they lead it into a blind alley from which it can not emerge. T h e fate of such species is to face the constant danger of extinction, and man is no exception. Man evolves as he is selected, which may or may not be in a direction he would like. T h e man who was biologically fit in industrial nineteenth century Europe, i.e., the man who left the most descendants, was definitely not the type to evolve into the awaited and expected superman. He was merely the type who breeds most rapidly when protected by civilization. This fact, missed by the dominant school of sociologists, the social Darwinians, was recognized and deplored by the contemporary eugenicists. T h e impact of evolution on society, particularly on that portion of society interested in ethical matters, was intensified by the doctrines of a number of pre-evolutionary philosophers. Factors also existed within the social disciplines that helped to magnify this impact. T h e industrial revolution, which had started near the beginning of the century, was well under way; business was growing rapidly and even trade was slowly becoming respectable, although it remained something of a handicap in the higher circles. New standards and new laws were becoming necessary for the changing society and many old laws were becoming hinderances and nuisances. Governmental and bureaucratic meddling in commercial matters had been a brake on progress for many centuries. Price fixing, limitations of trade, monopolies granted to favorites had all been common practice under feudalism. But stupid as such customs were, they were not too important until business became a major activity. T h e growing importance of manufacture, trade, and transportation, however, increased the amount of damage done by the old order and the ancient customs.

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With the growing appreciation of the values of liberty a n d freedom of choice, a demand grew u p for free business enterprise. T h e more progressive liberals of the period even held that that government was best which governed least. Business, supposedly, was capable of governing itself, not only wisely, but also easily and automatically. W i t h free markets and free trade guaranteed, the nineteenth century liberals believed that business would establish its own norms and its own order by means of free competition between producers, users, and workers. T h i s doctrine became known as laissez faire, a doctrine which even o u r twentieth century liberals still adhere to in the realm of ideas, i e., they still support free thought, free speech, free science, etc., and thus, even today, they would limit somewhat the scope of social controls. Now it was in part through an historical accident that laissez faire and natural selection joined forces in the social disciplines. Neither Darwin nor Wallace had gotten their concept of natural selection from their predecessors in biology—from Wells or Matthews. Both were led to natural selection by reading Malthus, and Malthus was classified as a social scientist. Natural selection thus seemed to have been derived from the social sciences—at least it was carried back into them by Walter Bagehot 2 (1867, 1872). T h u s , there seemed to have been a transference of a concept f r o m sociology to biology and back again to sociology, with both sciences profiting from the cross-fertilization. It became very easy, then, to consider free business competition a form of natural selection, in fact, the form of natural selection as far as m a n was concerned, with the obvious corollary that the more intense the selection, the faster the progress. T h e higher morality would thus be served by establishing rules for keeping 2 Cowles, 1933; Sandow, 1938; Zirkle, 1941.

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the competition "peaceful," for otherwise organized society could not exist but, within the rules, competition would not be hindered. Those who succeeded in the commercial struggle would be the fit and those who failed the unfit. T h e successful competitors would enjoy the fruits of their victories, which was just and proper, but what happened to the failures was really unimportant. They could be kept alive, of course, and might even be useful in menial positions. Fundamentally, those who could not win place and prestige in a business economy were of no consequence in themselves; their only value lay in their possible service to their betters. This doctrine of equating business competition with natural selection and endorsing it as a means of evolutionary progress has been called "social Darwinism." It should be recorded here that neither Marx, Engels nor their followers were among those who believed in social Darwinism. This, at least, is to their credit. §2 This section will be devoted to social Darwinism. Not that social Darwinism is a live issue anywhere now. On the contrary, few or none of the social scientists are social Darwinians and most of those in the field oppose the doctrine heartily. In fact, some even have the attitude toward it that the recently converted are supposed to have toward sin. But, historically, social Darwinism is a doctrine of great importance and the social sciences still suffer from its consequences. It was generally accepted in the late nineteenth century and it dominated the thinking in its field for more than a generation. A true revolution was required to get rid of it. It was also an aberration of such magnitude that great damage was done when it was finally egested. It had been accepted chiefly by

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those who were not well acquainted with technical biology, some of whom actually thought it was biology, that is, that when biology was applied to man, it equalled social Darwinism. Social Darwinism was a very vivid oversimplification and one which promised to tie the aspiring social sciences into the general fraternity of the sciences—i.e., give the social studies a truly scientific basis. Any rejection of social Darwinism then would involve a loss as well as a gain. T o those who mistook it for a biology, its deficiencies would seem to be deficiencies inherent in biology and they would thus be encouraged and confirmed in segregating themselves from such a limited, defective, and even immoral discipline. T h e social scientists could not deny that great discoveries were being made in biology—could not deny our rapidly growing knowledge of plants and animals. But biology could be held to be bad only when it was applied to man, only when the biologists deserted their proper jurisdiction and invaded a field for which they were not intended. Limitations to the validity of biology could be made rational by removing man from the biological world and by not allowing biological laws to apply to him, once he had entered human society. Man was actually to be placed in a world where the biological laws were superceded by the higher sociological laws. But the dominant social scientists did not reject biology to the extent that the Fundamentalists did, for they admitted that man had evolved. In other respects, however, they removed man from his organic setting. Of course, the only way a man can leave the biological world is for him to die, and man, as a living and gregarious animal, must live in both the biological and social worlds. But this concept apparently Avas just a little too complex. Moreover, it was much simpler to discard biology outright than to master those technical portions of it which were

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pertinent to social problems. It was much easier to denounce "biologism" than to understand biology. Thus, the rejection of biology was even pleasant for it promised to save a great many people from a great deal of work. Actually, of course, biology could not be discarded and a large portion of the social sciences must rest upon biological postulates, but postulates which are so tacit that those who accept them need not recognize their biological nature. T h e fact that these hidden assumptions are compatible on the whole with the Marxian line in biology will probably surprise a great many who hold them. Moreover, these postulates will not be discarded in the immediate future because a definite knowledge of biology is necessary for an understanding of their fallaciousness or even for recognizing that they exist. Thus, the split between the biological and social sciences, a direct consequence of the discarding of social Darwinism, serves to delay the social sciences in the task of getting rid of the Marxian aberration in biology. This split in what should be a continuum of knowledge has cut the social sciences off from the natural sciences and is perhaps the primary cause of their present backwardness. T h e first real emergence of social Darwinism 3 preceded the publication of the Origin of Species. In 1852, Herbert Spencer adumbrated natural selection in its application to human beings. He "set forth the view that the pressure of subsistence upon population must have a beneficent effect upon the human race. This pressure had been the immediate cause of progress from the earliest human times. By placing a 8 Social Darwinism would have to be given a much more detailed treatment here if it were not for the recently published book by Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (Philadelphia, 1944). Professor Hofstadter has traced the rise and fall of the doctrine in some detail and has shown how it was both accepted and rejected without its biological implications being really understood.

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premium upon skill, intelligence, self-control, and the power to adapt by technological innovation, it had stimulated human advancement and selected the best of each generation for survival." (Hofstadter, p. 25). Although Spencer recognized the beneficial effects of selection, the fact should also be recorded that he believed in the inheritance of acquired characters and that he implied more than selection in the above passage. Darwin himself did not apply evolution directly to human beings until 1871, nineteen years after Spencer's first adumbration of social Darwinism. T h e question has recently been raised "Was Darwin himself a social Darwinian?" Fortunately, this problem has been investigated in detail by McConnaughey 4 and we quote her answer: But was Charles Darwin a social Darwinist? If by social Darwinism we merely mean the application of natural selection to ethical and social problems, the answer is obviously yes. If, however, social Darwinism is taken to refer to the strongly imperialistic, racist, and anti-social-reform uses of natural selection, the answer is just as clearly no. . . . Because there were many elements in Darwin's thought both Harry Elmer Barnes, who claimed that Darwin was opposed to social Darwinism and Jacques Barzun, who finds a rank conflict theory in the Descent of Man are partially correct. At least we can say that Darwin did not fit into either of the neatly labeled pigeonholes. T h e real founder of social Darwinism was Herbert Spencer, a philosopher who practically dominated the social sciences during the first postDarwinian generation. Hofstadter (1944) has shown not only how the scholars, scientists, and philosophers followed Spencer but also how the leading industrialists and men of letters * Gloria McConnaughey, "Darwin and Social Darwinism," Osiris, 9:397-412 (1950).

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were influenced by his writings, and how practically every outstanding and effective leader of American thought was a Spencerian. One of Spencer's followers, William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), Professor of Politics and Social Sciences at Yale, carried the Spencerian torch for individualistic and practically unlimited competition well into the twentieth century, and Albert G. Keller of Yale and Thomas M. Carver of Harvard followed the same basic teachings but toned down greatly the concept of struggle in society. This moderate stand of Keller and Carver, while hardly a positive achievement, seems an act of real virtue in the light of the intellectual standards of those who rejected social Darwinism only to replace it with Marxian biology. Social Darwinism, however, shows exceptionally well how far a movement can go astray by developing and extending itself logically from premises which are false. As an example of this, we can cite a passage from Spencer himself who wrote in Social Statics (1864, p. 28) "If they [Human beings] are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die." T o quote from Hofstadter (p. 27): "Thus Spencer deplored not only poor laws, but also state supported education, sanitary supervision other than the suppression of nuisances, regulation of housing conditions, and even state protection of the ignorant from medical quacks. He likewise opposed tariffs, state banking, and governmental postal systems." We need consider but one more aspect of Spencer's social Darwinism, but it is one which, while purely biological, is very anomalous. Spencer believed in the inheritance of acquired characters and held tenaciously to the belief even when it had no justification—long after it had been abandoned by the leading scientists. Such a belief, of course,

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could have tempered his social Darwinism as it provided for an alternate method for bettering the breed of men. In fact, such liberals as Condorcet, Godwin, and Lamarck had all wanted to take advantage of the inheritance of acquired characters to improve mankind, and Spencer could have called upon it to resolve the internal conflict between his Victorian humanitarianism and his belief that it was necessary for the unfit to perish if progress was to be achieved. It is strange that Spencer never seems to have recognized the full implications of the Lamarckian doctrine. T h e doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters was both a supplement and a competitor to the theory of natural selection. Spencer was, of course, a complete selectionist. He believed that the fit and the powerful grabbed (and should grab) the best and most desirable living conditions and that the characters they acquired under these favorable circumstances they passed on to their children, making them still more fit and better able to grab for themselves. T h e unfit, barely existing under marginal conditions, would also pass on their environmentally induced defects to their children, making them less able to compete. Thus, races or classes living under adverse conditions would really be, or would soon become, biologically inferior. This aspect of the doctrine makes the inheritance of acquired characters an accelerator to natural selection, and it is obviously the aspect which Spencer understood. On the other hand, special attention given to the backward and the depressed would, according to the belief, allow them to acquire characters which, passed on to their children for several generations, would make them fit and as good as anyone else. T h u s , the unfit need not perish as they could be made over into the fit. T h i s is the belief which has always been featured by the Marxian biologists.

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It can easily be seen why few biologists w e r e attracted to social Darwinism—to equating the struggle for existence in nature with the individualistic struggle w i t h i n Victorian society. It is true that there is an analogy between the selection of the fit in nature and success in business competition in a laissez faire economy, but it is only an analogy. It is not our purpose here to discuss laissez faire in the economic field or to compare its effectiveness there with that of possible alternative systems. O u r concern is wholly with the attempts made to integrate the doctrine into biological evolution and to picture it as a part of the grand strategy of nature. T h e attempts were based, of course, on certain postulates, postulates which never seem to have been expressed clearly by their adherents. T h e unsoundness of these postulates can be indicated simply by stating them. First, there was the assumption that the type of man w h o succeeded best in a business economy, represented an evolutionary advance over his predecessors. T h e good business man, thus, was the man of the f u t u r e and, if w e were to progress properly, his tribe should increase. Of course, social Darwinism with its laissez faire philosophy also presupposed that there should be a competition between all individuals, even those not engaged in business or trade, between doctor and doctor, lawyer and lawyer, artist and artist, etc. T h e s e professions, however, represented b u t a m i n u t e portion of society, most of whose members were concerned with making their living in manufacture, trade, and agriculture, and w i t h selling their labor to those w h o w o u l d buy it. T h e business man dominated the scene and there is n o need for us to belittle h i m in any way. T h e nineteenth and twentieth centuries owe him a tremendous debt. H e does, however, represent a somewhat specialized type, a type moreover

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which, while necessary and valuable, is not necessarily the next step toward the evolution of the superman. T h e r e is always the possibility that the selection of the successful competitor in business throughout many generations, with the assumed result of sharpening his specialized talents and m a k i n g him the dominant type, might lead the human race into an evolutionary blind alley. M u c h as we admire the successful social Darwinian competitor, we will have to recognize that other types are closer perhaps to the main road leading toward the goal desired by our descendants, such types as scholars, scientists, executives, artists, poets, managers, philosophers, saints, etc. A species rich in such folk as these might well be stronger, even technically and in a military sense, than one which had become unbeatable in the counting houses and bazaars, even if the latter type had also evolved laborers w h o could work long hours with no loss of efficiency, w h o required no recreation, and w h o could maintain a great output of work on very little food. T h i s latter type is not some unreal product of a visionary speculation. It has actually been produced by some of the ancient cultures. T h i s latter type, however, may not always be the evolutionary end product of future civilizations. If it should be, civilization itself will have little future. A second postulate of social Darwinism, and one which was exceptionally naive, was that economic success and biological success coincided, that people w h o w o n wealth, social prestige, and p o w e r were the biologically fit. T h i s assumption, of course, was completely erroneous. From the evolutionary viewpoint, the biologically fit are merely those w h o have the highest reproductive rate (not just the highest birth rate), they are those whose type tends to displace rival types. In a heterozygous and variable population, the selection of one variant—even one conditioned by many genes—will alter

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the gene frequency of the whole population, so that the gene combinations which produce the selected variant will occur more frequently. In fact, this seems to be the way human evolution takes place. From the very first, the eugenicists pointed out the existence of a negative correlation between those who succeeded in business—indeed, those who succeeded in anything—and those who had the highest reproductive rate. Under no circumstances, then, could social Darwinism, even granting its presuppositions, mean evolutionary progress. When we recognize how fallacious were the assumptions upon which social Darwinism was based, it seems remarkable that it was ranked as part of the Cosmic process as long as it was. An even more remarkable fact is that it was finally discarded on grounds as fallacious as those on which it was founded. Apparently, it was abandoned because it gave great emotional offense (it was charged with being cruel and heartless for it justified grinding the faces of the poor) and because it was in direct conflict with a number of political convictions which were growing in popularity. Something, of course, would have to take the place of social Darwinism when it was finally rejected, something of about the same complexity and on the same intellectual level. Marxian biology was ready and waiting to fill the vacuum left by the discarded doctrine and a complex of beliefs very like Marxian biology became the next aberration. §3 Before we proceed to an examination of the doctrine which succeeded social Darwinism, it would be well to glance at an ethical system that appeared in a late nineteenth century philosophy, because it was a system which paralleled social

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Darwinism in many ways. This system grew out of the transvaluation of ethical standards attempted by Friedrich Nietzsche, a brilliant philosopher who had the ability to state startling ideas in startling language. This, together with the fact that he was clearing away the outworn sentimentality of the times, insured him a welcome and a reputation hardly justified by his intrinsic merits. But his moral philosophy was compatible with social Darwinism and it helped to strengthen the hold the latter had upon contemporary thought. In spite of the fact that Nietzsche's orientation was completely Darwinian—he looked upon man as a mere transitory stage, a rope reaching from ape to superman—he does not seem to have reached his conclusions by way of the theory of evolution. His ideas were developed from those of Schopenhauer, but they were certainly influenced by the popular discussions of evolution and by the impact of evolution on philosophical thought. Schopenhauer's Will to Live became for Nietzsche the Will to Power as Nietzsche held that power was the chief means of securing continued existence, and the desirability of the existence, at least of philosophers, seemed to be a fundament upon which philosophy could rest. Thus, any standards or actions which increased a person's power were good, at least to the person himself. There were, however, many people who were ineffectual, mere duffers, stupid ones who could never compete with the able few. These could secure their existence—and even for these existence was important—by giving no offense to their betters and even by being useful to them. Thus, there arose two standards of moral conduct, master morality for the aristocratic few, slave morality for the stupid many. T h e virtues of the former consist of courage, truthfulness, self-respect, candor, loyalty, strength, high-mindedness, self-control, personal honor, clear thinking. They should despise cowardice, pettiness,

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meanness, and lying. On the other hand, virtue for the slaves consists of humility, obedience, forgiveness of injuries, contentment, mercy, meekness, self-sacrifice; and, for slaves, the vices were revenge, pride, ambition, etc. The impotence which does not retaliate for injuries is falsified into "goodness"; timorous abjectness becomes "humility"; subjection to those one hates is called "obedience," and the one who desires and commands this impotence, abjection and subjection is called God. The inoffensiveness of the weak, their cowardice (of which they have ample store); their standing at the door, their unavoidable time-serving and waiting—all these things get good names. The inability to get revenge is translated into unwillingness to get revenge and becomes forgiveness, a virtue. (Zur Geneologie der Moral,

1: 4, tr. by H . L. Mencken)

T h e terrible thing about the weak, according to Nietzsche, is their numbers; and, by combining, they become stronger than the company of the strong. Thus, it becomes possible for them to enforce the rules they made for their own protection, which rules of course were against the best interests of the strong. They were able finally to fashion religious systems in which they could give their rules a Cosmic endorsement by ascribing them to the gods. Thus, the dominant moral codes of today are the excrescences of slave morality. It is easy for us to recognize what influence Nietzsche had upon the later development of social Darwinism. Indeed, in some quarters, his views really superceded it. Both Nietzschean ethics and social Darwinism emphasized the value of the superior individual but they also recognized the value of superior groups. Nietzsche even extended his ethical standards to master and slave races. It was necessary only to mix his ethics with Machiavellian statecraft, to bouleverse his individualism into Marxian collectivism, to add the Hegelian

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worship of the State, and the witches' brew of totalitarianism would be complete. Thus, do our notions afflict us, and that which grows up in the brains of philosophers and theoreticians may ultimately have to be debated on the fields of battle. §4 Any description of the biological aberration which permeated the social sciences, as social Darwinism declined, must begin with an account of the life and work of Lester Frank Ward (1841-1913). Ward played the same role in popularizing the present biological orientation of the social sciences that Herbert Spencer had played earlier. Even today, Ward is referred to as the "Nestor" of American sociology and his biographer, Samuel Chugerman, calls him "The American Aristotle." In 1906, Ward was elected the first president of the American Sociology Society and he is still honored as a man who was far ahead of his times. Much is written about him, much nonsense, but when we go back to his own works and read them, a somewhat different picture of the man emerges. We find that he is not really as bad as he is pictured and it might be an act of kindness to his memory to rescue him from those who claim to be his disciples. Professionally, Ward was a botanist and was acquainted with what was going on in the biological sciences. But in spite of his knowledge and training, he trimmed his information and selected a complex of hypotheses that was in complete harmony with the Marxian line. He did not get his biology from Marx, however, although his social objectives were very close to Marx's. What evidence we have indicates that he cut his beliefs to fit the same overall emotional pattern that motivated Marx. Ward's importance for us lies in

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the fact that it was through him that Marxian biology penetrated into the social sciences.5 A modern biologist, unfamiliar with the use that was made of Ward's ideas in the social sciences but aware of the present status of his beliefs on biological matters, would be tempted to dismiss him as a mere intellectual casualty—as a man who was too emotional and too evasive to face the discoveries that had been made in his own science. Ward's turning away from biology could then be explained as the action of a simple escape mechanism; he was merely avoiding the developments in biology which he found to be unpleasant, and taking refuge in a sociology whose concepts were more satisfying. It is true that Ward was very emotional, as Chugerman has pointed out, and, seemingly, he lived in a simple world of blacks and whites, e.g., his letters home when he was a soldier in the Union Army "showed his unabated patriotic fever in describing the enemy as ferocious savages and enemies of 5 Ward's life and post-mortem reputation furnish an extreme instance of historical irony. H e was neglected almost completely by his contemporaries and q u i t e undeservedly but, since his death, he has been venerated by his many followers and again, undeservedly. All his life, he wanted to teach b u t he received his first academic appointment (at Brown University) when he was sixty-five years old. T h e greater part of his scientific life was spent in the National Museum in Washington where he was employed as a botanist, botanical paleontologist, and geologist, but his real interests were in sociology. In his youth, he had almost no schooling, his father being a migratory and not too succesful mechanic, but he taught himself French and, mainly through his own efforts, he learned to read German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. W h e n at last and through tremendous efforts, he made u p hie educational deficiencies so he could enter college, he dropped his education temporarily and joined the Union Army as a volunteer. Finally, after the Civil W a r was over, he resumed his formal education and entered college, s u p p o r t i n g himself meanwhile, in Washington, as a government clerk. H e became a Bachelor of Arts in 1870, and, by majoring in botany, qualitative chemistry, and practical anatomy, he secured the degree of Master of Arts in 1872. Meanwhile, he had become a Bachelor of Laws (1871), was admitted to the bar, and, to keep himself occupied, also earned a diploma in medicine. However, he practiced neither law nor medicine because his "conscience would not allow it." H e really wanted to be a writer.

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liberty and his fellow-Northerners as noble saviors." (Chugerman, 1939, p. 31.) Also, because of his own humble origin, he could never admit some of the aristocratic implications of nineteenth century biology, and he clung to his Lamarckian egalitarianism as long as he lived. But this general picture of W a r d is too simple to be completely valid. Ward was definitely not a follower of Karl Marx, b u t the modern Marxians have kidnapped him and adopted him much as the medieval Christians kidnapped and adopted Virgil. T h i s was not too difficult an undertaking, and it must have presented an irresistible temptation to the Marxians because W a r d was, in reality, a fellow traveler long before the term had its present connotations. T h e n , too, it is extraordinarily easy to misrepresent W a r d by emphasizing one o r another aspect of his work and ignoring the rest—to pick and choose passages here and there which fit into the desired stance, because Ward published over a considerable period of time (from 1883 to 1918), and some of his ideas changed markedly. For example, in some of his earlier works, he denounced Malthus and misrepresented him in the exact manner of the Marxians, but, by 1903 (Pure Sociology, pp. 170, 197, etc.), he had either read Malthus or had learned to understand him and in this book he refers to Malthus accurately. By a careful choice of quotations, however, W a r d can be made to seem very Marxian indeed. Nevertheless, the American Socialists, whose ranks he did not join, recognized him as the supreme authority in social science. Such radical leaders as Daniel DeLeon, George R. Kirkpatrick, and Scott Nearing continually used the mental dynamite of his works to clear the road for the workers' movement. Although Ward believed his sociology was irreconcilable with Marxism, the Marxists themselves used his ideas as steppingstones to a people's government in a co-operative commonwealth. (Chugerman, p. 75.)

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T h e Marxians have good reasons for their approval of Ward. First, he was a complete Lamarckian. In fact, his belief in the inheritance of acquired characters was basic to his whole social philosophy, and his plan for reforming man and society was founded upon it. H e could not give up the belief without scrapping his entire scheme for social betterment, and he clung to it in spite of the accumulation of evidence against it. Of course, when he first adopted the hypothesis, it was in good scientific standing but he maintained his conviction until he died, until long after the biologists had abandoned the belief. Although he lived for thirteen years after Mendel's work was discovered, he never grasped its importance, and his concept of heredity remained extremely old-fashioned, a concept worthy of Lysenko himself. T o Ward, heredity was merely the transmission of characters that had accumulated from past environments: heredity was merely the effects of past training and of past opportunities. This belief gave Ward an odd orientation toward natural selection. According to Ward, natural selection was not a factor in evolutionary progress at all but was, on the contrary, a real and active cause of retrogression. He reasoned as follows: W h e n a plant is cultivated so that it is protected from the competition of wild plants, it gets more mineral nutrition and more sunlight, hence, it grows larger and healthier. It then transmits its increased size and vigor to its descendants, which become bigger and better and evolution proceeds apace. If, however, it had to compete for its existence, it would lose so much sustenance in the struggle, that it would be weakened and its progeny would be inferior. Natural selection and, in fact, all competition thus are deleterious. T h e Communists today could hardly go further. Ward's egalitarianism also fits into the overt Marxian

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dogma. H e held that, except f o r a m i n u t e fraction of t h e race w h o are mysteriously, e i t h e r geniuses or defectives, all m e n have the same intellectual potential. Actual differences between m e n , he thought, were e n v i r o n m e n t a l in origin a n d the different rates at which the different social classes produced exceptional individuals had, he believed, n o biological basis. T h e proposition that the lower classes of society are intellectual equals of the upper classes will probably shock most minds. At least it will be almost unanimously rejected as altogether false. Yet I do not hesitate to maintain and defend it as an abstract proposition. . . . But here we encounter the great, sullen, stubborn error, so universal and ingrained as to constitute a world view, that the differences between the upper and lower classes of society are due to a difference in their intellectual capacity, something existing in the nature of things, something preordained and inherently inevitable. Every form of sophistry is employed to uphold this view. (Applied Sociology, pp. 95-96). W h e n W a r d wrote that he m u s t have been completely i g n o r a n t b o t h of the implications of M e n d e l i a n segregation ® a n d of o u r m o d e r n concept of heredity a n d e n v i r o n m e n t . As we shall show later, the contrasting of heredity vs. environm e n t is utterly meaningless—biologically naive—but this fact was n o t at all clear w h e n W a r d wrote. Also, W a r d was u n β An interesting discussion of Ward's assumption is to be found in Science 111:697-99 (1950), between Bernard Stern, the editor of Science and Society: a Marxian Quarterly and Curt Stern, a Professor of Zoology, at the University of California. Bernard Stern's implication that the existence of an environmental variable somehow eliminates the hereditary variable is an interesting example of much current sociological thinking. He also urged that it was reprehensible for Curt Stern to have suggested the existence of a genetic difference between the classes. Perhaps the attempts of the Marxian biologists to liquidate Mendel is not unconnected with their knowledge of what Mendelian inheritance does to their egalitarian assumptions.

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aware of the many tacit postulates he had made, which is excusable of course when we consider the period in which he published. As we would expect, he cited no critical data at all to support his assumptions of human equality—even today, real data on the subject seem to many to be just unimportant. Moreover, it is now obvious that Ward missed the true complexity of what he was assuming. Perhaps, the question of the genetic equality of the different social classes will be clearer if we list the conditions under which Ward could have been right. First, in a homozygous race or species the matter would be simple—the different classes would be biologically equal. But man is not homozygous; on the contrary, he is perhaps the most heterozygous of species, that is, he shows great genetic variability, so much so, in fact, that he can not breed true any more than our grafted fruit trees can. Each of our grafted varieties produces many different types of seedlings. But this in itself does not prove that the different socio-economic classes are genetically different. In a heterozygous species such as ours, the different classes could be made biologically equal or, expressed in modern language, could be made to have the same gene frequency if the following conditions were met: T h e formation of the socio-economic classes must be completely fortuitous; i.e., they must be completely unselected as to their personnel. If the personnel of the different classes were chosen by drawing lots from a bowl, e.g., all those drawing "A" becoming the highest class, "B," the next highest, and so on down, these conditions could be fulfilled. If the drawing were honest, any chance difference in the gene frequencies of the several classes would not be significant. But to maintain the potential equality of the classes a number of conditions also must be preserved. These are: 1. No individual should be allowed to change from one

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class to another, i.e., no exceptionally able man could be allowed to rise to a higher class and no failure or defective to fall to a lower. 2. No selective interclass marriage should be allowed, i.e., no man in one class be allowed to choose a wife from another unless he were blindfolded and chose her completely at random. Also, no clever woman should be allowed to catch a husband from a higher class and no homely woman be allowed to marry "beneath" her. 3. Selection should also have to operate identically within all classes. T h e several classes would show, of course, a great intraclass variability. T h e living conditions of the upper and lower classes might also be very different but, even so, the different types within each class would have to have the same relative reproductive rate throughout the entire population. If any of these conditions are not met, the gene frequency of the different social classes would change and their potentials would become different. Obviously W a r d did not know all that he was postulating. 7 7 W. A. Davis and R. J . Havighurst (Scientific Monthly, 66:301-316, 67:31334 [1948]) published a critique of mental tests in which they stated "any difference between the average response of different cultural groups (here, socio-economic groups) to a mental problem may be attributed to their unlike cultures. Therefore, all problems that show socio-economic differences in performance should be ruled out of the tests as unfair." A. S. Otis (Scientific Monthly, 67:312-313 [1948]) questions the validity of results achieved by such scientific standards and in their reply to Otis, Davis and Havighurst made the following contribution to genetics (67:313): "From what is known about genetics, the children of a man who was well favored with innate intelligence would have very little chance of being better favored than the children of a man who was less well endowed genetically in these effects. Both men carry many latent characteristics as well as manifest ones in their genetic structure. Both men, furthermore, have wives who in each conception contribute half the genes to the offspring . . . Thus we believe the safest assumption that can be made is that there are no innate differences of intelligence between socioeconomic groups in the United States today." This contribution is from the Department of Education, University of Chicago.

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While the limitations of Lester Ward are at once obvious to any biologist who reads his works, they are apparently missed by his followers. T o quote again from Chugerman (p. 46): ". . . his original contributions to science and to modern evolutional and cosmic philosophy were amazing. H e even anticipated, in whole or in part, such brilliant discoveries as De Vries's theory of mutation, Freud's sexology, Huxley's ethical dualism, and Lenin's scheme of a social order ruling itself for its own benefit." T h e biology of Lester Ward is identical with the biology of T . D. Lysenko {see Chapter X). §5 W e can readily see how useful certain aspects of Marxian biology were to Lester Ward in his attacks on social Darwinism. Others, like Ward, who had also recoiled from social Darwinism, found other aspects of Marxian biology equally useful, and chief among these was the routine Marxian misrepresentation and denunciation of Malthus. As we have recorded earlier, Marx and Engels were not the first to attack Malthus nor were such attacks confined to their followers. As we have also stated, we cannot assume that an anti-Malthusian stance by itself is a symptom of Marxian biology. Long before Marx, Malthus had offended the tender-minded unforgivably, and their emotional reaction to him is undoubtedly responsible for the fact that they seem never to know just what he wrote or just what his conclusions implied. T h e i r obscurantism was certainly fortified by a political use made of Malthus early in the nineteenth century. Malthus supplied the authority for an attack on the poor laws showing, supposedly, that no real help to the poor was possible. Those who opposed the laws did so on what they thought

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were Malthusian grounds, i.e., if such help were given, the only result would be that, in a short time, there would be more suffering poor who would need still more help. What Malthus had actually done was to show that undiscriminating and unintelligent charity would do more harm than good. T h e poor could be helped and even made into valuable citizens but only under certain conditions. If charity merely kept them alive then such charity became an inexcusable cruelty. A century and a half ago, this was just about what British charity accomplished. Much had to be learned before aid to the poor lost its dangers. Today, we in the United States face, on an international scale, the problem Britain faced a century and a half ago on a national scale. Incidentally, most Britons believe now that their country is overpopulated and that their overpopulation is the basic cause of much of their present involuntary austerity. Although Malthus is still being exorcised by some social scientists (Chapter XI), he still manages to fret and haunt them. T h e scale of our concern now is much wider than formerly—it is in fact world-wide, 8 hence, because of our international position, the basic problem of Malthusianism has acquired such startling political aspects that the ignoring of Malthus is steadily demanding greater and greater skill. We are actually attempting to alleviate the woes of the poor of the whole world, even the poor who reproduce with no thought of the future. In the immediate past, we relieved a famine in India, a country whose population is increasing at 8 We also have a problem on our door step and are beginning to realize that a cheap air plane service to New York City does not really solve the population problem of Puerto Rico, definitely one of our responsibilities. Nor can we noticeably raise the living standards of the overpopulated Far East. We may even be forced to evaluate the problem realistically and also to judge fairly the problem which her domestic poor once presented to Great Britain.

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the rate of five million a year. We are also trying to lessen the misery of the Near East where Egypt has already experienced the Malthusian catastrophe. T h e earlier work of Ward, as we have indicated, showed the orthodox misunderstanding of Malthus. In this, of course, he was not alone, for others who rejected social Darwinism also missed the meaning of Malthus. We need cite only the case of Henry George (1879) in a passage cited by Hofstadter (1944, p. 91): I assert that the injustice of society, not the niggardliness of nature is the cause of want and misery which the current theory attributes to overpopulation. I assert that the new mouths which an increasing population calls into existence require no more food than the old ones, while the hands that they bring with them can in the natural order of things produce more. Malthus, of course, had said that lack of food was rarely a direct check on population growth but was generally only an indirect check. We should also call attention to George's blithe overlooking of any possible checks to population growth through limitations in natural resources, because this oversight is well worth emphasizing. It is typical of the antiMalthusians who were opposing social Darwinism. As social Darwinism was based on an extreme form of individualism—almost a reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine, we would expect all kinds of collectivists to oppose it. One of the leading collectivists, Edward Bellamy (1888), whose Looking Backward made such a stir among the Utopiaminded, came out flat-footed against all competitive aspects of human living. As he obviously equated social Darwinism with biology itself, he naturally wanted to take his own species out of the Animal Kingdom. " T h e principle of the Brotherhood of Humanity is one of the eternal truths that

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govern the world's progress on lines which distinguish human nature from brute nature. T h e principle of competition is simply the application of the brutal law of the survival of the strongest and most cunning." (Hofstadter, p. 94.) In this contrasting of human with brute nature, he showed, of course, his intellectual relationship to both Marxians and Fundamentalists. T h e true followers of Marx would also oppose social Darwinism and would ally themselves naturally with others who opposed it. This alliance undoubtedly helped to spread the postulates of Marxian biology to many who did not look upon themselves as Marxians. We should note, however, that there was probably no clear cut division between many of the basic assumptions of the Marxians and of those who did not consider themselves Marxians at all. In fact, during the late nineteenth century, many gradations in left wing doctrines were available, and the doctrines themselves could be accepted in many different permutations and combinations. Marx's own followers in the Socialist party were constantly splintering into mutually hostile groups, and often they found themselves in separate intellectual compartments because of doctrinal trivia. In spite of the wranglings, however, all the parties on the left opposed social Darwinism. This, at least, can be said in their favor. We can not trace the historical development of Marxian biology further without calling attention to a most peculiar dilemma in which the followers of the Marxian line found themselves. They were compelled by their faith to espouse the doctrine of the equapotentiality of all social classes. This actually necessitated accepting a number of biological postulates which were incompatible with each other. T h e simplest course would have been just to ignore the difficulty but this was hardly practical. T h e modern Russian procedure was not

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available to them at the time as they did not control a censorship, hence they could not simply forbid the publication of anything that might expose the self-contradiction. It requires the possession of some of the implements of social control to maintain the true party discipline. T h e result of this dilemma was that some of the socialist writers floundered into a most serious deviation. They actually went so far as to reject the Lamarckism of Marx and Engels, and of Lester Ward— the Lamarckism which is now standard in all Communist countries. As Hofstadter (p. 96) expresses it, "Post-Darwinian trends in biological theory were hailed by socialists as definite proof of the validity of their approach . . . the socialists, hoping for reconstruction of the economic environment, found Weismann's theory more congenial." In brief, the Marxians not only had to endorse publicly the belief in the biological equality of all social classes, races, and groups, they also had to assume that all were equal as of that instant. They had to believe both in evolution and that man was particularly sensitive to and influenced by his environment. Moreover, they had to assume that human evolution came about through a particular process and that it did not take place through the substitutions of an elite few for the great masses of the unfit, with the corollary that the elite would be superseded in turn by a new and super-elite. T h e belief in the present biological equality of all men made it necessary to believe that acquired characters were not inherited, while the Marxian belief in evolution required that such characters be inherited. Marx and Engels themselves, as we have pointed out, did not believe in the equapotentiality of races and thus they recognized the full implication of Lamarckism. Lamarckism, however, provided a quick, easy, and humane method for securing such equality, but, even so,

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it did r e q u i r e a certain amount of time. Further complications also appeared. At the t u r n of the century, the Marxians had not reached the point where they could simply shield themselves from all new biological discoveries. Weismann's great contributions were winning acceptance in the biological world and so, at least in America, the Marxians could not ignore them in their thinking on social subjects. Actually, they learned to use them with a certain amount of skill. W h e n we consider both the real purpose of the socialist writers, who quoted Weismann, and the people for whom they were writing, we will have to admit that they did very well indeed. W h e n we analyze their reasoning, however, we learn much about the intellectual standards of the followers of Marx. H e r m a n Whitaker published an article entitled "Weismannism and Its Relation to Socialism" in the International Socialist Review (1: 513-23 [1901]). T h e following quotation exposes an aspect of Lamarckism which the modern Communists have agreed to ignore. From page 519: The socialist teaching might be condensed in the phrase, 'Man is the product of heredity and environment, and heredity is the summing up of past environments'; and this is the Weismann theory in a nutshell. 9 . . . T h e old theories of heredity, do not and can not be made to agree with socialist philosophy. Their exponents agree that acquired characters are inherited and that after they have been transmitted through a certain number of generations they become fixed and enter into the heredity of the animal. If this were true, the habits of a man forced by hard conditions into the slums would be transmitted to his children; and if they continued to live in the slums the habits would become fixed and enter into their heredity. Such people would then be β It is not. See page 120 ff.

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congenitally bad, and though removed from the evil environment, would continue in their evil ways. Arthur M. Lewis published Evolution, Social and Organic in 1908. T h e following passage, as cited by Hofstadter (p. 96), shows its indebtedness to Whitaker: If it were true that the terrible results of the degrading conditions forced upon the dwellers in the slums were transmitted to their children by heredity, until in a few generations they became fixed characters, the hope of Socialists for a regenerated society would be much more difficult to realize. In that case these unfortunate creatures would continue to act in the same way for several generations, no matter how far their environment had been transformed by the corporate action of society. This much, at any rate, Weismann has done for us, he has scientifically destroyed that lie. Needless to say, if Whitaker and Lewis had lived behind the Iron Curtain in 1948, they would either have recanted or been liquidated. Moreover, they did not seem to realize that they were throwing human evolution directly back on natural selection and the struggle for existence. Nor had they removed the possibility that the slum dwellers were merely those who varied in an adverse direction and were, as the social Darwinians held, in the process of being eliminated. In fact, they do not seem to have done any real thinking. Communists who understand genetics and who live in the free world are aware of the conflict between Lamarckism and the dogma of equalitarianism. In a series of articles on science, published first in London Daily Worker, J . B. S. Haldane damned the inheritance of acquired characters in routine Party language. These articles were collected in a book, Science and Everyday Life, and republished in 1940. From page 115:

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Lamarckism is now being used to support reaction. A British biologist who holds this view now thinks it is no good offering self-government to peoples whose ancestors have long been oppressed, or education to the descendants of illiterates. He has, however, to explain why even the children of orators must still be taught to speak, though men have been speaking for hundreds of generations. From page 243: Reactionary biologists, such as Professor MacBride who thinks that the unemployed should be sterilized, naturally use the theory of the transmission of acquired habits for political ends. It is silly, they say, to expect the children of manual workers to take up book-learning, or those of long-oppressed races to govern themselves. Laboratory experiments agree with social experience in proving that this theory is false. T h i s was published, however, eight years before the inheritance of acquired characters became an official Party doctrine and, at that time, Professor Haldane was not offering excuses for Lysenko. But one other aspect of Marxian biology will be considered here, and this aspect is important, for it is still imbedded in the social sciences, i.e., its "negative" attitude toward eugenics. At this point, the Marxians lost a good opportunity to perform a real service by making an intelligent criticism of the eugenicists. T h i s seems all the more regrettable when we consider how much of a religion contemporary eugenics had become. It is true that Galton, Pearson, Ellis, a n d others had abstracted and studied the hereditable variable in h u m a n population and had published a great deal of valuable data. T h e y never succeeded, however, in eliminating the environmental variable completely, and thus all of their conclusions concerning the hereditary variable were open for corrections.

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As no one had ever succeeded in measuring environment accurately enough to describe it on any numerical scale that has meaning, quantitative estimates of it were far from accurate. Of course, in an homozygous population, living under diverse conditions, the differences in performance would be due to difference in environment. On the other hand, in a heterozygous population living under uniform conditions the differences would be due to differences in heredity. In a heterozygous population living in a variable environment, the problem is most complex, and a quarter of a century was yet to elapse before the geneticists were able to prove that any assignment of relative importance to the effects of heredity and environment in the achievements of any individual is completely meaningless. Those social scientists who were critical of social Darwinism could have performed a real service by making a scientific evaluation of eugenics. They lost the opportunity, however, when, like the Marxians, they merely denounced it and adopted an environmentalism which was as naive as the doctrine they denounced. Ward himself was in large part responsible for this. Although he admitted differences in inherited capacity, he looked upon such differences as very minor factors. He believed that the real differences between men lay in differences in their opportunities. Genius to him was widespread throughout the whole population though it was generally "mute and inglorious" because it was inhibited by hostile surroundings. Even today, an emotional and unreasoning hostility to eugenics is to be found in both the social sciences and in Marxian biology, and references to the "eugenics craze" can be found in modern sociological literature as well as in the writings of the Russians. But more of this later I

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§6 In the above discussion, we have neglected certain aspects of social Darwinism completely, i.e., its purely economic functions and effects. Its inadequacies in this field have been explored many times, but these are beyond the scope of the present study. Also, we have not been concerned with the economic effects of any of the past and current forms of Marxism. Several of these are now being tested on a national scale and their defects are emerging. There are also many current compromise systems compounded of individualism and private enterprise with varying degrees of social controls and planned economy. These economic systems are likewise beyond our scope. What we have been concerned with is the amount of hidden biology behind the social and economic systems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the biological postulates which have been used to bolster the many different social doctrines. Even those who reject biology as entirely irrelevant to social problems and who preserve their innocence of the science have tacitly adopted beliefs of a biological nature even though they are not held any longer by biologists. It should be a gain to clear thinking if these presuppositions are brought out into the open.

6 · The Machinery of Heredity, 1900-50 §1 HUS FAR, we have considered the development of the theory of evolution and the intellectual ferment caused by the impact it made upon the thinking of the nineteenth century. T h e "fact" of evolution was soon established; all the new data that the biologists collected accorded neatly and consistently with the picture of a changing but orderly universe. Although the causes of evolution were not well understood and much confusion existed in evolution theory, the fact that all living things had evolved was never challenged successfully. As a result, the implications of evolution, especially of human evolution, were forced upon the attention of contemporary thinkers. T h e concept of evolution, however, conflicted with many long and well-loved convictions so, obviously, its advent could not be peaceful. But after the dust of the inevitable battle had settled, it was clear that evolution had been completely victorious. Soon the theory was accepted not only by scientists and scholars but also by the more rational and literate religious groups. T h e fact that man himself had evolved from an apelike ancestor was so pertinent to all social thinking that no honest scientist could overlook its implications. If man were a product of evolution, his biological equipment obviously was not static. Therefore, all 186

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plans for the future of mankind had to allow for possible changes in man himself. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, evolution theory was not in a happy state, because many of the observed facts could not be explained. This was not altogether bad because it gave the scientists a number of interesting problems. T h e unknown in science is always challenging, and, when it is of such a nature that it can be investigated, it stimulates rapid progress. T h e expected advances came quickly and, fortunately, they were such that they fit together neatly and could be organized into a self-consistent \vhole. Almost before anyone was aware of what was happening, a new science had come into being, a science soon to be known as genetics. For some time biologists had known that the real problem of evolution was the problem of heredity, for evolution can take place only when heritable changes occur. Obviously, if evolution was ever to be explained, heredity would have to be studied intensively and its basic mechanisms discovered. A most vigorous investigation Avas undertaken and three investigators, Hugo De Vries, Carl Correns, and Eric von Tschermak, discovered independently the long forgotten work of Gregor Mendel. At first, the bearing of Mendel's work on evolution and even on heredity itself was not realized. Actually, it was something of a distraction and a source of some confusion. When it was brought to the attention of the English-speaking world, a bitter controversy arose between the Mendelians led by William Bateson and the biometricians who followed Karl Pearson. 1 Some time elapsed before the biologists realized ι See R. C. Punnett, "Early days of Genetics," Heredity, 4:121-33 (1950), for some of the details. There is still much misunderstanding concerning the nature and cause of this very important quarrel, and a real need exists for it to be cleared up. Until it is, a proper history of genetics can not be written.

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that Mendel had furnished a clue which would lead ultimately to the discovery of the machinery of heredity and, as a corollary, to the discovery of the missing factors needed to explain evolution. In fact, Mendel's work soon gave the entire science of biology a new impetus, one almost as great as that given by Charles Darwin. But Mendel's work did not lead immediately to an understanding of evolution. T h e biologists, who had been investigating evolution, were actually diverted toward a study of heredity itself, and soon they found this type of research so fascinating and profitable that they put aside all really serious work on evolution. They did not return to the direct investigation of evolution until the genetic problem had been solved,2 but, when they did return nearly a generation later, they could investigate the subject on a very different level. As a result, there has been a renaissance in evolution studies during the last twenty years, due in large part to our knowledge of the mechanism of heredity. It is now possible to fit evolutionary changes into a known scheme, to measure and evaluate them quantitatively, and, finally, to bring the exceptional cases, which so puzzled the nineteenth century biologists, into an established framework. No attempt will be made here to cover the entire science of genetics. Even the portion of the subject which follows has to be elementary with all the detailed evidence and quantitative data omitted. T h e evidence, however, is available and can be consulted easily, although much of it can be 2 It may seem odd to wiite of a scientific problem as ever being "solved." However, Τ . H. Morgan himself so designated the "genetics" problem, but this means only that the relatively simple problems of the early Mendelians have been solved. The solutions, however, disclosed so many more new unknowns whose existence had never been suspected that today there are more leads and questions in genetics than ever before. At present, we cannot foresee the time when genetics will be a finished subject.

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evaluated only by technically trained biologists. Fortunately, there are several excellent textbooks

3

which give very lucid

accounts of the subject. Descriptions of the newer knowledge of evolution are also available, but they are necessarily technical. A number of extremely well-written and up-to-date books on evolution have been published recently, and they have made all earlier compendia obsolescent. 4 W e must have some scientific background, however, if w e are to understand the present status of genetics and evolution theory, and

to appreciate

their

bearing on

the

current

assumptions in the field of the social sciences. W e must have this knowledge if we are to judge either the misapplication of biology to social problems, or recognize the

ignorant

omission of that portion of the science that does apply. M a n y archaic notions about evolution and genetics are still held by many, and many of the biological assumptions of nonbiologists are false. Such assumptions, of course, are impediments to a rational communication between those w h o hold them and the biologists who are technically equipped to correct the errors. A n y honest appraisal of the application of genetics to social problems must be undertaken against the background of what we know about the machinery of heredity, and it is hoped that this chapter, limited as it is, will give such a background. s E. W . Sinnatt, L . C. Dunn, and T h . Dobzhansky, Principles of Genetics (New York, 1950); Laurence H. Snyder, The Principles of Heredity (Boston, 1951), etc. 4 T h . Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species (New York, 1951); Julian Huxley, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis (New York, 1942); Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York, 1942); G. G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (New York, 1944), etc.

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§2 It would be hard to find anywhere a man more harmless than Gregor Mendel. He was a devoted and conscientious priest who liked to work in his monastery garden, crosspollinating flowers. For eight years, he crossed different varieties of the edible garden pea, and his records show that he handled nearly twenty thousand plants. In 1865, he described the results of his experiments before two sessions of a local scientific society, and the next year he published his work in their Proceedings, a worthy but relatively obscure periodical. Apparently, the paper was read by few of his contemporaries and it was understood by none. He corresponded with Carl Naegeli, who was then at the height of his reputation, but Naegeli missed entirely the significance of Mendel's work. Naegeli, because of his own very definite intellectual limitations, discouraged Mendel in following up the work and in developing further the clues he had uncovered. After his work on plant hybridization had met with such a discouraging reception, Mendel turned his attention to raising and breeding honey bees. Characteristically, he kept careful records of his experiments but he never published them and they are now lost. No one knows what important discoveries he might have made. Shortly after he experimented with bees, he had to give up his scientific research because his ecclesiastical obligations took up more and more of his time. As early as 1868, he had been elected abbot of his monastery. He died in 1884, unknown to the scientific world, a worthy and respected but strictly local figure. T h e neglect of Mendel, however, was not absolute. There is one early reference to his work (Hoffman, 1869), and the Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers listed his publica-

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tion. Wilhelm Focke (1881), who wrote a justly famous book on plant hybridization, referred to Mendel several times but showed by one superficial remark that he did not understand what Mendel had done. Years later, Professor Liberty Hyde Bailey of Cornell University listed Mendel's paper in the bibliography in his book Plant Breeding (1894), but Professor Bailey had not read the original paper and had only copied the title from Focke's citation. This late reference, however, led De Vries to the discovery of Mendel's original work, and at long last, in 1900, sixteen years after Mendel's death, he got the hearing he had earned. T h e discovery of the long neglected contribution was announced, and the foundation was laid for a new science. Mendel and his discoveries ceased to be harmless. Almost at once, an acrimonious debate arose in England. This debate was soon resolved, but forty years later, the Mendelians were being arrested in Russia and sent to concentration camps. Finally, in 1948, the few remaining Mendelians in Russia found it expedient to recant, to forswear their knowledge, and to promise to reform, hoping by this personal degradation to keep themselves and their families from dying in Communist prisons. T h e r e is certainly nothing on the surface of Mendel's work to justify all of this attention. Moreover, if we consider his discoveries singly, we can see that every one of them had been made previously. H e reported, first, that when he crossed two peas that differed in a single character, such as color of seed or height of plant, the hybrid was like one of its parents and not like the other. There was nothing new in this. In 1799, Thomas Andrew Knight had described this type of hybrid in Mendel's own genus, in peas. A few years later, in 1822, the very year in which Mendel was born, Alexander Seton and John Goss made the same discovery

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and, the next year, Knight himself verified their work. In 1826, Sageret reported this prepotency of one parent in crosses between muskmelons and cantaloupes, and, in 1849, C. F. von Gärtner published a very important book in which many more such instances were recorded. This type of hybrid should really have been well known. Secondly, Mendel reported that, when he inbred the hybrids, both parental forms reappeared in the second hybrid generation. Again, this observation was not new for such occurrences had been described by Knight, Seton, Goss, Sageret, Gärtner, and Naudin (1863). Thirdly, Mendel noted that, when the parents differed in regard to two characters, each character was transmitted independently. He could prove this because in the second hybrid generation (F.), the two factors would appear in several different combinations. Again, this had been recorded—by Sageret. Mendel's next discovery gave the clue that led to the disclosure of the real mechanism of inheritance. He counted the several types that appeared in his breeding experiments and found that they always occurred in definite ratios. This turned out to be so important that his fundamental r a t i o three dominants (the characters which appear in the first hybrid generation) to one recessive (the characters which do not appear in the first but which reappear in the second generation)—has, popularly, become synonymous with Mendelism. (Of the 19,959 second generation hybrids Mendel raised, 74.9 per cent were dominants, 25.1 per cent were recessives.) But Mendel was not the first even in the recording of precise genetic ratios. Eleven years earlier, Johann Dzierzon (1854) had found a definite ratio in honey bees between the two types of drones prduced by hybrid queens. Superficially, we might question Mendel's originality and

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conclude that everything he did had been done earlier.® Such a view, however, misses the essence of his discovery. H e had put all of his findings together and had shown their interrelation and their meaning, something no one else had ever done. H e really demonstrated that the mechanism of inheritance is particulate and that the particles, which carry hereditary characters, can pass unchanged from generation to generation. H e showed that they even keep their characters in individuals where they do not show up at all. Finally, he demonstrated that these particles may unite temporarily in many different combinations and that they can leave a combination as easily as they enter it and, throughout the whole process, they remain unaltered. These particles were originally called Mendelian factors but are now known everywhere as genes. W e know now that all our hereditary characteristics and potentialities, except for some trivial variants which will be discussed later, are due to the interaction of these genes. W e know that these genes are the real material of heredity, the material which we receive from our parents and transmit to our children. W e know also that the mechanism of inheritance is the same for all plants and animals and that man (despite the escapists) is still a member of the animal kingdom. T h e discoveries, following the clues given by Mendel, finally have made genetics an exact science. W e must admit, of course, that, no matter how precisely an "exact" science can measure and no matter how accurately it may predict, it can never claim to have achieved absolute precision. Unfortunately for a popular understanding of genetics, most non-biologists equate it with Mendelism and then equate Mendelism with the three to one ratio. Modern genet5. C o n w a y Z i r k l e , " G r e g o r M e n d e l and H i s Precursors," Isis, 42:97-104(1951).

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ics, of course, is founded on Mendelism but, being a science, it rises above its foundation. We might even describe the genetics of the twentieth century as beginning where Mendel left off. Actually, the men who discovered Mendel had already verified his basic principles in their own work. Almost immediately after the Mendelian principles were announced, they were found to apply to animals as well as to plants. Certain genetically simple human characteristics, such as the color of hair and eyes, were found to be inherited as Mendelian factors, and the study of human heredity was given an enormous stimulus by the new technique of subjecting family pedigrees to a Mendelian analysis. Although Mendelian inheritance was found to be common in the higher animals and plants, some disturbing complications appeared, and it was difficult to prove that all heredity was Mendelian. This problem will have to be considered in some detail later. T h e first important addition to post-Mendelian genetics came in 1906, when Bateson and Punnett found two Mendelian factors which were not transmitted from generation to generation independently, as all Mendelian factors were supposed to be. T h e characters themselves were trivial. Bateson and Punnett were breeding sweet peas, and they found a color factor, purple flowers as contrasted with red, and a pollen character, long pollen as contrasted with round, both of which were Mendelian. But the inheritance of these two characters was, in some way, connected. When they entered an experiment together, i.e., in the same plant, they stayed together more frequently than they should have on a chance basis. Soon, many such cases were known, and it was clear that there was some component of the mechanism of heredity that needed an explanation. After a number of false starts, the geneticists discovered that Mendelian factors or

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genes did not really pass independently from one generation to another but that they were transmitted in packets or groups. Two genes would be transmitted independently only when they traveled in different carriages. Genes that travel in the same group are now said to be "linked," and it was found that the number of such groups is never really large. In every race or species which has been studied adequately, the number of linkage groups equals the number of chromosomes which the race or the species possesses. T h e inferences from this fact are clear: (1) T h e genes are connected with the chromosomes and each linkage group represents the genes connected with a single chromosome; and (2) the genes are actually carried in the chromosome from one generation to the next. We shall have to return to the subject of linkage later. As stated earlier (Chapter 4), sometime before Mendel's work was discovered, a number of leading biologists had been led to the conclusion that the chromosomes were the chief vehicles of heredity. Roux (1883) had made such an assumption and two years later he was followed in this by Hertwig, von Kölliker, Strasburger, and Weismann. Thus by 1900, the hypothesis that the chromosomes carried the factors of heredity was eminently respectable. Soon after the discovery of Mendelian factors, it was observed that they passed from one generation to the next precisely as the chromosomes did, and the presumptive evidence that they were carried by the chromosomes became so strong that, in 1903, W. S. Sutton definitely stated that they were. Before we can prove this assumption, however, we will have to make a short detour. In 1891, H. Henking described an odd body in the nucleus in a male insect (Pyrrhocoris apterus). This body was observed during the cell divisions in which the number of

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chromosomes is reduced to one half. These are the cell divisions which produce the sex cells—the eggs and the spermatozoa. H e n k i n g also noted that this body in the male was passed on to only one-half of the spermatozoa. F. C. Paulmier (1899), C. E. McClung (1899, 1901), Τ . H. Montgomery (1901), and R. de Sinety (1901) all identified this body correctly as a chromosome but as a most peculiar one. In the cell divisions, which precede the formation of spermatozoa and eggs, the chromosomes lined u p in pairs and only one member of each pair goes into each sex cell. T h i s is the way their n u m b e r is reduced. Thus, the unfertilized egg and the spermatozoa have only half as many chromosomes as the body cells, but when the sperm and egg cells fuse in sexual fertilization, the full chromosome n u m b e r is restored. T h e peculiar chromosome first seen by Henking, however, did not have a partner, but it lined u p just as if it had. It could pass into only one half of the sperms, however, the other sperms in line for its non-existing partner had to go without it. T h u s , two different kinds of sperms were produced. McClung (1902) stated that this chromosome controlled sex. H e held that the sperms which contained it fertilized eggs which developed into males, but this turned out to be in error. T h i s lone chromosome was first called the accessory chromosome, then the excess, a n d finally the Xchromosome. Soon Ε. B. Wilson discovered that it really made for femaleness as the female had two such chromosomes, which formed a pair in the reduction division, while the male had but one. Each egg, then, before it was fertilized, had one X-chromosome and when it was fertilized by a sperm that carried an X-chromosome, it had two X's and developed into a female. W h e n fertilized by a sperm that had n o X, the fertilized egg had b u t one X-chromosome and hence developed into a male. This was proven in 1905 when Ε. B.

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Wilson showed that the female squash bug (Anasa tristis) had twenty-two chromosomes in all the body cells, while the male had but twenty-one. Widespread investigation showed, however, that this type of sex determination was not universal and that other chromosome mechanisms could also determine sex. In some forms, the females had two X-chromosomes while the males had one X, but the males had, in addition, another kind of chromosome which was lacking entirely in females. Although this chromosome was only in part like the Xchromosome, it paired with the X-chromosome. It was very naturally labeled the Y-chromosome. The males then produced two kinds of sperms: those which contained the X-chromosomes went to their daughters while those containing the Y-chromosomes went to their sons. This latter type of sex determination is of special interest to us because it operates in all the mammals that have been investigated including, of course, ourselves. It also operates in the fliesincluding the famous Drosophila—and in some fishes. Still another mechanism determines sex in the birds, butterflies, and moths. Here, the male has the two like chromosomes, named Z-chromosomes while the female has the unlike chromosomes, one of which is a Ζ while the other is called a W-chromosome. There are really innumerable chromosome mechanisms for controlling sex, especially in the insects; so many, in fact, that new ones are constantly being discovered. Here, we need mention but one more type, that found in Hymenoptera,— the bees, wasps, and their relatives. Newell (1915) showed that the drones or males of the honey bee had only one-half as many chromosomes as the females—the workers and the queen. Wherever the females have a pair of chromosomes, the males have but one. Startling as this mechanism may

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seem, it was really expected; for, as early as 1791, Fran$ois Huber had discovered that the males (drones) were hatched from unfertilized eggs while the females (the workers and queens) came from those that had been fertilized. T h i s had also been discovered and reported by Johann Dzierzen in 1845. It is worth mentioning that our ancestors had probably speculated as to why some babies were born boys and others girls from the time they could speculate at all. Ancient and medieval records are full of their fantastic guesses. W e should also mention that it was actually in honey bees that we first got a clue as to what really determined sex. W e did not learn what controlled our own sex until the twentieth century. T h i s brief account of the chromosome mechanism of sex only scratches the surface of a most complex subject. T h e r e are excellent discussions of the problem in a number of texts, however, 6 and the reader, who is interested, is referred to these. This description, scanty as it is, is sufficient, though, to enable us to complete our detour. T h e discovery and correct interpretation of the role of the X-chromosome led to the next great advance in genetics. If any Mendelian factor or gene were carried in an Xchromosome, it would have to be inherited differently in the different sexes, because the males and females have different numbers of this chromosome. Any defective gene in this chromosome would show its full effects in the male, because the male would have no other homologous gene which might cover it up. On the other hand, in the female, the defective gene would not be recognizable if the normal gene in her other X-chromosome could do the whole job alone. This means that there would be many more male than female defectives due to any such inadequate genes. If such a gene β See footnote 3, page 189.

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occurred frequently enough to cause one man in a hundred to show its effects, a simple calculation will reveal that only one woman in ten thousand would show it because she would have to have two such genes. If only one man in ten thousand showed such a character, only one woman in a hundred million would show it. Therefore, it is not at all strange that such characters, which we now call "sex-linked," were thought originally to be limited to males. But here was a great opportunity for geneticists. Any gene which would be inherited in this manner could be located in a particular and recognizable chromosome—the X-chromosome. T h e first discovery of such a "sex-linked" gene, however, did not clear up the matter at once. Doncaster and Raynor (1906) found a gene in the moth Abraxas which they correctly assigned to the Z-chromosome, but there was still much confusion as to just how this factor was inherited. In 1910, however, Thomas Hunt Morgan published the first of his researches which were to put genetics on a new basis and earn for himself the same hatred in the Communist world which Mendel has received. In fact, he was to be honored by having his name linked to Mendel's and Mendelism-Morganism was to become anathema to those who accepted Marxian biology. But to return to Morgan's work: his first discovery was simple enough; he found a Mendelian factor, which caused the eyes of the little fruit fly Drosophila to be white, and he found also that this factor passed from generation to generation as did the X-chromosomes. He found a second factor, a yellow body color which also traveled as did the X-chromosome and —this was the pay-off—these two genes, both of which were sex-linked, were also linked to each other. Here, we had, for the first time, a linkage group of genes that we could assign to a particular chromosome, one which we could see under the microscope.

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At once, a great many facts, which had been known for a long time, started to fall into place, and a clear and consistent picture began to emerge. T h e physical basis of certain human characteristics became apparent, characteristics whose peculiar mode of inheritance had been recognized for over a century. T h e puzzling "sex-linked" inheritance of color blindness had been described in 1777 by the great Joseph Priestley, in 1778 by the Rev. Michael Lord, and again in 1794 by the famous chemist John Dalton. Likewise, the sex-linked inheritance of haemophilia, which has so plagued the royal families of Europe, had been described in the Medichenische Ephemeriden published in Chemnitz in 1793, and also and independently by Dr. John C. Otto of Philadelphia in 1803. Pagensticher (1878) and Morton (1893) found that there was a night blindness in man which was inherited like color blindness and haemophilia, and Owen (1882) found a form of nystagmus which was also inherited in this manner. Genetics was beginning to organize a great many discoveries. Genes were found to be transmitted from generation to generation, as we have stated, in packets called linkage groups, whose numbers corresponded to the number of chromosomes. Also, in those species that have been studied properly and that have X-chromosomes, it was found that one of the linkage groups invariably follows the transmission of the X-chromosome. Obviously, it had now become highly desirable to discover the relationship which the genes have to each other within the linkage group. It was known at the very beginning that linked genes only tended to stay together. Sometimes they parted company and this separation of linked genes was called "crossing over." T h e question naturally arose, how did genes cross over? It had been observed that, when chromosomes paired up before

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they separated and their numbers were halved—in the cell divisions which formed the eggs or the sperms—they often became entangled (F. A. Jannsens, 1901, 1905, 1909) and exchanged corresponding segments—a process we call forming chiasmata. If a gene were in a fragment that passed to the other chromosome of the pair, it "crossed over." A simple and reasonable assumption (since verified literally thousands of times) led to the next step. It was assumed that the closer two genes are in the group, the less the chances are of their being separated by crossing over; the farther apart they are, the greater the chances. This assumption, if true, allowed certain quantitative measurements to be made. T h e linkage groups could now be represented by a diagram. T h e distance two genes should be from each other in the diagram could be found by the percentage of the time they crossed over. T w o genes which separated one per cent of the time were arbitrarily placed one unit apart. By this method, it was found that all of the genes in a group fall neatly into place. T h e most convenient diagram of the group turned out to be a straight line with each gene placed in an assigned spot or locus. If the diagrammatic distance of any gene were known from any two other genes, it was located automatically in respect to all of the other genes within the group. When the proper corrections are made that are called for by the method of calculating degrees of linkage, the cross over ratio with any other gene in the group could be predicted. These linkage diagrams were called, somewhat prematurely, "chromosome maps." T h e next step was made possible through the fact that chromosomes are subject to many accidents. When cells divide the chromosomes often become entangled. T h e results of these accidents can be seen under the microscope so that it is possible to depict them with fair accuracy. Their im-

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portance to genetics lies in the fact that these physical changes in the chromosomes correspond to changes in the location of the genes within the linkage group. Sometimes a chromosome gets tangled u p with itself and may even fold back, on itself to form a loop. If the loop unfolds, no important change occurs. If, on the other hand, the strands of the chromosome fuse where they cross, there may be a number of changes, depending on how the fusion takes place. T h e parts of the chromosome outside of the loop may join together, and the loop itself may drop out of the chromosome and become a circle. When this happens the chromosome will suffer a "deletion." T h e chromosome may also break where it loops and each broken-off end of the chromosome may fuse with an end of the loop. T h e loop may then be taken back into the chromosome, but that portion of the chromosome which formed the loop in the first place may have been turned around from its original position. T h e fragment that formed the loop will then be said to be reversed. Sometimes a chromosome may lose a small part of itself to its partner without getting an adequate return. T h e partner then will have two like segments. T h e n we say there has been a "duplication." Don't dismiss these details as trivial, for these chromosome changes are closely connected with evolutionary changes I Another irregularity in chromosome behavior is called translocation, which is defined by Bridges as cases "in which a section of a chromosome is removed from its normal location but is present in an abnormal location." In Drosophila, Bridges (1923) described how such a section became attached to an entirely different chromosome. Muller and Painter (1929) described how it was possible to produce such translocations by treating the cells with X-rays (also in Drosophila), and Dobzhansky (1930) described a number of such

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translocations and showed how, by a study of such errant segments, the diagram of the linkage groups could be translated into real chromosome maps. When a chromosome breaks, the genes on either side of the break become separated no matter how closely they had been linked previously. If one of the fragments fuses with an entirely different chromosome, the genes therein find themselves attached to a different linkage-group. When such a translocation occurs, it is possible to discover by genetic experiments which genes had changed their linkage habits. Thus, we can locate the exact point of breakage in the linkage-group. By measuring the broken segments of the chromosome under the microscope and knowing what genes are in each segment, we can determine just where the genes are in the chromosome. Thus, Dobzhansky was able to make a "cytological map' of the chromosomes of Drosophila and he showed that it agreed with the previously derived "genetical map." Thus, real chromosome mapping became possible and, in time, very profitable. The next great advance in our knowledge of genetics was helped by plain good luck. In 1881, E. G. Balbiani had described the peculiar structure of the nuclei in the salivary gland cells of a fly, Chironomus, one of the Diptera. Here, the chromatic material was formed into a convoluted thread which was so marked that it looked like a long and entangled rope-ladder. Now the fruit fly Drosophila, which had been studied so intensively, is also one of the Diptera. Finally, in 1934, a quarter century after Drosophila became the most studied genetical material, the geneticists finally got around to investigating its salivary gland nuclei. Painter (1934) and Bridges (1935) proved that the striated bands in these nuclei of the salivary gland cells of Drosophila are really chromo-

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somes and that they corresponded, part for part, with the chromosomes of the germ tract. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of these salivary gland chromosomes to genetics, even if they are limited to the Diptera. First, they are relatively enormous, seventy times as long as the chromosomes in the germ plasm. Second, they are neatly marked with striations, i.e., heavily staining bands which cross the chromosomes in fairly regular intervals and which are so individualistic that each one of them can be recognized. It has also become possible by an extension of the method of chromosome mapping to locate genes within the salivary gland chromosomes with such accuracy that they can be placed within a particular striation or band. Sometimes when genes change or mutate, changes can be seen in the corresponding bands which contain them. And the salivary gland chromosomes have still another value. T h e effects of the chromosomal changes (deletions, reversals, duplications, and translocations) can be seen and located in them easily and directly. Thus, in the Diptera, at least, the chromosome changes which accompany evolution are easy to follow. §4

T h e preceding section tells in barest outline of the physical basis of Mendelian heredity. T h e fact that genes constitute a hereditary material, that they are carried in the chromosomes, and that they can actually be followed from generation to generation by means of their hereditary effects does not exclude, of course, the possibility of there being some other hereditary material which may also pass from generation to generation and which may also be investigated through its hereditary effects. We must remember that each parent gives its child an entire cell, a cell containing both

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the nucleus with its chromosomes and the "cytoplasm" or material outside of the nucleus. Any particle in the cytoplasm that can duplicate itself may also pass from generation to generation and serve as a vehicle for heredity. In fact, there are such bodies and there is such a thing as cytoplasmic inheritance, but the scope of this inheritance seems to be strictly limited. According to all the criteria we have thus far devised, it seems to be of little importance. This cytoplasmic inheritance does help us to complete the picture, however, and it is of enough interest to be included in all our textbooks of genetics. Its existence has really been known for many years. T h e recent emphasis given to cytoplasmic inheritance by the Russians, together with the misrepresentation of its role, is one of the latest developments in Marxian biology. This emphasis, however, seems to be but a by-product of the Marxian attack on Mendel, for Mendel must be discredited at all costs as Mendelian inheritance is incompatible with the biological postulates necessary for communism. It has been known for a long time that the cells of many of the lower plants contain green bodies called chloroplasts. These bodies occur also throughout the plant kingdom (except in the fungi and a few other exceptional forms) and in the higher plants are responsible for the prevailing green color of our landscapes. In many of the lower plants, the chloroplasts are relatively large and divide when the cells divide and their behavior in this respect parallels the chromosomes. T h e i r passage can also be followed from mother to daughter cells. In the Conjugateae, the passage of the chloroplasts into the sex cells can be observed, and they can actually be traced from one generation to the next. There is, of course, no a priori reason why such chloroplasts should not be considered as forming a part of the material of heredity.

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In fact, R. A. Harper (1906) has shown that it is best to consider them as such. In the higher plants, the story is a little more complex. Here, the germ plasm does not contain chloroplasts but, in their place, it contains small cytoplasmic inclusions which develop ultimately into chloroplasts. At various times, these primordia of chloroplasts have been called mitochondria, chondriosomes, proplastids, etc. Lewis Anderson (1936) has shown that they exist in both the egg cells and the pollen tubes of Antirrhinum and Hyacinthus but, although the presumptive evidence was very strong, he could not actually prove that they passed into the egg cell along with the male nucleus when fertilization took place. However, the genetic data indicate that in some genera these cytoplasmic particles actually participate in the fertilization of the egg, but that in other genera they do not. In this latter case—assuming, of course, that the plastid primordia do carry hereditary factors—they would pass from one generation to the next exclusively through the egg and not through the pollen, and they would transmit hereditary characters only through the female line. This heredity is called maternal inheritance. Such inheritance has been described in Antirrhinum by Baur (1907), in Mirabilis by Correns (1909), in Melandrium by Shull (1913), in Primula by Gregory (1915), and in Zea Mays by E. G. Anderson (1923). Many additional examples of this type of inheritance could be cited. Other instances, where such cytoplasmic inheritance can be traced through both egg and pollen, have been described by Bauer (1909) in Pelargonium, by Stomps (1920) in Oenothera, etc. None of the characteristic types produced by this kind of heredity gives Mendelian ratios. (Most instances of plant variegation, however, are due to aberrant Mendelian genes and do give such ratios.)

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T h e many interesting problems suggested by this aspect of heredity can not be developed further here. We should mention, however, that any invading organisms—any parasites that live inside the cells—may be transmitted from one generation to the next, and, if such parasites modify any normal structure or cause any abnormal behavior, their effects will have a superficial resemblance to hereditary effects. Thus, Preer (1948, 1950) has found a Reketsia (a bacteria-like parasite) to be transmitted from one generation to the next in a unicellular animal (Paramecium). Virus particles have also been found to be transmitted through to cytoplasm of egg cells. T h e overall interaction of genes with the cytoplasm will be discussed briefly in the following section. §5 Thus far, we have been concerned with the structure of the mechanism of heredity. Here, we shall consider how it works. First of all, we should state that our knowledge of the finer workings of the mechanism is very incomplete. We have some good guesses as to just how the genes do their basic work, but they are merely guesses. There are, of course, innumerable steps between the genes and their end product, i.e., between the genes and the final development of the characters they control, but, viewing the matter as optimistically as possible, we have to admit that we have only begun our attack on the problem. We have, however, made a little progress (e.g., the work of Beadle and his co-workers on Neurospora) and have now progressed beyond the first rather simple concept of genes. As we look back upon the early days of genetics, we can see how the role of the gene was bound to have been misunderstood. T h e gene was such a precise unit while its end

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product, the character it "caused," appeared in such definite ratios that it was only natural to equate the gene with its end product and to look upon each gene as performing a single function which was to produce a single character. Conversely, it was just as natural to look upon each character as being produced by a single gene, e.g., a gene for blue eyes produced blue eyes, a gene for a red flower produced a red flower, etc. This simple concept, however, is false; genes do not work this way at all. The precise location of genes within the chromosomes made it possible for us to get a very different picture of their functioning. Mutations that occur at different loci, i.e., in different genes, may have the same end results. This is especially evident in recessive mutations which cause marked deficiencies. For example, a number of mutations, that cause seedlings of Indian corn to fail to develop their normal green color but to remain white (albino mutations), have been located in a number of different genes (Demerec, 1923). These genes may even be carried in different chromosomes. This fact tells us that, for an ordinary green seedling to develop, a number of genes must not mutate in the fashion described. That is, a perfectly normal character can be conditioned not by just one gene but by many genes. It fact, our data indicate that no one character is caused or controlled by a single gene but that all characters are due to the interaction of many genes, just how many, we do not know. Here, there is a defect in our experimental technique. We can not tell what gene contributes to what character until it has mutated, because we can identify genes only when they cause measurable changes, and consequently we can not know how many unmutated genes are involved in producing any end result. This is true for all characteristics. It follows from the above that, if only one gene mutates, our stocks will show the simple Mendelian ratios character-

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istic of one pair of Mendelian factors. If two genes mutate, we have the slightly more complex ratios of "dihybrids," if three, we have the "trihybrid" ratios, etc. All the mutations, however, may not be equally important. We sometimes speak of primary genes, those in which the mutations have produced marked effects, and modifying genes, those in which the mutations have been less drastic. This, however, is merely a convenient terminology. Just as the mutations of different genes may give the same effect, so a single mutation can give different effects. For example, a mutation that gives a yellow coat color to a mouse will also, when the mouse has the gene in both of its homologous chromosomes, kill the mouse. (This gene is a dominant "visible" and also a recessive "lethal.") This function of a gene in having two seemingly unconnected effects is called "pliotrophic." This complex functioning of a single gene should warn us that a gene that produces a simple and obvious character may also produce some subtle physiological effects. Moreover, a single gene may mutate in a number of different ways and thus contribute to a number of different end results, and a number of different mutant forms may thus exist because of changes that have occurred at a single locus. Such a series of mutant genes is called a "multiple allele." We know of many characteristics that show the influence of such mutations. For example, a gene of Drosophila, whose normal functioning is necessary for the characteristic red eye color, may alter in such a fashion that the eyes will be white. Or, it may change in another manner and the eyes will be pink—or salmon colored, or the color of the dye eosine, etc. T h e well known series of blood groups in man are conditioned by mutant genes which form multiple alleles.

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( T h e r e is no need here to go into the subject of pseudoallelism.) T h i s description of multiple alleles may seem to be overemphasizing a technical aspect of genetics in an account of the science as sketchy as this one is. T h e subject, however, has a bearing on o u r present understanding of evolution. It is possible that all of the so-called u n m u t a t e d genes (known technically as "wild type") are not identical, and that one of the advantages of our having genes in pairs is due to the possibility that two unlike genes may function better than two which are identical. T h i s would be expected if each gene were slightly defective and if each unlike gene compensated for the defect of the other. T h i s point is important also when it comes to explaining the evolutionary role of what has recently been called "over dominance." T h i s section may be summarized by a single example. W e may take the production of the normal green chloroplast in healthy plants as an illustration of how the whole hereditary mechanism works. Obviously, a n u m b e r of genes are involved and all of them must be functioning properly if the chloroplast is to be normal. If any one of these genes is defective, the defect will be inherited as a single Mendelian factor. If two are defective, the defect will be inherited in the characteristic dihybrid ratio and so on. But the genes in this example also have to co-operate with a cytoplasmic particle or a cytoplasmic inclusion which must also work properly. If this cytoplasmic body is defective, the defect will be transmitted not as a Mendelian character b u t as an instance of cytoplasmic heredity. O u r general picture then is of heredity controlled by the interaction of many genes, each of which may have many different functions and, at times, even of the possible interaction of these genes with some cytoplasmic component.

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§6 We have now reached a point where we can consider a factor which caused a great deal of misunderstanding when Mendelism was brought to the attention of the scientific world. Many of the hereditary characteristics of plants and animals, and particularly of man, just do not form simple Mendelian ratios. Examples can be found in the skin color in man. T h e hybrid between the white and the Negro, the mulatto, appears to be a blend of the two parental stocks; and mulattoes, when they reproduce, do not produce segregants identical with the races which went into the mixture. Many other human characteristics also seem to be inherited as blends, such characters as height and size, strength and vigor, even differences in intelligence. Family resemblences can be recognized but, except for a few simple characters like hair and eye-color, they do not fit into simple Mendelian categories. When Mendelism was rediscovered, it seemed to many biologists that it was an exceptional type of heredity and not a very important one at that. It was easy to study and hence it was very attractive to investigators who supposedly were either simple or lazy. All the really valuable traits of our crop-plants, domestic animals, and even of human beings seemed to blend in inheritance. For a while, there seemed to be two basically different types of heredity—blended and Mendelian. T h e biometricians and eugenicists, who had been investigating blended inheritance for years before Mendel's work was discovered, simply did not like Mendelism, even though it gave clear-cut results. T h e results all seemed to be trivial. This blending inheritance also seemed to be the universal method of transmitting quantitative characters in contrast

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to the simple, qualitative Mendelian ones. Any investigation of quantitative characters requires careful measurements, and the science of biometry had already developed such methods. It is truly remarkable that sound work was done in this field in spite of the many unforeseen complications and difficulties. Not only was the basic mechanism of heredity unknown at the time; but also nearly all quantitative characters were exceptionally difficult to study genetically as they were especially sensitive to environmental variations. W e can imagine the difficulties biometricians would have in studying the inheritance of stature at a time when the role of Vitamin D in human growth was unknown. Nevertheless, the pre-Mendelian biometricians obtained a great deal of valid data, and we know now that their basic conclusions were correct. Now the assumption that there were two basic types of heredity, and consequently two different mechanisms of heredity, was very unsatisfactory from any scientific viewpoint. But even so, some years were to elapse before the apparent contradictions were to be resolved. T h e biometricians were confident that their careful and controlled researches and mathematical methods of investigation were valid, and they felt that Mendelism was an unintelligent attack on their science. On the other hand, the early Mendelians could see little but their own precise and simple ratios. Within a decade, however, the growing knowledge of heredity slowly forced the two schools of thought together. Those responsible for bringing order into this rather complex field were H. Nilsson-Ehle (1908), Ε. M. East (1910, 1913), R . A. Emerson (1913), and R . A. Fisher (1918). 7 7 We should mention here a remarkable paper by Udny Yule, "Mendel's Laws and Their Probable Relation to Intra-racial Heredity," New Phytologist, 1:193-207, 223-238 (1902). Within two years of the discovery of Mendel's paper

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Nilsson-Ehle crossed a wheat with red grains with one whose grains were white. In some of his second hybrid generations, he got the expected simple Mendelian ratio of three reds to one white. In others, the progeny appeared to be much more complicated. T h e r e were many shades of red and in some stocks only one-sixteenth of the grains were white and in still others only one sixty-fourth. It soon appeared (1) that he was working with three different Mendelian factors whose end results were similar; (2) that dominance was not complete so that the hybrids appeared to be intermediate between the parents; and (3) that the actual shade of red was conditioned by the number of genes for red color, the more genes the darker the red. When he separated the different shades of the grains into different classes, he found that they could be arranged into a symmetrical distribution curve which turned out to be the same type of curve that the biometricians themselves had been studying. T h e paper which East published in 1910 has a most significant title; it is "A Mendelian Interpretation of Variation That Is Apparently Continuous." East was working with Indian corn and, three years later, together with his student Emerson (Emerson and East, 1913), he made one of the truly famous contributions to genetics. These investigators had crossed two races of corn, a small popcorn whose ears averaged 6.6 cm. in length with a field corn whose ears averaged 16.8 cm. T h e first generation hybrid was intermediate between the parents, with the average ear length of 12.1 cm. T h e second hybrid generation's average was also intermediate with the mean ear-length of 12.6 cm., but the and without any real experimental data. Yule showed mathematically how Mendelian and blended inheritance could be described by the same mechanism.

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two hybrid generations were quite different. They differed in their variability. T h e second hybrid generation varied so much that its extreme variants were as far apart as the original parental stocks. T h e coefficient of variation (the standard deviation over the mean) of the parental stocks and of the first hybrid generation were all comparable, being 12.3 per cent and 11.1 per cent for the parents and 12.5 per cent for the hybrid. T h e second generation hybrid, however, had a coefficient of variation of 22.3 per cent. There was so much variability in this second hybrid generation that, although the average size of the ears remained intermediate, the population included segments which matched the two parental stocks. T h e "blended" inheritance of size in corn had become unblended. This could not have occurred if the hereditary material had truly fused. What apparently had been blended in the first hybrid generation had separated out in the second. Thus, quantitative and blending characteristics, which had seemingly been fused were not true blends at all. In as much as they segregated, they could be interpreted as Mendelian. Finally Fisher (1918), in a paper whose importance is still not sufficiently realized, showed by an adequate mathematical treatment that the types of heredity studied by both the biometricians and the Mendelians could be accounted for by the same basic mechanism. We realize now that socalled blended, quantitative heredity has a Mendelian basis. Many genes are involved, of course, and the effects of the individual genes overlap so that simple Mendelian ratios cannot be recognized. Such inheritance is now called "multiple factor." T h e progeny of crosses who show this type of inheritance fall into characteristic distribution curves. T h e hereditary material, however, still segregates and the segregation can be identified in later generations. We know

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now that there is but one basic mechanism of heredity in all the higher plants and animals. This mechanism is Mendelian and the inheritance of particular characteristics can be traced to the functioning of one, of a few or of many genes. §7

The above account of the mechanism of heredity and of how it works might seem to have no political implications. T h e discoveries in genetics, however, have had an important impact upon biological theory. T h e most significant problems of the biological sciences are concerned with the nature, origin, and evolution of life, and our knowledge of what causes evolution is obviously dependent upon our knowledge of genetics. Genetics, thus, bears directly on our understanding of evolution; and the factors which cause and direct evolution are obviously essential to our well-being. We cannot escape the fact that the entire future of our species depends upon the nature and direction of the changes we shall undergo. T h e acquisition of knowledge in this field should be one of our most important occupations. And the honesty of our thinking on these subjects should be a matter of our deepest concern. Preconceptions, prejudices, and emotional blocks can do untold damage when they warp our evaluation of such fundamental subjects. Unfortunately, intellectual dishonesty is not uncommon, and it frequently distorts the thinking of many people when their basic assumptions are challenged. Marx and Engels made a number of such assumptions about heredity and evolution before our modern knowledge of the subjects existed. As it happened, their assumptions are incompatible with what we know today, but when these assumptions will be abandoned, if ever, we do

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not know. We may believe—if we view the matter optimistically—that they will be discarded soon by that fraction of the human race that looks upon truth as a thing valuable in itself. Today, however, a philosophy exists in which truth and falsehood are considered merely as means toward a predetermined end, to be used or not as expediency demands. It is a philosophy which just does not admit that honesty is a policy which pays in the long run. In this philosophy, the assumptions of Marx and Engels are maintained against all evidence to the contrary, and any science that challenges these assumptions will be extirpated in the lands where the Marxians have political control. Thus, it has come to pass that genetics has been destroyed in Communist countries. T h e complete rejection of Mendel is now one of the most prominent of the stigmata of Marxian biology.

7 . Evolution Theory in the Twentieth Century §1 HE T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y found the explanation of evolution in a very unsatisfactory state. One fact, however, had become clear: the problem of evolution was basically a problem of heredity, because evolutionary changes could come about only through the origination of novelties which could pass from generation to generation. The full, logical impact of Mendel's discoveries upon the theory of evolution, however, was not felt for some time. Indeed, a new, postMendelian generation would have to attack the problem of evolution before the real importance of Mendelism would be appreciated; but, in the meanwhile, a few students of evolution had grasped the most obvious implications of the newer knowledge of heredity and soon even the elementary textbooks referred to Mendel's discoveries. During the first decade, however, the evolutionists seemed to be feeling their way rather cautiously, although they did recognize the relevance of Mendelism to some of their disputed doctrines. Mendelism was clearly compatible with Weismann's explanation of evolution but incompatible with Lamarck's. It also helped to remove one of the early objections to natural selection, as it showed that heredity was controlled by dis-

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crete particles which maintained their identities. T h e older view had been that all hereditary characteristics blended together and fused, and that, consequently, the advantageous variations selected by nature might well be lost or swamped when the selected variant bred back into its original stock. If, however, heredity is controlled by particles which maintain their individuality, as the Mendelian factors do, the characteristics selected by nature would not be swamped but would reappear in subsequent generations and, if they had survival value, they would reappear in increasing numbers. Mendelism also helped to clear up a silly misunderstanding which had come about as the result of an historical accident. Darwin had emphasized the continuous and gradual nature of evolutionary change. Nature, he held, would produce new species by selecting the variations that any animal breeder could recognize in his own stocks, if the process of selection continued for a long enough time. These variations were small and were soon labeled "Darwinian variations." On the other hand, the "mutations" described by De Vries were very different. They were large and drastic, real jumps or saltations, and they supposedly produced new species in a single step without the aid of any selection at all. Thus, the mutation theory was looked upon as a rival to the theory of natural selection. Neither, supposedly, needed the other to explain how new species arose. Actually, no matter how a species comes into being, by big mutations or small, it must be fit if it is to survive. Thus, nature selects continuously. Natural selection and mutations can not really be contrasted, as they operate on different levels. Clearly, the overall picture of evolution would not be altered basically by a change in the mere size of the individaul steps, and new species could be formed

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either in one step or in many. There were emotional factors in the misunderstanding, however, that tended to keep the scientists apart. T h e formation of a new species in a single saltation, without any prolonged or tragic struggle for existence, seemed such an easy and kindly method of evolution that it appealed to a great many humanitarians. On the other hand, Darwinian evolution seemed "cruel" and the tender-minded sought to reject it. "Darwinian" variations were explained away by some as being non-heritable. T h e species was likened to a polyhedron which rested on one of its faces. It might rock back and forth on one face (Darwin's "variations") but would always return to its original position. If, however, it rolled over to another face (mutation), it would then fluctuate around a new norm (species). Mendelism, however, soon put an end to the bogus antagonism between the mutation theory of evolution and evolution by natural selection. Almost at once, it was discovered that the Mendelian factors or genes changed or mutated, and that such mutations were heritable. T h e mutations also were of all sizes. Many were small enough to be indistinguishable from Darwinian variations while others were as drastic as De Vriesian mutations. Soon the term mutation was practically limited to the change which occurred in the Mendelian factors or genes, and the evolutionists soon realized that the variations which nature selected were themselves mutations. Mendelism also helped to clear up another misunderstanding that had grown up as a result of the late nineteenth century hostility to Darwin. Darwinism had been criticized on the ground that natural selection was a purely negative process. It was described as being uncreative because nature could eliminate only those variations that already existed. T h e real causes of evolution, supposedly, lay in what pro-

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duced new variations. Natural selection, admittedly, could destroy but it could not create. Originally, of course, Darwin had not been concerned with the origin of hereditable variations. They were simply observed facts, familiar to all animal and plant breeders. Darwin had merely sought to show that if such variations existed, then nature could evolve new species. T h e origin of variations was an interesting and important problem in its own right, but its solution did not have to precede the acceptance of natural selection. T h e discovery that natural selection operated upon Mendelian populations put the subject on a very different plane. Although the full impact of Mendelism upon evolution was not felt during the first quarter of the century, it did exert a growing influence upon the thinking of evolutionists, and it did help to prepare the way for the recent great advance in evolution theory. §2 As soon as the necessary data could be collected and organized, it was found that Mendelian heredity applied to animals as well as to plants. In 1902, both L. Cuenot and A. D. Darbeshire described factors in mice that were inherited as segregating Mendelian units, and the next year, Cuenot called attention to certain aspects of this heredity which would soon cause considerable confusion. Actually, this was fortunate, for, in the process of clearing up this misunderstanding, the first real application of Mendelism was made to the problem of evolution. Cu£not had found a spotted coat color in mice (black spots on a white background) which was inherited as a definite Mendelian recessive. Thus, spotting was due obviously to a Mendelian factor, but the amount of spotting varied

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widely and could be altered by selection. W h e n mice who had only a few spots were bred together, their progeny had few spots. Strains of spotted mice were developed that had so few that they were nearly white and, by selecting in the reverse direction, stocks were produced which had so many that they were nearly black. T h e simple and inevitable interpretation was that spotting was inherited as a Mendelian unit, but that the unit itself was variable and could be altered by selection. Naive as this may appear today, Ave must rem e m b e r that at the time it was both reasonable and in accord with the known facts. Later, W . E. Castle found this same type of inheritance of spotting in rabbits. In 1907, he started an intensive research into the inheritance of still another variable character, the hooded pattern in rats. This work was one of the first important post-Mendelian investigations of evolution. Hooded rats are white except for the hoods which are black. T h e hood covers the head, neck, shoulders, and forelegs, and continues as a black stripe down the middle of the back and joins a black tail. T h e width of the stripe varies greatly. Castle pursued his selection experiments for sixteen generations and bred a total of 33,249 rats. T h e hooded pattern was clearly due to a Mendelian factor, but Castle succeeded both in reducing the hood until only the heads remained black and in extending it until almost the entire animal was black. H e concluded that Mendelian factors were variable and subject to selection. Meanwhile, the knowledge of genetics was growing rapidly. Modifying genes had been discovered and identified correctly and, incidentally, some of the best known of the modifiers had been described by Castle himself. Modifying genes are ones which affect or modify the end-products of primary genes. Some modifying genes apparently have n o

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known primary effects and can be recognized only when their primary genes are present. T h e discovery of modifying genes, however, suggested an alternative explanation of the effects of selection upon Mendelian stocks, and this explanation also was simple. It was that the selection did not affect the gene itself, but that it either preserved or eliminated the modifying genes, and thus it modified the character determined by the primary gene. Both of these hypotheses fit all the known facts. T h e controversy which developed helps us to understand the orientation of the early geneticists toward the unknown factors of evolution. At this time, the mutation theory was supposed to be a rival rather than a supplement to natural selection. T h e biologists who had disliked natural selection had seized upon the mutation theory in an attempt to escape from the "struggle for existence." It was not until 1917 that H. S. Jennings combined the concept of mutation and natural selection into a unified theory and showed that selection operated in all cases and that evolutionary changes in a population came about through the mutations of individual genes followed by a selection of the mutated forms. Selection, thus, could direct evolution by accepting or rejecting mutant genes even though the gene itself was a relatively stable unit of heredity. Today we realize that a single gene may mutate in many different ways and form a series of multiple alleles, (see p. 209), any one of which may be preserved by nature. W e also realize that modifying genes may be either preserved or eliminated by selection. Later experiments showed that selection had altered the genetic stocks which Cu£not and Castle had investigated merely by changing the frequencies of the modifying genes. T h e effects of selection were also measured by Jennings (1908, 1911) and some of his students in experiments on some

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unicellular microscopic animals (the protozoa). T h e little slipper animalcule, Paramecium, increases its numbers normally without sexual reproduction simply by pinching itself in two. Each of its lines of descent or clones has but a single parent and thus it forms a pure genetic line such as Johannsen had worked with in his beans (see p. 137). Jennings found that he could separate different clones of Paramecium by selection, clones distinguished by their different sizes, but that selection within each line had no effect, for it turned out that the progeny of the larger animals in a pure line were the same size as the progeny of the smaller ones. This, of course, was in keeping with Johannsen's results. In another protozoan, Difflugia, however, Jennings found (1916) that mutations occurred within his pure lines and that, by selecting mutant forms, he could alter the progeny. Obviously, evolutionary changes could be secured through the preservation of mutations. As a result of these discoveries in the protozoa, Jennings showed that the effects of selection upon Mendelian population was a promising subject for investigation. Years later, this subject was to develop into the discipline called population genetics. Meanwhile, it was desirable to explore mathematically the effects which selection might have upon the frequency of genes in a given stock or population. Before this could be done, however, a preliminary question had to be answered. How did such genes behave in a population when they were not subjected to any selection at all? T h e answer was easily obtained. Pearson (1904) had shown that, when two contrasting Mendelian factors occurred with equal frequency in a hybrid population—the ratio of the dominants to the recessives being the standard three to one—and that when the breeding continued at random, the genes continued to occur with equal frequency, and the populations did not

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change. Moreover, he showed that no matter how many Mendelian factors the stock had, the frequency of none of the genes changed. H e did miss one aspect of the problem, however, an aspect which later turned out to be of considerable importance. He was unaware that his conclusions were true only for populations so large that mere chance fluctuations in the genes were insignificant. In small populations, random fluctuations have marked effects on the end results, and actually become an important factor in evolution (see p. 240 fF.). Pearson had used general symbols in his calculations. H e could easily have given these symbols a more general significance than he did, and if he had done so, he would have taken the next and very simple step. In 1908, the step was taken independently by G. H. Hardy and W. Weinberg, and now we have the Hardy-Weinberg "Law." Stated briefly, this law is that, in a large isolated Mendelian population, where no selection is taking place, whatever frequency any two contrasting genes may have will be maintained indefinitely. This law is basic to population genetics and is often quoted in works on evolution. Pearson's contribution has always been overlooked and the reasons for this neglect are now clear. First, Pearson included his contribution in a paper whose chief object was to depreciate Mendelism; and second, those who could have used his work to advantage, i.e., Bateson, Punnett, Hurst, et. al., had little mathematical competence. They were also on the other side of a very bitter controversy. T h e chances are that the contemporary Mendelians were unaware of the tool Pearson had put in their hands. They had to await the work of Hardy and Weinberg. Many years later, Punnett (1950) tells us how "Hardy's Law" came into being:

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Here I may mention an interesting advance in genetical theory which came about in an unusual way. In 1908 I gave an address to the Royal Society of Medicine on Mendelian Heredity in Man. In the subsequent discussion, I was asked why it was that, if brown eyes were dominant to blue, the population was not becoming increasingly brown-eyed; yet there was no reason for supposing such to be the case. I could only answer that the heterozygous browns also contributed their quota of blues, and that somehow this must lead to equilibrium. On my return to Cambridge, I at once sought out G. H. Hardy with whom I was then very friendly, for we had acted as joint secretaries to the Committee for the retention of Greek in the Previous Examination and we used to play cricket together. Knowing that Hardy had not the slightest interest in genetics, I put my problem to him as a mathematical one. H e replied that it was quite simple and soon handed to me the well-known formula pr=q2 (where p, 2q, and r are the proportions of A A, Aa and aa individuals in the population varying for the A-a difference). Naturally pleased at getting so neat and prompt an answer, I promised him that it should be known as "Hardy's Law"—a promise fulfilled in the next edition of my Mendelism. Whether the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton is still, I gather, a matter for conjecture; certain it is, however, that "Hardy's Law" owed its genesis to a mutual interest in cricket. T o d a y , the effects of m a n y kinds of selection, even of n a t u r a l selection, are well k n o w n , thanks to the investigations of such leading scientists as Fisher, H a l d a n e , a n d W r i g h t , scientists who are b o t h geneticists a n d m a t h e maticians. At first, however, progress was slow. I n 1916, J e n n i n g s calculated t h e effects of a most drastic selection, a selection in which a M e n d e l i a n factor was eliminated w h e n e v e r it showed itself. T h i s type of selection occurs f r e q u e n t l y i n n a t u r e , f o r m a n y m u t a t i o n s p r o d u c e defects t h a t cause

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sterility or death, and all such mutants naturally discard themselves. T h e automatic elimination of such mutant genes gave us our first glimpse of how selection changes Mendelian stocks. If the "lethal" mutation is dominant, all who have it die. Thus, it is wiped out in a single generation and the stock becomes purely recessive. If the lethal gene is recessive, it can be eliminated only when it shows itself, i.e., when it occurred in a double dose. In the heterozygous state, its effects are covered up by the dominant member of its gene pair, and it will be carried along in the stock. Even so, it is eliminated in time. Jennings investigated the matter mathematically and, starting out with a stock in which the two members of the gene pair occurred in equal numbers in the first hybrid generation, the "Fi" generation, he showed that, in subsequent generations, the gene selected against continued to appear but always in lessening numbers. In generation F», the percentage of the individuals who showed it would be represented by the fraction ! _ and its frequency during the selection could be represented by a curve which approached zero as η became large. As many human defects are caused by a single recessive gene, this curve gives us a measure of the effectiveness of eugenic selection. Jennings (1917) also showed that the effects of this drastic type of selection upon characters which are produced by two mutant genes, and the writer (Zirkle, 1926) describes its effects when it is produced by many genes. T h e more genes required to produce the character, the slower selection operated after the first few generations but the end results are always the same. A simple approximation of the proportion of the "unfit" to be eliminated each subsequent generation (F„) would be IL, where p is the number of genes

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which caused the defect. Later on, Haldane (1934) gave this problem a proper mathematical treatment. The effects of selection on Mendelian populations are now known well enough so that they can be described quantitatively, thanks to the pioneering work of Fisher, 1 Haldane, 2 and Wright, 3 but unfortunately this work is too mathematical to be understood by those who are not technically trained. T h e contribution of these three investigators, however, is basic to our present understanding of evolution, and it enables us to evaluate natural selection with great accuracy. T h e earlier emotional rejection of natural selection now seems very silly. Its continued rejection on political grounds is inexcusable. T h e new science of population genetics 4 grew out of our ability to describe natural selection in exact terms.

§3 When we examine the many complex problems involved in biological mutation, we approach the very heart of the theory of evolution. We can prove very easily that, without mutations, organic evolution would be impossible and also, just as easily, that mutations in themselves are not enough to 1 T h e reader is referred to A. A. Fisher, The Genetical Basis of Evolution (Oxford, 1930), especially pp. 22-47. 2 T h e best non-technical description of Haldane's contribution is in his The Causes of Evolution (New York and London, n.d.). T h e Appendix (pp. 171-215) is entitled Outline of the Mathematical Theory of Natural Selection. His technical treatment of the subject was published chiefly in the Proc. Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1924-32. 3 Of Wright's numerous technical contributions, we cite only "Systems of Mating," Genetics, 6:111-38 (1921); " T h e Genetic Theory of Natural Selection," Journal of Heredity, 21:349-56 (1930); "Evolution in Mendelian Populations," Genetics, 16:97-159 (1931); "Adaptation and Evolution" in G. L. Jepson et al., Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution (1949), p p . 365-89. 4 See, for example, M. M. Lerner, Population Genetics and Animal Improvement (Cambridge, 1950).

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account for the evolutionary changes. Mutations are merely innovations or deviations that can pass from one generation to the next. In as much as the complex process of replacing one generation with another takes place under diverse conditions and is subject to many different hazards and accidents, it is only reasonable to expect a great variability in the end results. All deviations that can be inherited are mutations in the broadest sense of the word. Consequently, there are many different kinds of mutations, although for the sake of convenience some geneticists restrict the meaning of the term to the type of mutation they are working with at the time. Any attempt to trace the history of mutation in detail is hopeless. For over two thousand years, biologists and practical agriculturists and gardeners accepted mutation as a matter of course, as they did not know that species are relatively stable units. Our records contain innumerable instances where species are described as mutating into other species. Theophrastus thought that when a plant was grown in a new country it would change its species; and Virgil and Pliny told how wheat and barley changed to wild oats. Medieval literature is full of records of one species "degenerating" into another and, according to some of the herbalists, there were many species which were so unstable that they could never breed true but would always produce something new and different. T o complicate matters, many descriptions of real mutation are scattered throughout the erroneous records, but of course we can never identify them accurately. As the usual crops of the time were grown from mixtures of different seed, and as neither the role of pollen nor the possibility of pollen contamination was understood, and as Mendelian segregation naturally was not suspected, old records of sudden changes

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in a species cannot be taken as real evidence of mutation. 5 Another fact which should be of interest is that the word generally used to describe these changes was "degeneration." T h i s word was used originally in its literal sense and meant only a generation away from the normal. In biological works, however, it later acquired its present meaning of "deterioration," which indicates that the changes were generally looked upon as bad. This bit of history was repeated in the twentieth century when real mutations were first studied intensively. Admittedly, mutations, when properly selected, are the building blocks of evolution, but mutations also seemed to be degenerative (in the modern meaning of the word), and this fact put the geneticists into a quandary whose seriousness was not realized for some years. Before we can resolve their difficulty, we must consider the nature and kinds of mutations. W i t h the discovery of the material basis of heredity, it became possible to describe mutations accurately. First, it was f o u n d that the Mendelian genes themselves mutated. T h i s is perhaps the most common of all types of mutation and is called a gene or a point mutation, as it is a mutation that occurs at a specific locus or place on a chromosome. T h e statements made today by Marxian biologists that geneticists look upon genes as idealistically conceived, eternal, and unchangeable is pure falsehood. In fact, genes or loci where no mutations ever occur—if there be any such—can not be investigated by our present techniques. Point mutations, however, may be of several different kinds. (1) T h e change may occur in the chemistry of the gene itself. In as much as the gene may change in many different ways, many different 5 It is worth noting here that the slovenly technique and stupidly designed experiments of Lysenko have led him to report this sudden change in species, e.g., wheat into rye, 28-chromosome wheat into 42-chromosome wheat, etc. It is not difficult to match each of his errors with some ancient belief.

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mutant forms of the gene may exist, or, as it is generally expressed, form a series of multiple alleles. (2) A minute deletion may occur at a point or locus in a chromosome so that a gene drops out and is lost. If the gene is not essential to the life of the organism, this "lack" of a gene will be inherited as a Mendelian factor—as a recessive "gene." If it is essential, but if a single unmutated gene is able to carry on alone, it will be inherited as a recessive "lethal," i.e., a gene that causes death when homozygous. T h e most common of all point mutations seem to be lethals, but clearly all lethals do not have to be deletions. (3) T h e order of the genes in a chromosome may be altered through many accidental changes: through reversals, translocations, etc. Many genes are now known to function differently when they are in different loci on the chromsome. This is called the positional effect. Such positional effects are inherited as mutations. More than gene mutation is needed, however, to explain the evolutionary changes which produce new species. A simple microscopic examination of dividing nuclei in the cells of related species shows that, with few exceptions, they differ drastically from each other. If the differences are great enough to be seen with the microscope, they are too great to be caused by mere gene mutations. In a few genera, however, the sister species seem to differ only in their Mendelian genes, e.g., the hawthorne (Crataegus), oaks (Quercits), and rhododendrons (Rhododendron). In these genera, the species are generally cross fertile. Even the hybrids themselves are fertile, and natural hybrids occur frequently. But such genera, while numerous, are exceptional. T h e discovery of the salivary gland chromosomes in 1934 made it possible for geneticists to get a much clearer picture of the evolutionary process because it enabled them to trace and identify not only divergencies in the hereditary mech-

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anisms, which separate different species, but also the divergencies which had developed between the different races within a species. This work, unfortunately, is extremely technical, but the reader who is interested is referred to the basic research of Dobzhansky and his co-workers. In the salivary gland chromosome, the genes are frequently arranged differently even in neighboring groups. Such different arrangements, reversals, translocations, etc., are common in nature and sometimes are drastic enough to make neighboring groups cross sterile. Such chromosome alterations often serve as isolating mechanisms, and thus they become a factor in evolution itself. Dobzhansky has even traced the relationship and descent of geographic races in Drosophila by mapping the microscopic variations in their salivary gland chromosomes. Even before the discovery of the salivary gland chromosomes, considerable progress had been made in recording the chromosome changes which were involved in speciation. Metz (1923), for example, showed that different species of Drosophila had different chromosomes, but that the chromosomes were related, e.g., the genes in a long chromosome in one species seemed to be carried in two shorter chromosomes in another just as if the larger chromosome had broken in two. Blakeslee (1922) had found that extra chromosomes and even extra sets of chromosomes produced heritable differences in Datura. When we count the chromosomes in the different species that make up certain plant genera, we find that their numbers often form a "polyploid" series, such as 6-12-18-24 or 7-14-21-28, etc. For example, the chromosome numbers in our common cultivated wheats fall into three groups—which have respectively 14, 28, and 42 chromosomes. Some genera may even have species which form more than one series with

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some of the species having 8, 16, 24, etc., chromosomes while other species will have 11, 22, 33, etc. As some plant genera contain hundreds of species, the polyploidy may become very complex. In the plant kingdom, at least, the evolution of new species is more often than not accompanied by a change in the n u m b e r of chromosomes. Obviously, a sudden doubling in the n u m b e r of chromosomes is relatively common. In fact, such evolution is important enough to have a name of its own: it is called "catastrophic evolution," and by catastrophic evolution a new species may actually be formed in a single step. Such evolution has been observed among cultivated plants and has even been induced artificially by means of certain chemicals. T h e r e is actually an instance of a new genus being made artificially. A radish and a cabbage were crossed by Karpetschenko in 1929. All the seeds of the hybrid aborted but one. T h e viable seed grew into a large plant which was completely self-fertile (incidentally it was completely useless—neither a radish nor a cabbage). It was different enough from all other plants to rank as a new genus. W h e n its chromosomes were counted, the discovery was made that it had become a tetraploid as it had two complete sets of chromosomes from each of its "diploid" parents. T h e formation of a new species or genus by artificial hybridization differs in no important respect from what occurs naturally in many plant families. One genus, Crepis, has been so well investigated by Babcock (1947) that we now have a rather clear picture of how it evolved. It is a large genus, some two hundred species. T h e chromosome numbers range from 6 (diploid) to 88. It has several polyploid series on each of the basic numbers 3, 4, 5, 7, 11. It contains several different sets of chromosomes which are distinct enough morphologically to be recognized. A given set of chromosomes may actually be traced through a

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number of different species and may be found in various combinations with other identified sets of chromosomes. Babcock has shown that evolution in Crepis came about through an almost promiscuous hybridization, plus back crossing, followed by more hybridizing of the hybrids themselves, a doubling of the chromosome numbers, etc. In Crepis, the "tree of descent" could not be diagrammed as a mere branching line with many twigs, but only as a network showing many lines coming together, joining temporarily in a species, but parting again to enter into new combinations, and so on. Evolution in the plant kingdom, we know now, is not a simple one-way progression. We need consider but one more type of biological change which is heritable and thus of significance in evolution. This involves the "genome." A "genome" is merely an individual "set" of chromosomes, such as we get from a single parent. All sets of chromosomes which work well and harmoniously together and which normally pass regularly from one generation to the next belong to the same genome. Different genomes may look alike but may be told apart by the fact that they do not work well together. We may illustrate the genome concept with the wild cotton (Gossipium). Wild cottons are found growing in Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. They all have the same number of chromosomes, 26. T h e chromosomes of all the species that grow on a single continent belong to the same genome for, when such species are crossed, the hybrids show little or no irregularities in their chromosome behavior. When species from different continents are crossed, however, the hybrids are generally sterile because the genome contributed by one parent will not pair up properly with the genome from the other. T h e chromosomes of the species from different continents thus belong to different genomes. When sister species have been separated

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a very long time, their chromosomes usually become different, so that they ultimately form different genomes. What these differences are, we do not know. Perhaps they are no more than gene mutations, but, on the other hand, they may be small inversions or other alterations in the chromosomes. At any rate, chromosomes belonging to different genomes do not pair properly. T h e recognition of different genomes is essential in any attempt to produce fertile hybrids between species. T h e changes which come about in genomes also show us how sister species evolve apart. T h e discovery that new heritable characteristics appear suddenly in biological stocks added greatly to our knowledge of what caused evolution. T h e physical basis of these changes on the genetic level was soon known with great precision. Furthermore, it became possible to induce these changes or mutations experimentally. T h e added facts that mutations could be either preserved or eliminated by nature and that they were the raw material for natural selection to work on gave our explanation of evolution a validity no mere speculative doctrine could have had. T h e discovery of mutations also solved some of the puzzles which had foiled the late nineteenth century biologists. Evolution was beginning to assume its present twentieth-century status. Good science, however, is never static. Moreover, almost any advance in science that solves problems also raises further questions. T h e discovery and analysis of mutations was a major step forward, and the mere increase in our precise knowledge of mutations brought to light a number of very important unknowns. Evolution was clearly a more complex process than its investigators had assumed. T h e new problems which mutation presented can be examined more easily if we organize them into a few numbered categories. 1. Nearly all the mutations discovered by the geneticists

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turned out to be recessives; dominant mutations are extremely rare. Now, the very existence of a recessive mutation implies that a dominant one also exists. T h e natural or "wild type" or "unmutated g e n e " which existed before the mutation was nearly always dominant. W h e r e did these dominant genes come from? How could recessive mutations b e a factor in evolution if the " n o r m a l " individuals were as they were because of their dominant genes? 2. Nearly all the mutations which were investigated turned out to be destructive or disadvantageous—real instances of degeneration. Mutations, consequently, could explain very easily how a species could deteriorate or even become extinct, but how could they explain constructive evolution? Yet constructive evolution had occurred. Moreover, when M u l l e r devised a very ingenious method for identifying " l e t h a l " mutations, he found that they were the most common of all. Obviously, lethal mutations cannot be considered the basis of evolutionary advance, except, of course, by the cynics. T h e r e was also another puzzle. Many mutations, particularly in the plant kingdom, are neutral—neither advantageous n o r disadvantageous. But, again, neutral mutations, while they can help to explain the great diversity of forms, can not account for any progressive evolutionary advance. 3. W h e n the frequency of mutation was finally put on a quantitative basis, it was found to be extremely low. Stadler, in particular, has measured mutation "pressure" very accurately, and his results show that the genes he investigated mutated at a very low rate. It is difficult to account for the rate of evolution by a mutation pressure of this magnitude unless the mutation itself had such a tremendous survival value that none of its alleles could stand its competition. 4. In 1927, H. J . M u l l e r produced artificial mutations for the first time, a work for which he received the Nobel Prize.

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By means of X-rays, he was able to reach and alter the germplasm directly. Later, it was found that mutations could be induced by ultraviolet light and by such chemicals as nitrogen-mustard. All these mutagenic agents are destructive, however, and almost without exception, the mutations produced are so debilitating that the mutants cannot survive any competition with their unmutated relatives. Obviously, this is not the whole story of the role of mutation in evolution. T h e limitations of the "mutation theory," as presented here, are now recognized. T h e whole story is too complex and too technical to be treated in any detail. F o r example, Fisher has investigated the "evolution of dominance," but his work is necessarily very technical. It is feasible only to call attention to one aspect of the mutation problem which has not yet been treated, and this aspect is due directly to the subjective limitations of the investigators. Mutations of all degrees of severity occur. Some produce effects, such as changes in flower color, dwarfism, the elimination of a wing, red eye to white eye, etc., that no observer could miss. Others are less easy to identify. Some can be recognized only by skilled and expert workers. Non-obvious mutations clearly present a problem. Subjective elements are clearly present and must be controlled. For example, in comparing the mutation rate of such factors in two different stocks, a single observer must be used. Otherwise, the comparative rates might be only a measure of the relative competence of the observers. T h e question arises: Are the mutations studied by geneticists a true sample of mutations in general? T h e answer we can now give is " n o . " T h e y are not even a sample of the mutations the geneticists themselves discover. Both the geneticists and nature select their mutations, but they select different kinds of mutations. T o the geneticist a " g o o d " mutation

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is o n e that is easy to see, that occurs at or a b o u t the desired locus in the c h r o m o s o m e , a n d it is a m u t a t i o n whose e n d p r o d u c t is changed only slightly by fluctuations in the env i r o n m e n t . N a t u r e has n o such ideals as these. I n fact, it has been said that there are two kinds of mutations—those that are i m p o r t a n t a n d those that geneticists work with. T h e geneticists, of course, are justified in their choice, a n d o u r present knowledge of the m a c h i n e r y of inheritance is d u e to t h e i r success with the genes they selected. T h e fact that m u t a t i o n s existed which were not suited f o r investigation in the early days of genetics has been recognized for some time. Both E. B a u e r (1924) a n d T . T a m m e s (1925) called a t t e n t i o n to these m u t a t i o n s a n d to their possible significance in evolution. T h e whole case has been stated clearly by Ε. M. East (1936): T h e situation is so peculiar that taxonomists have little interest in the characters with which geneticists deal, maintaining that they are wholly unnatural material for evolutionary processes. Professor C. T . Brues has examined the published descriptions of mutational effects in Drosophila, at my request, and finds that only a limited few characteristics of similar type have ever survived in nature, and these often in distant genera, thus indicating that the germinal causcs arc not identical. It is worthy of note, however, that the characters resembling the Drosophila mutations that have survived elsewhere in the insects are invariably retrogressive simplifications. . . . I suggest that constructive mutations are numerous, but have ordinarily remained unnoticed simply because destructive mutations are more easily described, catalogued and scored, and therefore have been more convenient in genetic research. T h e r e is evidence of a varied nature, nevertheless, in support of the idea that constructive mutations occur with remarkably high frequency. I have presented elsewhere a study of a large series of species

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hybrids in the genus Nicotiana where normal genomes developed under natural selection are pitted against other and different genomes developed under natural selection. T h e r e the effect of innumerable gene differences of the constructive type may be examined; and where the effects concern essential characteristics, dominance [and recessiveness] is practically absent. Development of the alien genomes together gives a harmonious result in which the normal activity of each is traceable in the resultant pattern of every organ. Evidence as to the precise moment of origin of mutations of this class is not so definite as one could wish, and experimental proof of the exact location of the genes concerned is meager indeed; but this is to be expected from the very nature of the phenomenon. Evidence of their abundance is not lacking. Every plant breeder has noted that no matter how similar different varieties appear to be, there are literally hundreds of gene differences affecting the quantitative relationships of every organ. Easily detected recessives may be hard to find as material for work; but inherited quantitative differences, giving all the results expected under multiple factor control, are omnipresent. Moreover, I have various records of diploid Nicotianas originating presumably from induced parthenogenesis—and theoretically complete homozygotes—whose immediate progeny were as much alike as if cut out by a die, but whose later descendants, coming from successively selfed mother plants, rapidly became more variable in every part. T h i s increase in variability could only come about from frequent mutations of the type we are discussing. Plant breeders, as I have said, may be expected to receive this view with sympathy, for their experience will corroborate it, whether they are dealing with wild plants or with cultivated plants among the Angiosperms or with lower forms. At least, so I read the evidence presented by experimental taxonomists, by agronomists and horticulturists, and by experimental pathologists, such as Stakman. But how about zoologists? I read their results the same way when they are dealing with naturally selected forms, which will cross together and sometimes exhibit fertility—

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Sumner on Peromyscus, Phillips and others on birds, the fish hybridists, and even the interesting series of mutations described by Raffel in Paramecium. From long experience in trying to fix details of structure after crossing—using as a standard of comparison either plants resulting from induced parthenogenesis or plants produced by immediate asexual division—I have the feeling that existent gene variation of this character is 5 to 10 times that of the destructive type. This does not necessarily mean, however, that there is the same relative difference in mutation frequency, for the constructive mutations should usually survive, while the destructive mutations should often be rapidly eliminated. Since the above was written, more evidence has accumulated that confirms the existence of beneficial mutations, b u t these mutations are of such a nature that they could hardly have been recognized in the early days of genetics. Today, however, they can be, and are being investigated. T h e widespread use of insecticides since World War I I has demonstrated clearly that mutant forms of insects have arisen which are practically immune to these poisons. Likewise, experiments with penicillin and other antibiotics have shown that bacteria mutate frequently (see the work of Demerec and others) and that many of the mutations are beneficial to the bacteria. I n some cases, the bacteria not only become immune to the antibiotic, but actually become dependent on it for their very existence. Small and non-spectacular beneficial mutations are apparently not at all uncommon. T h e r e is an excellent reason why constructive mutations should be small and produce only minor effects. W e know now that no final character is ever due to a single gene but rather to the cooperative interaction of many genes. T h e normal or "wild type," then, represents a harmonious, working group of genes. A radically mutated gene, with a large net

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effect, has little chance of fitting into the group as well as did the gene it displaced. T h e original group, of course, has already been selected by nature and all of the secondary modifying genes have also been selected. We do know from observation that the greater the effect of a single mutation, the less its chances are of being beneficial. On the other hand, many small mutations in many different directions might well produce some one new form which would mark a real advance, but the net effect of all mutations, both large and small, is deleterious. Mutation pressure by itself cannot cause evolution. In one respect, however, even destructive mutations may aid evolutionary progress. They act as a pruning force which clears away much deadwood but which, when checked by natural selection, does no real harm. When a useful organ is eliminated by a mutation, the mutant organism itself is eliminated and the mutation is discarded automatically. On the other hand, if an organ which has once been of great use to a species can no longer function in a new environment into which the species has migrated, natural selection cannot protect it and it is only a matter of time until mutation pressure, now unchecked, eliminates it. Thus, at long last, we have reached a point where we can explain the blind eyes of cave fish, and the degeneration and gradual disappearance of all useless vestiges. We no longer need any mystical factors such as the inherited effects of use and disuse to explain the disappearance of outgrown characteristics.

§4 About thirty years ago, an entirely new factor in evolution was discovered, a factor which Charles Darwin himself could never have imagined. Indeed, no one could have even sus-

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pected its existence prior to the discovery of Mendelian heredity, for it is a factor which depends for its existence on the machinery of inheritance. It has been given various names, such as the "sampling error," "scattering of variability," or, in recognition of the fundamental work of Sewall Wright, the "Sewall Wright effect." Interestingly enough, the early Mendelians missed it entirely and even the mathematicians who grasped the implications of Mendelism did not guess its existence. Thus, Karl Pearson (1904), in pointing out what he thought was the limitation of Mendelism, overlooked this factor which, incidentally, would have answered his objections. A statistician who signed his papers "Student" (W. S. Gösset, 1908) investigated the sampling error in some detail. When small samples were taken from a population, he found that their variabilities or, more properly, the average amount of their variabilities did not follow the normal frequency curve for the whole population. In Mendelian stocks, of course, the ratios we get are only approximations to the simple ratios we label "Mendelian"; and only when large numbers are counted are the results close to what is expected. For example, to explain and illustrate the famous three to one r a t i o , we conventionally use a family of four, three dominants and one recessive. Actually, a family of just four would be expected to show a three to one ratio less than half the time (42% of the time). Even when Mendel counted his 19,959 plants, his ratio was not exactly three to one. It was 74.9 per cent to 25.1 per cent. These chance deviations from the expected ratios have evolutionary importance because sometimes they achieve a finality, i.e., they eliminate one of the characters completely. This factor of evolution is inherent in all Mendelian stocks. All heterozygous populations (i.e., populations which contain

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one or more pairs of contrasting characters) segregate continually into Mendelian ratios because no heterozygous individual can breed true. (We need not consider here the behavior of balanced "lethals.") If, for any reason, one member of a pair of genes is lost, the other member, now homozygous, breeds true and the type is set. Thus, whenever the chance deviation from the normal is great enough to reduce the frequency of one member of a gene pair to zero, the other becomes fixed and the segregation stops. This need not happen for many generations but as long as the stock is heterozygous, there is a chance of its happening. It only needs to happen once for the stock to become homozygous. In a small population, this scattering of variability may even establish the gene which is the less fit of the two, purely by the chance elimination of the fitter gene. If the two genes occur in approximately even numbers in a large population, the elimination of either one by chance is extremely unlikely. In fact, in large breeding groups the chance factor may be safely ignored, but many species are so scattered that they are divided into many small breeding groups more or less isolated from each other. Our own ancestors were so divided during, perhaps, the greater part of the last million years. Such breeding groups tend always to differ from each other because a number of the genes which are fixed by chance in one group are eliminated by chance in another. If the groups are small enough, natural selection may have little effect on which characters happen to survive, except, of course, for those characters that are markedly beneficial or detrimental. This fact explains one of the minor puzzles of evolution—how small isolated races have come to be different from each other even though the difference may be completely useless. At last, the observations recorded by Crampton (1916, 1932) in his classical work on the evolution

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of snails can be explained on the basis of this scattering of variability. Unfortunately, it is not possible to indicate here the real elegance of the research that revealed the role of this purely chance segregation in evolution. The reader is referred to The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by R. A. Fisher (1930) and to the many fundamental papers of Sewall Wright (1931, 1940, 1948, 1949, etc.). Here, we can give only a few of the conclusions to show how effective this character is and how rapidly it works. If a neutral gene mutation occurs in a population whose numbers are stationary, the chances of its being lost are 36.79 per cent in every generation. T h e chances of its being passed on to a single individual in the next generation are the same, 36.79 per cent, of its being passed on to two individuals, 18.39 per cent; to three, 6.13 per cent; to four, 1.53 per cent; and so on. If the mutation is not lost in the first generation, of course, it is still exposed to the chance of being lost in the next and in all subsequent generations; but once it is lost, it is gone. It follows from the above that many mutations never become established. This is a hazard to mutation and reduces its effective rate, but it is not necessarily a hazard to the species. One other result of this chance segregation should be mentioned: its dependence upon the size of the population or breeding group. T o describe this dependence, we shall need the concept of the genetic population-size, or population number, N, which is equal numerically to that portion of a generation which at any one time furnishes the parents for the next. In a breeding group whose population number is Νj the proportion of genes which are fixed each generation is —ΐ—, which is also the number lost, - 4 - . Thus, it can easily 4N 4N be seen that this "Sewall Wright effect" is a major evolution-

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ary factor only in small populations, but the Pearson-HardyWeinberg Law holds for populations large enough for the scattering of variability to become negligible. The earliest accurate studies of animal and plant distribution showed that the types found on opposite sides of an isolating barrier differed. Indeed, it was this geographical variation in the isolated species on the Galapagos Islands which convinced Darwin of the fact that species evolved. He explained their evolution by natural selection after he had read Malthus, but there is a very ironic factor back of his explanation. Although, as we have noted, evolution could not have come about in the absence of natural selection, natural selection was perhaps not the major factor that caused the difference between sister species in the Galapagos. Natural selection can explain the persistence only of those differences between species that have survival value and that fit each species into its ecological niche. Trivial or useless differences are beyond its ability to explain, and many of the differences observed by Darwin were trivial. T h e scattering of variability, however, plus the ever-present mutation pressure explain all such differences adequately. Once a widespread species is cut up into small isolated populations, it splits up genetically because each isolate loses its variability through the chance elimination of Mendelian segregants. Which particular genes happen to be preserved and which are lost is purely fortuitous. For two separated groups to keep and to drop the same genes is certainly not to be expected. Thus, we see that merely isolating two segregating Mendelian populations is enough to insure their difference, and the ancient puzzle of the observed evolution of trivial differences between related species is now explained.

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§5 A geneticist reading this chapter would be impressed more by what is omitted than by what is included. Today, evolution has become very technical, too recondite for it to be presented clearly and adequately in non-technical language. Our present conclusions, of course, can be given so that any educated and intelligent reader can understand them, but conclusions by themselves should not be satisfying; and anyone who accepts them while remaining ignorant of the data on which they are based is really sacrificing a portion of his intellectual integrity. T h i s is not a happy condition, but there seems to be little that we can do about it. Apparently, one of the prices we pay for our increasing knowledge is our inability to communicate it both widely and adequately. If this knowledge is of such a nature that it should condition our basic philosophical outlook, our most fundamental thinking will have to be defective. At present, no practical remedy can be suggested, for the only remedy we know of—becoming technically competent in all important fields—takes more time, hard thinking, and hard work than we can afford. T h e best we can say for the presentation of evolution theory in this chaptcr is that the technical sources are cited and that anyone who wants to can find the evidence for the conclusions. W e may summarize our knowledge of evolution as follows: Evolution cannot take place in the absence of heritable changes. Many changes that reproduce themselves occur in the apparatus of heredity and hence they are heritable. W e call all such change, mutations, and thus we use the term in its broadest possible sense. Mutations are, in fact, the raw materials of evolution and, as we use the term, there are many different kinds of mutations. T h e simplest of these are

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point or gene mutations (mutation sensu strictu). T h e rates at which certain genes mutate in a particular way have been measured and we now speak of "mutation pressure." T h e r e is a subjective element, though, in these measurements. Mutations which cause large net effects are easier to recognize than those which cause tiny ones. East (1936) has cited evidence, however, to show that this latter type of mutation occurs much oftener than the former. This is important because the mutation rates of spectacular changes (Stadler, 1927) are too low for them to supply the variations selected by nature. Large mutations also are almost always detrimental. T h i s is as we should expect because all genes have to work together in the machinery of heredity. A large chance alteration of a part of a well-functioning machine could hardly ever be an improvement. T h e same also holds for most small mutations, but among the many small mutations are some which are beneficial. Recent work with more elegant methods has shown that these small beneficial mutations are more common than the earlier data indicated. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the net effect of all mutations—of mutation pressure—is detrimental. We may express this by the fourth law of thermodynamics: "If anything can go wrong, it will." Mutations alone could never cause evolution. Some good, however, can result from mutations that are detrimental in themselves. Such mutations prune from the species all characters and organs which have ceased to be useful, no matter what their past service may have been. W e can now state categorically that all characters not protected by natural selection degenerate in time. Hence the blind eyes of cave fish; hence the h u m a n lack of a tail; hence, in the future, any h u m a n characteristic "protected" by society from the action of natural selection. Mutation pressure can also explain the existence of polymorphism, or the exist-

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ence in the same species or race of two or more types of individuals, all of which are equally adapted to the conditions in which the species or race lives. If, for example, gene A mutates to A 1 , and A 1 mutates back to gene A , even though the two mutations occur usually at different rates, an equilibrium will be reached and the two types will coexist. As the types we have chosen for illustration are equally fit, natural selection cannot explain their evolution from a common prototype. T h e formation of new species generally involves changes in the material of heredity greater than simple gene mutation. W h o l e sections of chromosomes are frequently involved (Dobzhansky) and even whole sets of chromosomes (Blakeslee, Babcock, Stebbins, and others). T h e s e latter kinds of mutations cause more drastic changes and even make "catastrophic" evolution possible, but the mere changes in themselves are not productive of new species. T h e y still have to be fit, they still have to be selected by nature. T h e chance segregation of genes is also a factor in evolution. In small populations, certain characters will be fixed and others lost purely by the shuffling process of Mendelian heredity, regardless of minor differences in fitness. T h e discovery of this factor accounts for minor differences between isolated populations, particularly those differences too trivial to be explained by difference in fitness. Finally, back of all the heritable changes, which arise in all forms of life, stands natural selection. N o matter how great mutation pressure may be, or how small a population hence how great the scattering of variability, the changes produced by these factors must b e fit if they are to survive. T h e most common of all mutations are probably those that make genes lethal, yet, obviously, such genes can never predominate in a living species. Natural selection remains the

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court of last appeal and decides ultimately whether the new form shall be preserved or become extinct. Natural selection works, of course, in many subtle ways, not only on genes but also on combinations of genes. Fortunately, our knowledge of the machinery of heredity is now good enough to enable us to describe the working of natural selection in quantitative terms. We now recognize three major factors of evolution: (1) mutation pressure, (2) scattering of variability, and (3) natural selection. All the data we now have can be explained by the interaction of these three factors.

8. Evolution and the Future of Mankind §1 reached a point where we can p u t o u r own species in the general scheme of evolution and examine our present position and future prospects. T o do so, we shall have to place ourselves in the Cosmic time scale and in that part of the scale where life is found. Recent advances in geological dating have shown that living beings have been on earth at least two billion years and possibly m u c h longer, but our ancestors could have been called human for a mere million years—less than one-twentieth of one per cent of the time that our line of descent has been in existence. In this scale, civilization itself is just beginning, as it is barely six thousand years old. T h e implication of all this is clear; w e arc now living at the very dawn of recorded history—we ourselves are real dawn men. W e have the luck to exist in the brief period between the discovery of the fossil fuels and their exhaustion. Since the earth will probably support life for several billion years more, we can appreciate how near the beginning Ave are, and why we behave like primitives. Because we are primitives. It has been said that one trouble with the ancients was that they did not know that they were the ancients—they thought they were the moderns. T h e like can be said of us because few of us realize where w e really belong. T h o s e w h o write on social problems seem to b e unΕ H A V E NOW

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aware of the fact that they are writing about the problems of dawn men. Primitives we are, and our evolution as human beings barely begun. But if we succeed in avoiding a planet-wide catastrophe, we can not set a limit to our evolution—especially to the evolution of our intelligence. Nor can we set a limit to the future development of our arts and sciences. Mankind has hardly started. Men yet to be born will outnumber those who have been born by a factor of many thousands. Logically, perhaps, we need not concern ourselves with these as yet non-existing creatures, but actually most of us do. W e seem to be so constructed that we feel better if we can believe that even our remote descendants will live virtuous, happy, and effective lives in a world that is civilized and governed rationally. Some of us even try to live vicariously with these idealized descendants of ours; and many of our most restless and original thinkers have imagined Utopias where all human problems are solved and all frustrations are conquered. In fact, every potent ideology has a recipe or two for a better life, and groups as diverse as Jehovah's Witnesses and Marxian Communists have their plans and their directives for attaining a happier future. Our almost universal concern with the world that is to be is both human and understandable, and our desire to improve the world is reasonable. But there are some disturbing elements in our concern. Perhaps the most dangerous is the element of escapism which seems to infect all our designs for the future. Escapists, we know, rarely achieve their desires and, if they are numerous and strong enough to warp our collective behavior, they may also warp the future of our species. Our present behavior, we know, will affect our future, but there is nothing new or unusual in this. From the very begin-

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ning, every stage in evolution has conditioned all the following stages. Moreover, our knowledge of evolution has recently become an important factor in our evolution, and this gives our actions and decisions a greater significance. We may even be moved to attempt to direct our evolution deliberately, although the attempt need not be wise. Even our refusal to act will have its effects; and, if we lack the intellectual honesty to face reality, or if political considerations make us ignore unpleasant data, the evolutionary consequences may be lamentable. Obviously, our weaknesses are just as important as our strength in determining the future of our species, our ignorance is as powerful a factor as our knowledge. T h e only difference between them is that one may direct evolution in a direction we like, the other in a direction we may not like at all. In the field of evolution theory, the spreading of biological misinformation may be fatal to the well-being of our kind, and it is here that Marxian biology poses its greatest threat. It is here that we should evaluate the Marxian claims honestly and very accurately. But to do this we must know how evolution operates—especially how it operates on Homo sapiens. There has never been a closed season for those who speculate on the future of humanity. This is a field in which we can wander at will and in which we tolerate the most extravagant opinions. Anyone can guess anything, for there are no proven experts of the future. Nor can we ever expect to have enough evidence to enable us to make an accurate forecast as to what will ultimately come to pass. Today's science is inadequate, because all scientific prognostication must be based on an "if-then" proposition. If a given course of action is pursued, then the results may be foretold—often with great accuracy—but there is always an "if." In many cases, we know

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precisely what the consequences of our acts will be, but, being human, we never know just how wre shall act. Even the seventh son of a social scientist cannot say with any degree of certainty what the "if" will be when human behavior is involved. And we should remember this limitation whenever we try to foresee the future of our evolution. Purely as a matter of convenience, we shall examine the factors of our evolution in the inverse order of their importance. All of the factors, of course, are important, and they all interact. But variations in some will have greater effects than variations in others. By taking them in this reversed order, we can clear the ground for an inquiry into the workings of those factors that will determine our evolutionary fate. We must evaluate both the operation of these factors in the past and their operation at present, and, most important of all, we must determine just how they operate within the peculiar framework of human society. These factors are the ones described in the preceding chapter, i.e., (1) the scattering of variability, (2) mutation pressure, and (3) finally, natural selection.

§2 T h e scattering of variability, sometimes referred to as "the sampling error" or, more conveniently, the "Sewall Wright effect," can be disposed of very quickly. At present, it has practically no effect on the evolution of the great mass of human beings. 1 In the past, however, it played a major role, ι T h i s does not mean, however, that the Sewall Wright effect does not operate within h u m a n societies. Even today many fringe isolates and primitive peoples live in groups small e n o u g h for it to change their gene frequencies; for example, peoples living in a h u n t i n g economy, isolated A n d e a n and Amazon communities, our own Appalachian mountaineers, etc. T h e n , too, there are groups within the larger communities that are more or less isolated repro-

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reaching its greatest importance during the period when our ancestors wandered about in small breeding groups—before they collected into sizable tribes. As described in the preceding chapter, this factor owes its existence to the chance elimination of Mendelian genes from small populations. Two small, related, but separated populations become different through the fortuitous loss of different genes. This scattering of variability, operating in the distant past, has been responsible for much of our present racial diversity, particularly for the more trivial differences which occur in human stocks. We must not assume, however, that the purely chance segregation of Mendelian genes has no longer any evolutionary consequences. True, the scattering of variability is now unimportant, but our complex culture—our social heredity—has reintroduced another factor into our evolution, a factor which owes its existence to Mendelian segregation— to a mere chance combination of genes. Natural selection, as we have shown earlier (Chapter I), affects individual human beings within the environment of their social organization. Culture is a major factor in determining who is fit and who is unfit. Thus, anything which alters human society drastically also changes culture, hence the norm of selection. Thus, anything that changes the culture alters the type of human being selected. Human culture being variable, of course, is itself a subject for natural selection, and any particular culture may be either preserved or destroyed as circumstances dictate. ductively—religious sects such as the Dunkards, racial minorities, recent immigrants within small communities, and others. In an open society, however, there is enough vertical migration between socio-economic groups to insure genie migration. A very clear and interesting description of genie drift is given by Bently Glass, "Genie Changes in Human Population, Especially Those Due to Gene Flow and Genetic Drift," Advances in Genetics, 6:95-139 (1954).

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This aspect of evolution need not concern us here, for as long as a culture lasts, it will determine the type of man it selects, the type who is successful reproductively. If a chance Mendelian combination of genes alters society itself, it may change the relative fitness of the various types within the society, hence it may alter the frequency of the genes in the population. In other words, such chance Mendelian combinations become factors in human evolution. But first we must show how a chance genie combination can alter society. Present human populations are extremely heterozygous. In fact, great as human diversity is now, it is as nothing compared with the potentialities of human diversity because only a minute fraction of the possible genie combinations can ever be realized. Large heterozygous populations, breeding at random (as far as the individual genes are concerned), always produce a number of extreme Mendelian segregants. This number may be minute when compared with the millions of individuals within the whole population, but, over the years, such segregants will be numerous. They will also deviate from the norm of the population in all recognizable ways. Many segregants will not meet with conditions suitable for the development of their peculiar talents and they, of course, will remain mute and inglorious—even guiltless. Some few, however, will fall into a favorable milieu and will become major historical characters, great heroes or great villains. Some will even affect the course of history, of culture, of society itself. These segregants actually become factors in evolution. T h e acknowledgment of the role of the extreme Mendelian segregant might seem superficially to be an endorsement of " T h e Great Man Theory" of history. Actually it is not. T h e Great Man theory of history can be shown to be as inadequate as all other monophyletic theories. T h e extreme Mendelian

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segregant is a factor, however, and an important one, but it is only one among many. Our only concern here is to examine the manner in which such Great Men may alter the gene frequencies in large populations. A few examples may make the process clearer. T h e inventor of the bow and arrow undoubtedly gave his group or tribe an enormous advantage in the "struggle for existence." It increased greatly the efficiency of the hunters and thus it increased the food supply. This led to an increased population. As a military weapon, the bow and arrow gave the people who possessed it the ability to expand at the expense of their competitors. Whether the bow was invented once or many times makes no real difference. In either case, during the period between its invention and spread, it meant a differential survival value between those tribes who had it and those who did not. T h e number of people in some tribes would increase but in others they would decrease and this could produce changes in gene frequencies over large areas. Such examples as the invention of the bow could be cited indefinitely. T h e great technical advances made in Europe during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are cases in point. They increased greatly the power of the Europeans both to expand into other continents and to grow more food in Europe itself. They thus increased the number of people of the European stock and, in so doing, altered the genie endowment of the human race. All extreme human segregants, of course, are not beneficial to the society that produces them. T h e particular combination of genes which grew up to be known as Adolf Hitler, appearing just when it did, and under the prevailing circumstances, had an evolutionary significance which did not help its tribe at all. It probably altered permanently the ratio of Teuton to Slav. Likewise, the little group of men who seized

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control of Russia has also changed the populations, hence the genie frequencies in many stocks over a large portion of the globe. T h e store of genes of the Baltic nations may well have been depleted in part through the extermination of their leaders and their professional and educated classes. (The extermination of local leaders is, of course, a recognized technique of establishing a foreign hegemony.) Many other effects of communism upon biological evolution can be cited, such as those produced by forced migration and resettlement, and by liquidating whole social classes, e.g., the differential butchery of the Chinese by those now in power may well have altered the genie endowment of the Chinese race. Another form of totalitarianism also had its evolutionary effects in the Hitlerian concentration camps, camps that lowered the genie endowment of the human race. T h e role of the extreme Mendelian segregant in evolution, however, should not be overemphasized. It is only one factor in a complex equation and certainly not the most important. It is, however, an erratic variable, and the complexity of its functioning is so great that its effects can never be calculated with any surety. We can never tell in advance when it might initiate a major change in human affairs and consequently in the genie reservoir of the surviving population. At any time in the future, some new religion may appear, some holy war be fought, or some new fanaticism or ideology break loose and destroy a portion of mankind. Some few of the future Pied Pipers will certainly secure enough followers to become world-wide nuisances, and some may even affect the future of our species. Do what we will, this erratic factor in evolution will always be with us and will always defy our best prognostications.

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§3 Mutation pressure is now a much more important factor in our evolution than the scattering of variability. Many different kinds of mutations occur, and, of course, they affect our species in many different ways. Most of the important mutations—all drastic ones—have such an effect upon fitness and even upon viability that they can be evaluated only as a part of an interacting whole—only in the light of their acceptability to nature. A f e w relatively unimportant mutations,

however,

are

neutral

and

do

not

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survival

value in any way. These, of course, can be treated separately. But the overall problem of the effects of mutation pressure on our evolution should be examined merely as a component of a complex biological system. Mutation pressure itself may be independent of the other factors of evolution, but its results are not. W e are thus forced, whenever we discuss the role of mutation pressure, to do so within the framework of the mutations which nature preserves or destroys. T h e most destructive of all mutations are the dominant lethals. A n y animal or plant which experiences such a mutation dies and ceases to be a factor in evolution. Dominant lethals cause no racial degeneration—no weakening of the stock—in fact, they cannot affect our future in any way. Most dominant lethal mutants are born dead, if they are born at all. A l l that mutations of this type accomplish is to cause a few miscarriages and stillbirths, distressing instances in themselves, but unimportant f r o m the standpoint of the species. Recessive lethal mutations do not discard themselves so promptly. T h e y may pass through many generations and can be eliminated by nature only when they are homozygous— only when two of a kind occur together. Every individual who is homozygous for the lethal mutation dies and, in dying,

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eliminates a pair of the mutated genes from the stock. In this way, nature automatically checks the accumulation of recessive lethals. An equilibrium will be established sooner or later—just where depending upon the mutation pressure. T o illustrate: suppose that a particular recessive lethal mutation occurs in one individual in every fifty thousand. T h e lethal will then accumulate until about one individual in every one hundred and fifty-eight carries it. At this frequency, in one marriage in twenty-five thousand (1582 = 24,964) both husband and wife will have the defective gene. One-fourth of their children will be homozygous for the lethal and thus one child in every hundred thousand (one fourth of the children of one twenty-five thousandths of the marriages) will die because of it. But even this small death rate will balance the mutation pressure and the mutant gene will not accumulate further. Lethal mutations occur at many different loci in our chromosomes, however, and we carry a load of them in our germ plasm. But they do little harm. They increase the death rate, but they do not affect our future evolution. A few other types of degenerative mutations have the net effect of being lethals and thus they become as impotent as lethals in altering our future evolution. Thus, all mutations which cause sterility drop out of the stream of germ plasm, as do all mutations which are so disfiguring or crippling that the mutants are unable to secure the partners necessary for their reproduction. At most, these mutations cause some personal tragedies—some individual suffering—but no evolutionary degeneration. Even if there should be an enormous increase of such mutations due to stray radiations in some future atomic war, the net result should be the same—more personal tragedies, some not apparent for generations. But as long as defective mutants do not breed, they cannot cause the

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race to suffer an evolutionary decline. It is a fortunate paradox that the more drastic degenerative mutations cannot cause evolutionary degeneration. Other kinds of degenerative mutation, however, mutations from which we cannot be protected by natural selection, may accumulate in our stock and may cause real biological degeneration. These are the mutations which we protect ourselves from by our human ingenuity and which consequently do not decrease our chances for survival in human society. Our species has experienced these mutations many times in the past, and their effects are still with us. They have already altered the course of our evolution and we are as we are now because of them. Moreover, we have such striking examples of the effects of such mutations that it has required a certain blindness on our part for us to miss their evolutionary significance. Again, some illustrations may not be amiss, because the measurable effects of such mutations on our past evolution furnish the best guide to their role in the future. In the distant past, long before our ancestors became human, they left their terrestrial habitat for life in the trees. Before this migration, they were small mammals and had, of course, the usual mammalian equipment. Seemingly, they were in no way remarkable, either for their endowments or their deficiencies. Like other mammals they had rather poor eyes, but excellent olfactory organs, because the sense of smell is necessary for all animals who live on the ground. Herbivorous animals must be able to sense the approach of carnivores, and the carnivores themselves must be able to trail their prey. Once in the trees, however, our ancestors found that their survival did not depend upon their ability to smell their enemies because they were safely beyond the reach of most predators. In time, their sense of smell became practically useless—even for social purposes—because the most

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delicate olfactory organ would be a very clumsy instrument for trailing a fellow monkey through the treetops of a jungle. In an arboreal environment, natural selection could not protect the sense of smell, and mutation pressure caused it to deteriorate. N o w we are all smell-blind, but most of us have not yet realized it. It is not easy for those w h o have a sensual defect to recognize the deficiency. N o r can such defects be described adequately to those w h o suffer from them. It is impossible, for example, to describe the color " r e d " to a person w h o cannot see "red." Sensual deficiencies are not easy to identify and may even escape recognition for ages. T h u s , color blindness was not discovered until late in the eighteenth century, in spite of the fact that, from time immemorial, about three per cent of the men could not distinguish red from green. W e ourselves are all color blind in part of the spectrum, but few of us k n o w it. W e see some red in the shortest visible wave lengths of light. T h e r e are three different combinations of colors w h i c h we can not tell apart. W e see all three of them as white. So it is not remarkable that, as so few realize that we are all color blind in part, almost no one realizes that he is smell-blind. For certain odors, of course, our noses are adequate, for the odors of such chemicals as the lower fatty acids, carbon disulphide, mercaptan, etc. For a more delicate analysis, though, our olfactory sense simply does not work. Practically no man can trail a rabbit across a field, using his sense of smell alone, and very few people can recognize their friends and acquaintances by their individual and characteristic odors—something any dog w o u l d d o routinely. O u r sense of smell is not only defective—what little there is left of it has become perverted. We actively dislike what we can smell of our own species, a perversion in which we are probably unique. W e have no evidence of any other species

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considering its own odor bad. Dogs certainly seem to like the smell of other dogs. Our olfactory perversion, moreover, is specific and precise, for we do not dislike the odor of all animals. We do not object to the smell of birds, of cows, or of cats. What we really object to is the body odors of other human beings and of animals who smell like human beings, e.g., goats, etc. (Skunks are an exception, and their odor also is unpleasant even if it is not human.) We dislike our own odor routinely, but we actively hate the odors of other human races. For example, in the Far East, the European is described accurately if not politely as "the pink barbarian who smells like cheese." This dislike we have of the human body odor is not just a pose, a stance recently induced by the advertisers of deodorants. It is, at least, as old as history. As soon as perfumery was devised, it was used to disguise our odor, and this was its major function until soap was invented. It is true, of course, that the "odor of sanctity"—the odor of unwashed priests and anchorites who were mortifying their flesh—may have been an indication of holiness, but it was also a sign of asceticism. We really do dislike the smell of our kind, but other animals—those who have not suffered our degenerative mutation—do not share our perversion. Some even seem to like the odor of human beings. Any man will smell better to his dog than he will to his wife, and there is no doubt at all as to which of the two, dog or wife, has the superior olfactory organ. T o repeat, when our ancestors went up to live in the trees, they acquired a habitat in which natural selection could not protect their sense of smell. Consequently, mutation pressure was unchecked and, following its usual course, it caused the

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sense to deteriorate to its present ineffective state. T h e accompanying perversion was probably only coincidental. §4 When our ancestors took to the trees, they possessed the usual mammalian equipment including, of course, a tail. Seemingly the tail was in no way remarkable. In the mammals, as in the higher reptiles, the tail had lost its original function as an organ of locomotion and had started either to play a number of new but minor roles, such as keeping off the flies or of preserving an assailed virginity, or it might even play no role at all. Anatomically, it was merely an anticlimax. W h e n the tail served no function, its fate was certain—it would be eliminated by mutation pressure. In fact, there are many tailless mammals. T h e tails of the early primates, however, were in a very anomolous stage of development. In some genera, obviously, they performed a useful service—a service so important that they were protected by natural selection. In a few species, moreover, the tails evolved so successfully that they were able to assume a new and most important function. T h e y became highly effective prehensile organs, useful in climbing, in grasping, and in preventing accidental falls. Among our distant cousins, the South American monkeys, some species have developed tails so useful that they are now practically fifth hands. T h e tails of our direct primate ancestors, however, never developed to a point where they were valuable enough to be protected by nature. T h e inevitable happened: they went the way of all useless organs, the way of the blind eyes of the cave fish. Many of the Old World primates became tailless. All our nearer relatives, the anthropoid apes, lack tails, and the only mementoes we have of our own lost organ are the bones

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in our coccyx. No matter how useful tails might have become in some subsequent stage of evolution, they can never be recovered. Our ancestors lost them, and nature plays for keeps. Few of us have ever stopped to consider what a degenerative change this loss of an appendage was or how useful a well-developed prehensile tail would be in our mechanical and gadget-filled age. W e are human enough, of course, to make a virtue of our deficiency and have actually argued ourselves into being proud of our loss because our lack of a tail can be taken as an indication of evolutionary progress. This pride, of course, has no logical basis. T h e other anthropoids are as tailless as we are, so our being deprived of a potentially useful organ should have no real snob value. But the human snob is not always logical. If he cannot mend a defect, he can at least pretend that it is really an advantage and ascribe all sorts of disreputable vices to those who do not share his shortcomings—the grapes obviously are sour. Human snobs have been able to set the fashion, however, and today the only humanoids to whom we ascribe tails are the evil spirits of tradition, the devils. It is very easy to show that a prehensile tail would be so useful in our present culture, that, if it were the common possession of all, we would look upon anyone who had lost his tail as a cripple. With very little training, a good prehensile tail should become skilled at grasping, carrying, or manipulating almost anything. Our efficiency as a tool-using animal should be greatly enhanced, as would be our ability to control our many machines. Automobiles would be designed differently, of course, and would be built so that the driver could use all five appendages instead of the mere four which we are now accustomed to use when driving. One-arm driving might even have been relatively safe. T h e

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busy housewife also could find innumerable uses for a prehensile tail, e.g., she could rock a cradle with it while she was washing dishes or ironing. She could even use it to amuse a restless infant without taking her mind off higher things and while she was busy in some useful activity such as looking at television and shelling peas. T h e uses of a prehensile tail are really innumerable. We all would find it useful for carrying umbrellas when it rained, and great scholars, strolling across some university or college campus, could carry their briefcases with it and thus keep both hands free for gesticulating. If the members of a football team were equipped with prehensile tails, dozens of new regulations could be put in the rule book and twice as many officials could be employed in looking for infractions. Other and less material employment could also be found for so useful an organ. Dogs and cats use their tails to express their deepest feelings,2 and certainly we should not do less. Just think what our tails might have added to the art of pantomime or to the ballet and how expressive they could be in the drama! Hollywood actresses could keep their faces immobile, preserve their dead-pan beauty, and still act acceptably! No matter what our customary views may have been concerning our vanished appendage, we cannot logically look upon the failure of our immediate ancestors to develop a workable prehensile tail and the degeneration, and disappearance of the second-class one they did have, as other than a tragic loss. §5 T h e third and last instance we shall cite of the degenerative effects of an unchecked mutation pressure is our loss of 2 Charles Darwin, The Expression (London, 1872).

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the natural and almost universal mammalian clothing, the covering of hair. For all practical purposes, we have become bald all over, except for some rather unsightly splotches. This loss of our natural clothing, we share with none of our near relatives, although our fellow primates have shared in the other deprivations we have described. True, all human races are not equally degenerate, all are not equally depilated; the Negroes and the Mongolians have descended further along this path than have the Caucasians or the Australians. But all races have lost so much of their hair that they are unable to survive cold weather without artificial clothing. T h e mutations which made us naked, thus, were drastically degenerate and might even have been lethal had our ancestors been living in cold countries. In such regions, of course, the mutation could never have become established— the bald mutants would have frozen during their first winter —and the race itself would have kept its natural clothes. Our species could have lost its hairy covering only in the moist tropics. T h e bald mutants would have been discarded by nature in the hot deserts or during the chilly seasons in the temperate zones. Indeed, once the depilatory mutation became established, it would have limited our habitat permanently to a small and most unfavorable fraction of the earth's surface, except for the fact that its ill effects had been checked by another evolutionary factor, one which was becoming more and more important in our development. This factor was our own growing ingenuity. By their cleverness, our ancestors were able to compensate for their physical deficiency; they invented artificial clothing. Later, when they had evolved to a point where they could kill the larger fur-bearing animals, they learned to make such efficient clothes that they could survive in the most frigid regions and could range as far north as any of the mammals. Indeed, by

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varying their types of clothes, they could increase their range until they could wander in more or less comfort over the entire land surface of the globe. Thus, in one case at least, the degeneration, produced by an unchecked mutation pressure, resulted in a clear advantage. There is no doubt that the overall effect of our body baldness has been beneficial. De-lousing became easier, and drying after a bath became no real problem. As time passed, the quality of our makeshift covering improved, and our artificial clothes ultimately became greatly superior to those given us originally by nature. True, the fur coats we had grown ourselves wore well and were self-repairing, but the fur was rather coarse and of an inferior quality, in spite of the poet 3 —the minks do a much better job. Even the most primitive skin clothes, however, made by the earliest human invaders of the Arctic, acquired an unprecedented efficiency by merely being turned inside out—with the hairy side in— an improvement apparently which nature could not equal. Artificial clothes thus represent a real human triumph, as great a triumph as artificial houses or artificial shoes. Thus, at times, our "natural" deficiencies may be corrected by art, but the balance is delicate and at best there is always the chance that the correction will be inadequate or clumsy. One final consequence of the loss of our natural clothingits cultural reverberations. Like our other mutational losses, it has had psychological sequelae. The deterioration of our sense of smell was accompanied by a perversion—by our disliking the odor of our own species. Our loss of a tail resulted in the deficiency becoming a matter of pride—as a sign of our 3 I was thewed like an Auroch bull, And tusked like the great Cave Bear; And you, my sweet, from head to feet, Were gowned in your glorious hair. Langdon Smith

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evolutionary progress. Likewise, the forced substitution of artificial for naturally grown clothes has been accompanied by a weird distortion of values—by the truly remarkable notion that our own bodies are indecent and that they should be hidden from the view of our fellows. We are so accustomed to this fantastic idea that we miss its real implication. It is the consequence of a colossal self-disesteem, a self-disesteem unique in the organic world. We find it nowhere else. We have no evidence that even the hairless elephant looks upon the bodies of other elephants as being so indecent that they should be covered up. Nor do we ourselves look upon the elephant as indecent—nor upon horses, squirrels, elks, or lions. It is true that we consider the apes to be not quite respectable anatomically, but this is a derivative notion, due to the fact that we recognize their resemblance to ourselves. Only we ourselves have truly obscene bodies; only mankind can be guilty of indecent exposure. In pictures and statuary, of course, we can tolerate the almostnude, but the complete nude must be viewed from certain angles only. T h e living nude still violates our taboos. We even have cultists who can get a pleasant sense of great and improper daring merely by taking off their clothes and acting nonchalantly. T o summarize the net effects of these three degenerative mutations which have become normal for our species: whatever self-respect and self-esteem we may have is based on something other than the odor of our species or the sight of our undraped bodies. It may be fortunate, after all, that we have been able to find a certain snob value in our loss of a tail.

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§6 Our evolution, of course, is not just a thing of the past. It is taking place today faster than ever before. Mutations are occurring constantly and the net effect of mutation pressure is always to destroy. Any characteristic or any organ which is not necessary for our survival will be eliminated sooner or later. Some of our useless anatomical relics are even now diminishing and, in time, will vanish. Our vermiform appendix is doomed, although it may linger on for a while. Likewise, the muscles which Aviggle our ears are losing their ability to function, and today only a few can use them—in time no human being will retain the art. Other trivial and useless characteristics will also be lost and no harm will ensue. Our real concern is with more important changes because, if we are ingenious enough to compensate for a biological loss, we can be sure that the compensation will be made, the loss will occur, and the defect will become a part of our inheritance. Thus far, there have been no exceptions to this rule—the really drastic degenerative mutations are eliminated by nature, the less degenerative ones are neutralized; hence, they are preserved. T o extrapolate the effects of mutation pressure is not difficult. We know that certain of our talents will never be lost. Others, however, have already begun to leave us. Blindness would be the greatest of all debilities, but we need not fear it. Our ability to see will be protected by nature if we give her a little help. T h e only co-operation required is that we keep those who suffer from hereditary blindness from having children. Accidental blindness is quite different, as it is not a factor in evolution. Nature, however, can no longer protect us from certain lesser defects of vision. Thus, the incidence of color blindness (now 3 per

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cent in males, .1 per cent in females) will increase slowly because there is no insuperable hardship in the inability to distinguish red from green, and color blind people reproduce. All other eye defects which can be corrected with glasses will also become prevalent, as they will not be selected against by nature. 4 Already a very large proportion of elderly people wear glasses, and younger people whose eyes are "corrected" by opticians survive nicely and have children. Before too many generations have passed, children starting to kindergarten will wear glasses as routinely as they wear clothes. In the distant future, perhaps, a child who does not wear glasses will be considered as atavistic as one who is covered with hair. We may also expect major changes to occur in our jaws and teeth, for these organs have been evolving with great rapidity ever since our species became human. Some of us have already lost our wisdom teeth. Indeed, our teeth have already degenerated to the point where we have had to create a special and highly trained profession to keep them in repair, or to replace them with skillful and well-camouflaged substitutes when they are beyond hope. Some of our dental defects are accidental, of course, and due to such purely environmental circumstances as a lack of fluorine in the drinking water or not enough vitamins in the diet. But over and beyond such incidental flaws, serious hereditary defects occur, defects, however, which are corrected by our skilled and effective dentists. T h e evolutionary results of this dental ingenuity are obvious—human beings with bad teeth are no longer unfit. In ages to come, our descendants will wear artificial teeth as routinely as they wear artificial clothes and * Men will make passes At girls who wear glasses. Apologies to D. P.

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artificial shoes. Toothache will vanish and become only a myth of the bad old past. T h e r e is no need to illustrate further this aspect of evolution. T h e general principles are clear—as soon as we find a suitable substitute for a "natural" character, "natur a l " degeneration is no longer checked, and the character deteriorates. Much of value may be lost in the process, but all is not loss. Some of our substitutes are obvious improvements over the originals. Others are not. In no way, however, can we reverse the general evolutionary trend. As a species, we are already committed and we have sent in our last reserves. With certain characters, though, the outcome is still in doubt; some of our present equipment may be either preserved or lost. If nature protects it, it will persist; if we invent substitutes, it will vanish in time. Feminine frigidity may serve as an example of a degenerative mutation which has an uncertain future. If the only women who ever reproduce are those who have a touch of nymphomania, and if they reproduce simply because they like sex, frigidity in women would be as rare (or as nonexistent) as it is in dogs, cats, squirrels, or birds. On the other hand, if women marry f o r security or social status or for any reason other than pure sexual desire, and if they reproduce as a result of marriage, the proportion of frigid women will increase. 6 ß It is amusing to find frigidity blamed on such things as puritanism, sense of guilt, father or mother complex, etc. We can see how silly it would he to assume that the sexual drive of any unmutated or "wild type" mammal could be inhibited by such trivia. Such environmental accidents could affect only border-line cases—those who were already rather torpid. Incidents in childhood or adolescence, however, can be made into very convenient scapegoats and are seemingly far less damaging to the amour propre than would be an admission of a genetic deficiency. They are even used to excuse amour impropre.

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§7 Thus far, the emphasis has been on mutation pressure although, of course, mutation can never be considered entirely apart from natural selection. Nor can natural selection be evaluated by itself, for nature must have mutations to select. Mutations are never lacking, of course, in a species as heterozygous and as variable as H. sapiens. Indeed, our stock has been accumulating a store of them for ages—mutations of all types—drastic ones whose effects cannot be missed, as well as minor ones, whose effects are too small to be recognized individually, but which, cumulatively, are of major importance. All human populations are variable genetically and are subjected continually to selection. The true importance of human genetics is slowly being appreciated.® Specialized courses in the subject are now included in some of our better medical schools. Although such courses emphasized the applied side of the science, they also acquaint the younger physicians with some genetic theory, because the hereditary factors in the degenerative diseases are becoming more and more difficult to overlook. In fact, the effects of selection upon the incidence of such diseases is now known and can be expressed in quantitative terms. The textbooks on human genetics list most of our hereditary defects. These defects are numerous, crippling, sometimes painful, and in large part unnecessary. Those caused by dominant genes could be wiped out in a single generation (except for new mutations) by the humane expedient of preventing the afflicted from reproducing. Those due to recessives would have to be eliminated more slowly, but the β T h e Society of Human Genetics was organized in 1948. It publishes a periodical, Human Genetics.

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rate of their elimination is known. If the fraction of our population which suffers from the defect in question is n - 1 or _L and none of the defectives breeds, the number appearn ing in the next generation will be ^ — W e maY illustrate the efficiency of this type of selection on such an affliction as feeblemindedness. If just over 2 per cent of our population are feebleminded (this figure is chosen arbitrarily so that \/n can equal a whole number, i.e., y n = 7), say one-forty-ninth, and none of the feebleminded breeds, the proportion in the next generation would be one sixty-fourth, in the second generation it would be one eighty-first and in the third, one one-hundredth. Thus it would take three generations of selection to reduce the incidence from 2 per cent to 1 per cent, but it would require an additional ten generations to reduce it to one-fourth of 1 per cent. Some years ago, this aspect of human genetics was generally referred to as "negative eugenics." 7 Negative eugenics, and indeed all kinds of eugenics, are anathema to Marxians of all types. In fact, eugenics impinges upon so many religious, political, and economic convictions f T h e percentage of the feebleminded chosen for the purpose of illustration is arbitrarily taken at a low value so that the high grade morons and borderline cases could be omitted. This enables us to avoid the complication (1) of modifying genes, which could obscure the functioning of the primary gene, (2) of the existence of very stupid "normals" who are stupid because of what are called polygenes, and (3) of mental defectives due to accidents in development (either pre- or post-natal). Many individuals who are "normal" genotypically are indistinguishable phenotypically from the genetic feebleminded. T h e formula for the elimination of feeblemindedness due to many genes, each one of which could cause the defect, would be

ρ

ρ

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number of defective genes involved and — is the fraction of the population suffering from the deficiency when the elimination started, and a the number of generations the selection is continued.

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that a great many individuals are unable to evaluate the subject honestly. Yet the questions involved are essentially simple. T h e program of negative eugenics is sound and based on valid research. Our knowledge of the machinery of heredity is now sufficient to enable us to foretell the outcome of the program and the outcome, we know, would be beneficial. The biological benefits, however, would not be unlimited. "Negative eugenics" is good as far as it goes, but it is really not of major evolutionary importance. T h e future of the human race does not depend upon whether two per cent or only one-fourth of one per cent of the population are feebleminded. The future will probably not be influenced greatly even by the sum total of those who suffer from major hereditary defects. Negative eugenics, however, should not be scorned merely because its benefits are social rather than biological. If the eugenics program is followed, the number of defectives will be decreased, fewer institutions would be needed for their care, and those institutions now in use would be less crowded. Uninstitutionalized defectives, those who now wander at large, would also be fewer and could be given better care with the present overall expenditure of energy, and the burden on society would be gTeatly lessened. Thus, the prescriptions of negative eugenics, if followed, should result in some real social gain. Opposition to all eugenics seems rather silly. The program prescribed is simple; all that is needed is for recognizable genetic defectives not to reproduce. §8 Thus far, we have not discussed the really important aspects of human evolution. T h e details we have been considering are mostly superficial. They are the aspects of

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evolution which are easy to evaluate a n d striking enough to attract attention. Mutational changes, which are degenerative b u t not too drastic for us to ameliorate or whose evil effects not too fundamental for us to evade, will definitely alter our species, b u t such mutations need not reach our basic h u m a n core. If, for example, o u r teeth are lost, we may survive nicely and even remain h u m a n . O u r descendants will probably not care whether they chew their food with teeth they grow or with teeth they buy. If they have to wear spectacles, they will wear them, and that is that. Even if they have to care for and support a fringe of morons and other defectives, they will probably be able to afford the burden. T h e main line of evolution need not be warped. W h a t is essential to our f u t u r e well-being is the biological e q u i p m e n t of those who are responsible for the general welfare, the genetic endowment of those who create, conserve, and improve h u m a n culture. If their brains are adequate, the f u t u r e may be secure; if they are inadequate, a chaotic collapse of civilization is inevitable. It is worth remembering that a n u m b e r of highly civilized fractions of the h u m a n race have already experienced these cultural collapses. T h e real question before us—the question of the ages—is: what is the f u t u r e of the h u m a n brain? For the last million years, our species has been depending more and more on its intellect—on its u n i q u e cleverness— for protection from "nature in the raw." It has learned a technique for isolating those ecological factors which it is not fit to cope with directly. If the brains at o u r disposal deteriorate, we can expect a cultural collapse and the later such an event occurs, the worse will be o u r fate. If, for example, h u m a n culture disintegrates and men lose the art of making adequate eyeglasses at a time when all have to wear glasses, the consequences will be most unpleasant. On

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the other hand, if human brains improve, no limits can be set to future progress. T h i s progress, be it remembered, takes place and should be measured within the cosmic time scale. T h i s scale will have more meaning if we condense it to understandable terms. L e t us say that life began on earth six years ago. O u r ancestors would then have been human for about one day and civilized for about four seconds. I n another second, the fossil fuels will be exhausted. O n this same scale, however, the earth should support life for another fifty years. Humanity has barely started. T h e course of our evolution would be simpler and much easier to chart if we ourselves did not alter our surroundings and, in doing so change the norms of natural selection. Nature, of course, always selects, even if she can not reach us directly but only at second hand—only by way of our culture. And nature is under no obligation either to preserve or destroy our culture, either to advance or retard civilization. Nature selects only the fit, and the fit are always those who reproduce their type more effectively under the existing conditions than their rivals reproduce theirs. T h e fit human beings are the ones who swamp and replace their competitors within the existing culture; and if these fit are unable to preserve the culture, the culture itself becomes unfit and perishes. If our species is to be successful, we must be able both to thrive as individuals in the culture that we have created and to preserve, through our j o i n t activities, the culture on which we are dependent. It is a matter of complete indifference to nature whether those who are successful biologically within a culture are able to preserve and advance their cultural values or whether they are too ineffective to keep their culture from disintegrating. Culture is now the major factor which deter-

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mines fitness, but culture itself always passes into the custody of those it selects. This constitutes, of course, a feedback system. Moreover, it is a positive feedback and subject to the exaggerated instability of all such mechanisms. It has a real built-in disequilibrium and may boost our species in any direction—one we may like or one we may dislike. Our descendants will not have a static future. T h e role of this feedback system in evolution has never been appraised adequately. Its workings were described briefly in depicting our evolutionary background (Chapter I, §3). There, the feedback was used to account for the unprecedented speed with which we left our simian relatives behind—to explain how so short a time was needed to separate the human intellect from that of all other mammals. Without this feedback system, the present status of human beings would be very different. T h e system, however, does not always make for "progress," for progress occurs only at times, only as an accidental accompaniment of the inherent instability of the feedback. We have no way of knowing how many human cultures, races, or even species have evolved themselves out of existence. We happen to be decended from the fortunate ones who did not, from the ones whose instability carried them forward. History has recorded many instances of civilizations arising, flourishing for a while, deteriorating, and finally falling to pieces—a familiar and depressingly repetitive pattern. T o establish a new precedent, a civilization will have to produce a citizenry who are able to preserve the culture they inherit, add to it, and keep it functioning. T h e jungles and the deserts have already covered some of the earlier abortive attempts. Civilization itself may possibly be a biological hurdle we have not yet learned to surmount.

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§9

The future of the human race will be decided by what natural selection does to civilized man. T h e other factors of evolution will also modify the end result, but natural selection is the court of last appeal and will render a final decision on the all-important alternatives which man faces. Moreover, natural selection will operate on the human species at two different levels—on individuals within the framework of their cultures and on the cultures themselves. Here, we will be concerned primarily with the effects of natural selection on individuals, while our concern with culture will be only secondary—only as its character may be altered by changes in the genetic endowments of the individuals who are charged with preserving it. The effects of selection upon genetically variable populations are not difficult to measure, although the measurements themselves are somewhat technical. 8 T h e human species, of course, is extremely variable. Indeed, its variability may well be its most valuable asset. While we cannot say that nature has an unlimited range to select from in man, she has at least enough to fashion a major evolutionary advance. T h e range in human ability is already so great that, if either extreme were to become the future norm, the change would rank as a major evolutionary step. Certainly, no matter what direction evolution may travel, the man of the not-too-distant future is already in existence. All that is needed for him to take over the earth is for his tribe to increase—for him to out-reproduce his competitors. All human characteristics will of course change with time, but all changes are not of equal importance. Many, perhaps 8 Kenneth Mather, " T h e Genetical Structure of Populations," Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology, No. VII, "Evolution," (1953) pp. 66-95.

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most, will not affect us seriously, but change in intelligence may well become a matter of life and death. T h e future evolution of human intelligence will finally answer the question as to whether any human race can remain civilized indefinitely and still maintain its biological health—whether it can keep its ability to advance civilization. W e have only to examine the diverse regions of the earth today to learn what the fate of all mankind may be tomorrow. T h e r e is no lack of data for forecasting the future of human intelligence. Indeed, the raw facts are voluminous— almost overwhelming. They are remarkably consistent and, in spite of their impingement upon the more popular political convictions, undisputed. T h e i r interpretation, however, is a very different matter, for here there is little agreement. Emotional factors are rampant and the resulting over-simplifications are many and contradictory. T h i s divergency of opinion is perhaps fortunate, for any general agreement on any partisan or intellectually dishonest interpretation of the facts might have most serious consequences. Perhaps the problem can be presented best by giving the facts first and organizing them on the basis of their obvious and surface relationships. This presentation will be followed by a critical evaluation and rigid logical analysis of the facts as given. T h e immediate data are striking, not to say alarming. T h e r e is a negative correlation between the reproductive rate and intelligence—the stupid are breeding relatively rapidly, the more intelligent too slowly even to replace themselves. It is just as if some culling mechanism were hard at work in society, picking the brainy minority out of the population and sterilizing them. T h i s procedure would be expected to so alter the gene frequency of our species that first-class minds would become progressively rarer until

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finally they vanished. T h e upshot of such a process can easily be foreseen. T h e average intelligence of the human race would decline, effective leadership would disappear, and the more complex cultures would collapse. Only very primitive social organizations could persist, and the whole process of human evolution would be set back to some point which we had passed long ago in our prehistory. T h e evidence of the unintelligent swamping the intelligent is derived from many independent sources, all of which tell the same story. First, those who are educated do not reproduce as fast as those who are not—the greater the education, the fewer the children. College graduates have fewer children than do those who have graduated only from high schools, and these in turn have fewer children than those who stopped their studies at the grammar school level. If the educated as a whole have more intelligence than the uneducated, this represents a net loss in the quality of our intellectual equipment. At the higher levels, the educated classes are not even reproducing themselves. Not so long ago, the graduates of Harvard averaged a half a son apiece, while the graduates of Vassar averaged a fifth of a daughter. Before we proceed further, it would be well to examine the overall relation between education and birth rate, and between education and intelligence. Two recent works contain some very pertinent data taken from the 1940 census. " T h e Score of the Colleges" (Journal of Heredity, 43:133140 [1952]) contains tables which show that the male graduates have, on an average, 1.77 children. T h e graduates of 182 colleges out of a total of 220 listed are not replacing themselves, as contrasted with the graduates of 38 colleges who are. Female college graduates do even worse. Their families average 1.28 children. Graduates from only 6 col-

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leges are replacing themselves, compared with the graduates of 225 who are not. T h e correlation between education and intelligence is given by Dael Wolfle in "Intellectual Resources" (Scientific American, 185(4):42-46 [1951]). Sixteen per cent of our whole population has an intelligence quotient (I.Q.) of 120 or above. About one-third of these (five per cent of the whole population) are among the college graduates, although the graduates constitute but one-tenth of the whole population. Obviously, if the college graduates do not replace themselves biologically, the population as a whole will suffer. Second, there is an inverse ratio between social status and reproductive rate. In any open society, a number of fortunate genie combinations rise in the social scale and many unfortunate combinations sink. This produces a genie drift which results in a difference in the gene frequencies in the several socio-economic classes, i.e., if there is any correlation whatever between genie constitution and intelligence. In fact, the children of the upper classes are more intelligent than those of the lower, as has been shown by numerous careful measurements. (Here we should emphasize that, at this point, we use the word "intelligence" to mean only the ability to get a high score in an intelligence test, with no commitments as to the source of the ability.) Also, the upper classes furnish a disproportionate number of the very able members of society. Many examples of this could be cited, such as the studies on the occupations of the fathers of "starred" American scientists which show that the parents of our scientists are not drawn equally from all classes. T h e professional classes, not necessarily the monied classes, furnish many times their quota on any random basis.9 9 T h e correlation of socio-economic status with intelligence has been proven in any number of cases, particularly by the classical biometrical work of Karl

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We will cite only a single instance of the increased reproductive rate which accompanies a fall in the social scale. Reed and Palm 10 reported a case in Minnesota where each of two brothers, born in 1831 and 1834 respectively, established an ever-widening line of descendants. One brother had the gene for Huntington's chorea, the other did not. Each brother had ten children, but the brother with the defective gene now has 716 living descendants while the healthy brother has but 167. T h e role which this particular gene plays in setting the social status is easy to identify. T h e onset of the disorder produces an economic strain on the family of the sufferer inasmuch as the afflicted individual loses employability, and often a second member of the family has to give up employment in order to care for the choreic member. As the family sinks in the social scale, its members intermarry with the class into which they have fallen and adopt the standards normal for their new status. These standards included producing many children. As a contrast to the fertility of these two unnamed brothers, Governor John S. Pillsbury, born in 1827 and who came to Minnesota at about the time of the two brothers, has only 15 living descendants. Studies of families on relief show that there is a positive correlation between social ineffectiveness and a high birth rate. T o quote from Landis (Population Problems, p. 176): Hill and Smith's study of a small sample in the 'cut-over' area of Wisconsin during the emergency relief period shows not only that the relief group was more fecund than the non-relief group but that both groups decreased their birth rates during the emerPearson, now almost universally ignored in social studies. Havelock Ellis, in A Study of British Genius (London, 1904), has shown how the British upper classes have produced a preponderance of those men who have made Britain great. Some hundreds of other studies have given comparable results. io S. C. Reed and J. D. Palm, "Social Fitness Versus Reproductive Fitness," Science, 113:294-296 (1951).

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gency relief years (1933-1938), the non-relief group reducing its birth rate more rapidly than the relief group. Hill and Smith also report that the chronic relief group is much more fecund than the group that is on relief only in times of emergency. With the age of wives standardized for a small sample, they found that the non-relief group had produced during a five-year period 667 children per 1000, whereas the wives on relief had produced 1132 children per 1000. T h e chronic-relief type had produced 1524 children per 1000, and the emergency relief type, 741 children per 1000. Limited data are available for two groups: (1) Those dependent on charity for many years, and (2) those recently on emergency relief. Both groups have a higher fertility than most other groups in the population. The point in doubt is whether relief recipiency retards, accelerates, or leaves unchanged the birth rate. The common popular assumption is that relief increases the birth rate. A third line of investigation shows that within a social class, the more stupid parents produce the m o r e children. Cattell 1 1 investigated the ten-year-old children in the city of Leicester a n d in three rural communities in England. H e found that the children with the lower I.Q. had the greater n u m b e r of brothers and sisters, and that the average I.Q. of the school children was two points lower than that of the parents who produced them. His measurements also showed a remarkable correlation (.84) between the I.Q. of the children and their parents. His conclusion, which was logically justified by his findings, was that the more stupid were reproducing faster than the more intelligent. His data also indicated that the I.Q. of the whole nation was declining. These facts and figures would indicate that h u m a n intelligence has b u t little future, and that f u t u r e short. T h u s far, 11

R. B. Cattell, "Is National Intelligence Declining?" Eugenics

28:181-203 (1936).

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the tacit assumption has been made, however, that the facts cited are the only ones that are relevant. This, of course, is not the case. T h e human race is subjected to many different types of selection acting simultaneously and, as we would expect, the different kinds of selections often work in opposite directions. Many complexities will have to be evaluated before we can measure quantitatively the effects of this admittedly disgenic breeding. One objection to the conclusion given in the preceding paragraph is immediately apparent. T h e facts seem to prove a little too much. Either the process of breeding from the bottom has been going on a very short time or there are other forces which counteract the obvious tendency toward intellectual degeneration. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to explain how we are as able as we are and do as well as we do. But the existence of factors which tend to preserve our intellectual endowment does not make the degenerative factors any better, and certainly disproves neither their existence nor their efficacy. 12 Even if no retrogression be in prospect, the evolutionary factors, which would cause degeneration if not counteracted, may, even if counteracted, slow up or prevent an evolutionary advance. W e have no a priori reasons for assuming that the intelligence of human beings, protected in civilized cultures, should either increase or decrease. T h e fact is, however, that no civilized group has yet been able to progress for a period of much over a thousand years. Many civilizations have lasted much shorter periods, and history records the collapse of one civilization after another. If human intelligence always diminishes in civilized cultures, we have a complete (but not necessarily true) explanation of the universal decline and fall of past civilizations. T h e fact that earlier civilizations have 12 This truism is inserted merely because the contrary assumption has been made tacitly so often, and is still current in much sociological literature.

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never been lost entirely, that always some of their contributions have passed on to other peoples—passed on to a fresh biological base—would in no way prove that there would always be some emerging group fit to preserve the higher cultures. W e are now in a position to examine the other side of the picture—to evaluate the factors which tend to arrest the deterioration of intelligence in civilized culture. There are many such factors, some of which tend to conceal the effects of selecting the least intelligent for propagating the next generation. Other factors, while not in themselves affecting the direction of evolution, work toward slowing up any deleterious (or beneficial) effects of a differential reproductive rate. As these factors operate independently, it is convenient to consider them separately. First, the more intelligent people are not the only ones who reproduce at a rate lower than average. A t the other extreme of the distribution curve are the defectives confined in institutions, the bums who end up on "skid row," the whores and the pimps; in fact, all who cannot be saved from disaster even though aided by social workers. These also are not replacing themselves. T h e culling of the very stupid from normal parenthood alters, of course, the frequency of genes in the whole population. T h e elimination of those at either end of the distribution curve tends to offset the effects of eliminating those at the other end. If the two extremes are discarded to the same extent, the mean of the curve is not altered. T h e elimination of both ends makes the curve narrower, but only temporarily so; and Mendelian segregation, which occurs in all heterozygous populations, restores the extremes as soon as the selection ceases. Thus, a specific type of selection may have either a beneficial or a deleterious effect, but one which will not show up as a direct measur-

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able change, for all such changes in the population indicate merely the overall results of all selections operating concurrently. It follows, of course, that the disgenic selection, so well described by Cattell and others, can not be refuted by showing that other types of selection also occur. T h e role of natural selection in the future evolution of human intelligence is one which we dare not disregard. Fortunately, our knowledge of the machinery of heredity enables us to calculate the effects of selection on characteristics due to different genie formulas, and also to calculate the effects of two or more types of selection working concurrently. In general, it can be stated that if two types of selection operate in opposite directions, an equilibrium will be established, the two types will be balanced and the population will stabilize at some point. Penrose 13 has illustrated this principle in a case where a single gene is involved, but the same principle applies to multiple factor inheritance. We are safe in concluding that human intelligence will also be stabilized under the influence of the social forces now selecting for and against it. But just where this will be, we cannot say. It may be either above or below the point where we are now. In either case, we may expect the social forces themselves to be altered as time passes, and then, of course, the selection rates will be altered, and the equilibrium will be upset. T h e human race just cannot achieve stability. 14 13 L. S. Penrose, "Genetical Influence on the Intelligence Level of the Population," Brit. Jour. Psych., Gen. Section, 40:128-35 (1950). 14 A technical footnote is inserted here to clarify a point which is generally missed, even by those who should know better. Intelligence like our other physiological properties is undoubtedly influenced by hybrid vigor or heterosis, so a selection against intelligence would be eliminating genes in heterozygous combinations. (To assume that intellectual vigor is unlike all physical vigor in its genetic constitution is, of course, completely gratuitous.) It has been said that ". . . [a] type of stable equilibrium of genetical structure occurs as a consequence of 'heterosis.'" This is not true in general. T h e

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A second factor which has been overlooked in the calculated effects of the selection against intelligence is the operation of an automatic genie rearrangement kno\vn as panmixis. Whenever any character due to the interaction of many genes is selected against, e.g., such a character as intelligence, the distribution of the genes in the stock becomes asymmetrical. Panmixis works toward restoring the symmetry 15 and reconstitutes the particular combination of genes which has been eliminated. Thus, the character eliminated by selection will reappear in future generations—with decreasing frequency, of course, but the number of genes involved in the character is important. T h e more genes which condition it, the slower will be its elimination. As we do not know just how many genes serve as the basis of intelligence, we cannot calculate exactly the rate at which it will be eliminated by an adverse selection. T h e panmictic rearrangements will reconstitute the genie combinations eliminated, but in continually lessening numbers. It should be emphasized that panmixis does not counteract the trend of selection; it only makes the rates slower. A third factor is to be found in the fact that there is no simple one to one correlation between intelligence and the cultural conditions which influence the reproductive rate, elimination of the heterozygote will decrease the frequency of its occurrence unless the two forms of the gene, which give the hybrid vigor, are equally numerous. If one allele occurs less frequently t h a n the other, it is always selected against, hence the heterozygote will occur less frequently as selection progresses. T h e end result, of course, is that one allele disappears, and when it does, all heterotic effects are lost. With multiple alleles, only some of which give hybrid vigor in combination, adverse selection is even more effective. Here the type selected against is eliminated almost as if it were due to a single recessive gene. 15 J u r . Philipschenko, Über Spaltungsprozesse i n n e r h a l b einer Population bei Panmixie," Zeitschr. indukt. Abs. Vererb., 35:257-78 (1924). Conway Zirkle, "Some Numerical Results of Selection upon Polyhybrids," Genetics, 11:531-83 (1926).

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such for example as social status. All honest measurements show a significant difference in the mean abilities of the different social classes, but they also show a very great overlapping. Even in an open society, such as ours, where the able may rise and the ineffective sink, it is not primarily the individuals who change social status, but their families. Many a mediocrity is carried along to a high level by an able relative. Also—and this is more important—we are too heterozygous ever to breed true. T h e children of the able always regress toward the average, as do the children of the dimwits. This in no way denies differences in the mean abilities of the different classes, but it does show that the biological effects of their different reproductive rates are less than they would be if all the members of a class were equal, and different from all the members of all other classes. T h e "lower" classes may be unable to produce able individuals at the same rate as the "upper," but all classes can produce able individuals. A "lower" class which is numerous may actually produce more able individuals than an "upper" class which is small. Again, this does not deny the ill effects of the low reproductive rates of those who are successful in the socio-economic field. It does point out, however, that the adverse selection against intelligence does not deplete the better genes as rapidly as it would in a simpler genetic set-up. Fourth, we cannot consider intelligence as a purely biological characteristic. Intelligence is always an actuality and can be measured only by some type of a performance test. T h e performance of any individual, moreover, is never determined by his total biological potentialities, but only by that portion of his potentialities which has actually developed. In addition, all intelligence tests have to make the assumption that the persons tested have developed in some standard and normal environment, and have been able to learn some-

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thing by their past experiences. Good tests have been able to eliminate much of the "background noise" due to uncontrolled environmental variables, but they do not test intellectual potential directly. What they do show is that, in comparable environments, the differences in the intelligence of those tested are roughly parallel to differences in their genetic potentials. Thus, differences in scores made on intelligence tests by individuals in different environments—in different social classes—have to be "corrected" for the environmental variable before they can be taken as quantitative indicators of inherent differences in intelligence. The failure to distinguish between the genetic limitations to intelligence and the limitations imposed by the developmental processes has led to considerable confusion. An overall cultural improvement might well cause an increase in actual intelligence, and, at the same time, a reproductive differential may be decreasing the potentialities for intelligence. T h e two processes may be concurrent, and some time might have to elapse before the biological degeneration would become apparent. Thus, Cattell's thesis of a deteriorating national intelligence cannot be refuted, even if it could be shown that, for a given period, the average intelligence of the whole population was actually increasing. T h e same holds true, of course, for any other characteristic which can be measured—such, for example, as height. As an increase of vitamin D in the diet may cause an increase in height and mask for a time the effects of a differential reproductive rate which might favor the shorter individuals. T h e failure to recognize this masking effect of a variation in the development of a potential has led to some rather naive conclusions.18 ιβ Otis Dudley Duncan, "Is the Intelligence of the General Population Declining?" Amer. Soc. Rev., 17:401-07 (1952).

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T o summarize briefly the evolutionary factors which will determine the intelligence of the future human race: T h e greater reproductive rate of the less intelligent causes a major change in the frequency of those genes whose interaction determines the potentiality for intelligence. Operating by itself, this reproductive differential would greatly increase human stupidity. Thus far, but one offsetting factor has been found—the relatively low reproductive rate of the defectives and semi-morons at the other end of the distribution curve. The relative effects of these opposing selective pressures will determine finally whether the human race progresses or retrogresses. T h e other factors discussed do not affect the direction of the evolutionary trend, but only its rate. Panmixis introduces a reshuffling of genes which slows considerably the elimination of any character due to many hereditary units. T h e fact that social status, which has such an effect upon the reproductive rate, is not completely correlated with intelligence also postpones the serious effects of any disgenic selection as does the fact that the actual intelligence, which is selected against, has an environmental component and does not correspond exactly with the biological potential for intelligence which is inherited. Before we try to draw any definite conclusions, however, attention should be called to a very stupid but widespread misunderstanding. It is that the admitted existence of an environmental variable somehow or other changes the genetic variable into a constant. (A comparable case would be for a farmer, who had learned the value of fertilizer, to assume that because the fertility of his land was important in determining the size of the crop, the variety of seed planted was unimportant and that all seeds were equal.) Of course, this assumption is never expressed so crudely. Well,

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hardly everl 17 It is, however, implied in any number of discussions of the roles of heredity and environment. It has almost become an ideological stance. No matter how important environment may be in the development of intelligence—and environment is important—if it is randomized in regard to the genie background, it can have no influence whatever upon the direction of the evolutionary change. It cannot reverse the trend of a disgenic biological selection; it can at best make the selection less effective and delay somewhat the end result. If there is any difference whatever in the frequency of the genes in the different socio-economic classes, if there is any genie difference between the bright and the dull, if men are unequal in their biological potentials, i.e., if the population is heterozygous, then a differential reproductive rate favoring the stupid will tend to cause future generations to be more stupid. This is not to argue, however, that our civilization and all future civilizations will be swamped by masses of dimwits, and collapse into simpler cultures as all past civilizations have done. The low reproductive rate of the human defectives and ineffectives works in the opposite direction. But more important than this counter-selection has been the recent abrupt change in the reproductive rates of the more intelligent. Since World W a r II, the more intelligent and better educated have been having more children. For the first time in several generations, they seem to be replacing themselves. The downward trend in their reproductive rate IT Edward B. Reuter, Population Problems (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1937). From page 442: "There is no doubt that environmental conditions are of far more importance than is heredity in the determination of human ills; every advance on the study of society shows more clearly and with greater certainty the preponderant role of cultural as compared with biological factors." Reuter naturally cites no crucial data.

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seems at least to be definitely checked. If this improvement continues, we probably will have little to fear; if it does not, disaster is almost certain. T h e r e is, of course, no cause for immediate alarm. Whichever change occurs will be very slow in terms of h u m a n life. Several generations—perhaps a century or so—will have to elapse before we will be able to measure the trend directly. But no matter how slowly the change may occur in terms of individual human beings, it will appear to be catastrophically sudden in the time scale of organic evolution.

9. Marxian Biology and Beautiful Letters §1 summarize briefly our knowledge of evolution, of what makes it take place, and how we ourselves evolve. T h e factors that cause and direct evolution should be of the utmost concern to us, for they have created all living things and have made us as we are. They also give us clues as to how our present actions will affect our future. "Whether we even have a future or not will be decided by the way they alter our present store of genes. As long as we are members of the animal kingdom— as long as we reproduce sexually—we neglect the factors of evolution at our peril. Normally, we should expect that the importance of the evolutionary factors in human affairs would be recognized by everyone who is concerned with human affairs, but this is not the case. A number of impediments have arisen, impediments which prevent a proper integration of biology into our common fund of knowledge, and even into the knowledge of our political and intellectual leaders. Some of these barriers are inherent in the subject and we can do nothing about them. For example, the theory of evolution has grown very complex and technical; it is now beyond the comprehension of most. Another impediment to its integration is caused by the deficiencies in our education, defiHE

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ciencies that result from the fact we must specialize and concentrate our interests in one small field, that is, if we want to know anything really well. T h i s means that most of us have neither the time, the training, nor the energy to make the effort necessary to understand the theory of evolution. In addition to these inherent obstacles, there are others that are purely gratuitous, and still others that owe their existence entirely to chance. O n e of these arose through an accident in timing. Evolution was adopted by the scientific world at a time when the dominant religions were conservative, when they interpreted their sacred records literally. As nearly every religion includes an account of the origin of the human race as part of its inspired theology, the application of evolution to man was naturally resented, for evolution was invading a field which religion had preempted. T h e disturbance caused by the resulting jurisdictional dispute has not quieted down completely, and there is still little chance for a widespread and honest study of evolution and its causes. A second obstacle grew out of Darwin's explanation of evolution—that it was caused by natural selection. In advancing this hypothesis, he was almost asking for misunderstanding, because natural selection could be oversimplified so easily into a picture of an u n e n d i n g gladiatorial combat, a picture of a heartless, deadly, and amoral struggle. T h i s concept offended humane and decent men, and helped to distort a reasonable scientific theory into something evil and revolting. A third impediment arose even more fortuitously. T h e role of natural selection was announced in the midst of the industrial revolution, and the rising merchants and manufacturers could easily equate their own laissez faire standards of business competition with those of nature in evolution.

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Some businessmen even sought to justify their most ruthless acts as being perfectly natural and, hence, virtuous behavior. For this perversion, all that was needed was some naive analogical thinking, and soon the struggle for existence was extended into the field of business ethics. Thus, natural selection became incorporated in social and economic theory. T h e extension of the principles of evolution to economics resulted in some very natural confusion. Evolution itself could not be denied, but the tender-minded could evade its brutal aspects. Two avenues of escape were available: (1) natural selection itself could be denounced in favor of a more humane factor, such a factor as the inheritance of acquired characters, and (2) man himself could be removed from an unappetizing biological world into a social one— into a world where unwelcomed complications might be dismissed as temporary inconveniences, soon to be reformed out of existence. Natural selection, of course, does have many unpleasant aspects. While it is not as bad as many Victorians thought, it is not all sweetness and light—even at its very best—hence it was never universally popular. Many sought to escape its unpleasant implications. Actually, in the late nineteenth century, no honest and informed scholar could deny that evolution applied to all forms of life, including pre-social man (if such a being ever existed); but, at the time, it was still possible to picture modern man as having completed his evolution—as belonging to a species which had already reached its pre-ordained goal. T o a man lacking our present knowledge, it was just posible—by straining slightly—to look upon evolution as belonging to our disreputable past, to look upon it as a process we have gone through and had finished and left behind. This line of escape, however, was not widely used at first, because the emotional needs for it

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were not too pressing. In the nineteenth century, Lamarck's doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters was still acceptable, and this factor provided a humane method of accomplishing evolutionary changes. As knowledge accumulated, however, and as Lamarck's notions had to be rejected, the sentimental urge to exclude man from the operation of biological laws became insistent. The science of biology was becoming more and more unkind to the escapists and any means of avoiding its harshness were welcomed. At this point, the true escapist value of Marxian biology became apparent. It was authoritarian and above all such disturbing influences as empirically derived evidence. It kept the inheritance of acquired characters by fiat, and this was enough for many true believers. It is worth recording, though, that Marxian biology attained its greatest popularity and aided the greatest number of evaders only after its basic assumptions had been abandoned by those who were technically equipped to judge them. The continuing existence of Marxian biology in our popular mores, particularly in our belles lettres, together with the all-pervading ignorance of what caused evolution, have had most unhappy consequences. Our literature has an importance over and above its amusement value because it does affect our lives and our ideals. In our literature, the Marxian doctrine reaches and influences many people who never have any direct contact with biology itself. The greater part of this Marxian biology, of course, is only tacit. Even the writers themselves may be unconscious of it. But some of it is explicit and hortatory. All of the Marxian biology in literature, however, whether privy or overt, has helped to create an intellectual background compatible with Marxian social and economic doctrines. It has helped to

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develop the climate of opinion in which communism could become one of the more prevalent intellectual aberrations. §2 A surprisingly large percentage of the best writers of the nineteenth and twentieth century have been Marxists of one sort or another. All modern literature owes a very real debt to the great writers of the left, particularly to those of France, Germany, and Russia; and many of these were openly followers of Marx. These writers succeeded not only in producing great literature but also in propagandizing and spreading their social and political convictions. Thus, they helped to shape the prevalent climate of opinion, helped to create the dominant popular outlook. Many of them even sought, as an essential part of their creative labors, to offer other and better alternatives to the capitalistic system whose flaws they had been so expert at detecting. But without their knowing it, their biological assumptions were taken from the source that had furnished their social and political inspirations, and they would doubtless have been surprised to learn that they had unconsciously and almost automatically adopted a number of hypotheses which their contemporaries in the biological field had discarded as false. Many writers in England and America, like their continental confreres, also concerned themselves with the proposed reorganization of society on Marxian lines. They also, as a rule, were unaware that their biological assumptions had no validity or even that they had made any definite biological assumptions at all. A few, however, accepted knowingly those biological hypotheses that were compatible with the kind of society they sought to promote. Such writers are

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not hard to identify, and their biology can be placed easily in the framework of our present knowledge where it can be judged on its merits—or rather, on its demerits. The generality of writers, however, were not so direct; their biology is only implied and tacit, and their basic Marxian convictions show up but rarely. But fortunately for our knowledge of the Marxian impact on our literature, we have some excellent scholarly monographs which have explored and described the field in detail.1 It may seem odd that a number of socialist writers appear to have been indifferent to Marxian biology. Actually, in the nineteenth century, Marxian biology did not deviate as much from the science as it does now, and the writers who accepted it routinely would have had to understand the implications of the newer technical, scientific advances before they could realize that they had wandered far afield. Even when they concerned themselves directly with evolution—and many of them did—they probably did not know that Marx and Engels had separated the acceptable theories of evolution from those which they held to be "inadmissable." The mere fact that Marx was an evolutionist meant that his followers would be on the side of the scientists in the controversy raging between the biologists and the religious leaders. T h e socialists certainly thought that their beliefs were advanced and scientific. Opposition to evolution per se 1 See Socialism and American Life, ed. Donald Drew Egbert and Stow Persons (Princeton, 1952). T w o o£ the works included in this collection are especially valuable in their treatment of the Socialist writers. They are: " T h e Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United States," Vol. I, pp. 213-406 by Daniel Bell; and "American Writers on the L e f t , " Vol. I , pp. 599-620 by Willard T h o r p . Fictioneers on a very much lower level who support the Communist party line—writers for the movies and TV—are described by Victor Riesel, " T h e y Blacklist Themselves," and by Martin Berkeley, " R e d in Your Living R o o m , " both in the American Mercury (1953).

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came originally from the more conservative writers, whose religion we would now label "Fundamentalistic." 2 A few Marxian writers, however, were fully conscious of the relevance of biological theories to their schemes for bettering the lot of man—especially the lot of the common man. It was not hard for the more intelligent and learned of them to recognize just what the biological nature of man had to be, and just which factors of evolution would have to operate if a Marxian society were to be both possible and desirable. Those who tried to advance Marxian biology consciously were not numerous, but their influence in shaping the ideals of our intelligentsia was tremendous. They actually set the fashion not only in letters but also in the popular up-to-date attitudes in morals and ethics. It is even possible that they furnished the dominant directives to the social sciences. This statement is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first, for practically all social scientists are familiar with the works of the more progressive writers, but almost none of them is technically equipped to evaluate the new discoveries in biology. Marxian biology has always had allies, and this has been one of the sources of its strength. On the other hand, scientific biology has had few friends. The moment it grew to the point where it applied to Homo sapiens, it acquired enemies. Indeed, for the last hundred and fifty years, the history of biology (outside of the history of its technical developments 2 T h e impact of evolution on the literary world has been described in a number of monographs. Many nineteenth-century writers were concerned with the conflict of evolution with revealed religion. Some few, however, were perturbed more by the incompatibility of natural selection with their traditional ethics. T h e following treatises furnish an excellent introduction to a study of the spread of evolution from biology to literature: J. M. Drachman, Studies in the Literature of Natural Science (New York, 1930); Lionel Stevenson, Darwin among the Poets (Chicago, 1932); Leo J . Henkins, Darwinism in the English Novel (New York, 1940).

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a n d discoveries) has been a history of conflict, and the conflict shows no signs of abating. For example, in 1925, a high school teacher in Tennessee was arrested for teaching evolution; and as late as 1948, five geneticists in Moscow were forced by the Communists to recant and forswear their knowledge of biology. T h e r e u p o n , in all the lands which o\ved allegiance to the Kremlin, the science of genetics was extirpated. On the other hand, the enemies of Marxian biology are found only among the scientists themselves. T h e proponents of Marxian biology appear in unexpected places. In the early disputes over evolution, the most effective aid to the Marxian line came from the humanitarian b u t conservative Christians, who not only rejected evolution on theological grounds, but who also looked with horror on the amoral viciousness of what they took to be natural selection. Marx himself had also objected to the competitive aspects of natural selection, so both his followers and the more conservative religious groups found themselves on the same side. In fact, the Marxian biologists of the last seventyfive years had their pathways made smooth by the Victorian fundamentalists. T h e very phrases which they use today in rejecting all competition in n a t u r e were coined for them by that romantic and most religious poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is not possible to outline here the full extent to which Marxian biology has permeated our literature. W e can list only a few of the more important writers who committed themselves to the creed. T h e Utopian writers from Edward Bellamy to H. G. Wells were, of course, all orthodox socialists. Wells, however, was a trained biologist and always showed the effects of his early education in that he never could deny the effects of natural selection in toto, as so many of his contemporaries did. But the degree of his objectivity

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can be judged by the fact that, as the advances in biology became more and more incompatible with the Marxian line, he abandoned his science, except for occasional publications on a popular level, and adopted a profession wherein he could create his own characters, situations, and events. Seemingly, he took refuge in a fictional universe of his own, a universe in which he was the undisputed master. Samuel Butler also deserves special mention and his biology has already been noted (Chapter IV). While he has always been —and still is—a joke to the biologists, he is now honored by the literary fraternity. 8 Bulwer-Lytton, in The Coming Race, endorsed Lamarckian heredity; and Olive Schreiner (1926) devoted an entire book, From Man to Man, to refuting what she mistakenly took natural selection to be. Many of the writers of today, who function in the field of science fiction and fantasy, are Lamarckian; and, until quite recently, the most popular formula for this type of story could be given as "science plus socialism equals Utopia." 4 Of course, if imaginative writers wish to endorse a cult and thereby aid their readers to escape some of the pressures of modern living, they are well within their rights and even perform a useful function in society. T h e cult of Marxian biology in our belles lettres, however, does some real damage. It helps to block the spread of the knowledge of evolution to those groups who need it most, the groups who are influential in establishing the climate of opinion. It also helps to propagate doctrines incompatible with scientific knowledge and 3 Bernard Shaw has recognized Butler as his own mentor and, of course, praises him highly. Leo J. Henkins (Darwinism in the English Novel, p. 209) states: "Lacking portfolia as a scientist, Butler, whose interest in biology was primarily philosophic, found the scientists' doors closed against his brilliant speculations in the field of evolution." < T o m Clareson, "The Evolution of Science Fiction," Science Fiction Quarterly, 1953.

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which, once they are embedded in public opinion, make our collective decisions slightly fantastic. Literature, of course, has always been one of the chief sources of ethical standards and popular ideals. If the makers of our literature prefer a mirage to science and write accordingly, they introduce defective data into the store of knowledge upon which our standards and our acts are based. Under these circumstances, our collective behavior will be more irrational than our knowledge justifies. In this chapter, we can only indicate the extent to which Marxian biology has permeated our belles lettres, and do so by a technique which contains the obvious defect of including samples that are not typical of the whole. In fact, the samples are really examples and are selected for a different purpose. They show how far some writers deviate from the biology of today. This does not mean that the writers chosen as illustrations should be condemned or that they are all personally at fault. As laymen, they cannot be blamed too greatly for deviating from the science of their time. They are, in fact, all superior men, men who have influenced markedly the thinking of their contemporaries. One of them was not a Marxian at all, and the other two, while socialists, have never been abject followers of the Master. Each has his own individuality and each his own personal philosophy. The three examples which we shall analyze in some detail are Alfred Lord Tennyson, Jack London, and George Bernard Shaw. A single passage is also quoted from Alphonse Daudet. The discerning belletrist might well question the selection of Tennyson, Daudet, London, and Shaw as samples of anything at all. These men, of course, were highly individualistic and represent no one but themselves. Any sampling technique that picks out such specimens is questionable, to

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say the least, but, as we stated earlier, these writers were not chosen to represent types. For our purposes, their value lies elsewhere. They are simply the most easily identified precursors or transmitters of an aberrant biological doctrine, and they state the doctrine unambiguously. Once we have learned to recognize the kind of biology their works contain, we should have less difficulty in identifying it in the works of others. Without the aids of such leads as those found in the work of Tennyson, Daudet, London, and Shaw, a reader who is not technically trained might well miss the biological assumptions that exist in the background thinking of many of our better authors. It is not difficult to show that the Marxian line has spread beyond biology itself, because in those sciences that it has infected most, it is often stated explicitly, although, naturally, it rarely bears the Marxian label. In belles lettres, however, it is generally only latent. It is merely implied in the plots, characters, and denouements. Indeed, many writers have followed and endorsed the line but have been quite unconscious of what they had done. And, this presents us with a problem. More often than not, we can identify these unstated biological assumptions only after we have made an extensive analysis of the social and political orientation of our literati. There is, of course, no simple or easy way to bring these background assumptions out into the open. Each author would require a long and intensive investigation, and only rarely would the findings be clear-cut and unambiguous. This makes it impossible to demonstrate the Marxian penetration into our literature by a sampling technique such as that described in Chapter XI. Fortunately, however, a few authors expressed their beliefs explicitly, and these give us all the clues we need to identify the Marxian line. But

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to show that this line exists in our literature, we have to cite it where it is stated openly, rather than to analyze samples taken from our better authors chosen at random. For example: to show the kind of biology that is embedded in the works of such left-wing writers as £,mile Zola and Anatole France, we would have to dig deep into their personal philosophies and devote at least a volume to each. But Alphonse Daudet's rejection of the "struggle for existence" can be given in a single direct quotation that takes u p only a page or so. It is not the purpose of this chapter to show how biology— particularly the biological theory of evolution—has influenced the thinking and the standards of our men of letters. This has already been done (Drachman, Stevenson, Henkins, etc; see footnote 2). Nor is it to show how many of our better writers were Marxian socialists. This also has been done (Bell, Thorp, Riesel, Berkeley, etc.; see footnote 1). Nor is it to evaluate the literary merit of those we quote, because, for our purposes, this is irrelevant. For example, it makes no difference whether Tennyson was a major or minor poet. His importance lies in the fact that he was a popular poet, that he endorsed the humane standards of his generation, and that he expressed himself vividly and precisely on just those biological theories that Marx felt called upon to reject. Jack London was chosen for analysis because he was, by far, the most logical and intellectually honest of the few Marxians who expressed their biological convictions openly. He followed the Marxian line to its logical conclusion and he endorsed without quibbling that portion of the line that the modern Communists have concealed for tactical reasons. Moreover, he seems to have been read more widely in Russia than any other American writer, with the possible exception of Mark Twain.

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Bernard Shaw, of course, is a natural. Biology, or rather " m e t a b i o l o g y , " was one of his major interests and he wrote extensively o n the subject. A n d Shaw is still very m u c h with us. T e n n y s o n and L o n d o n may have faded, b u t Shaw is still read, acted, a n d enjoyed. His influence in progressive circles is still great, f o r a m o n g the forward-lookers he is revered as a thinker—as one w h o has escaped the prejudices of the past. Perhaps m o r e than any other writer, Shaw is responsible for the present biological stance of our more popular authors. Even those w h o consider Shaw a crank may not be aware of w h a t he uses f o r biology. W h e n we show that M a r x i a n biology is endorsed by a writer, we do not, by that act, condemn the writer. T h i s fact should be emphasized because the acceptance of Marxian biology is definitely n o t an act of virtue. O f t e n it indicates some psychological inadequacy or some escapist tendencies. B u t this is true of the man of letters only when he knows w h a t he is d o i n g and after the Marxian line became untenable. W h e n w e place Tennyson, Daudet, or L o n d o n in their proper intellectual setting, we find that their biological beliefs were not unreasonable. T h e y deserve our complete respect. Bernard Shaw, on the other hand, is a true reactionary as he rejected every biological advance made during the past seventy-five years. H e had to work hard and long to preserve his biological misinformation.

§3 T o include A l f r e d L o r d T e n n y s o n among the writers w h o helped to spread M a r x i a n biology might seem to be the height of something or other. Tennyson was a Victorian poet —romantic, aristocratic, and intensely religious. As a y o u t h f u l idealist, he visualized the brotherhood of man, the abolition

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of poverty and suffering, and the coming of a day of universal peace and well-being. H e was not happy a b o u t the state of Victorian society, b u t neither was he blind to the unrealities which have made Utopia a Nowhere. H e was always courageous enough to face unpleasant a n d disconcerting facts, a n d h e did not try, as many lesser writers did, to escape into a purely personal universe of his own creation. H e had the strength to face the disastrous honestly without p r e t e n d i n g that it was really something pleasant or wholesome in disguise. H e described tragedy eloquently—even the universal tragedy in nature—and in so doing h e furnished both t h e anti-evolutionists and even the m o r e sentimental biologists with their most telling descriptive phrases, n a t u r e "red in tooth and claw," etc. Curiously enough, he portrayed the struggle for existence and the brutal aspects of natural selection some years before Darwin published the Origin of Species. Thus, when the ethical objections to n a t u r a l selection arose, the horror phrases which h e had created were available and awaiting use. Most emphatically, T e n n y son did not believe in Marxian biology, b u t h e certainly helped it gain converts among the literati. As early as 1842, Tennyson pictured a brave new world in Locksley Hall. Perhaps the most famous of all of his lines are to be found in the passage where, in the person of the hero, he seems to catch a glimpse of the world to be: For I dip't into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonders that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens filled with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies, grappling in the central blue;

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But aerial warfare was to be only a passing nuisance which would be followed by universal peace . . . Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. This future world, however, he recognized as only a vision, desirable, but not altogether practical. Certain unpalatable facts stood squarely in its way. If there should ever be a parliament of man, it would have to come about in spite of the fact that all men were not alike, and some whole races were far from admirable. I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains, Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains I Mated with a squalid savage—what to me were sun or clime? I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of timeMankind also had to face the ever-present Malthusian problem, which Tennyson was too honest to ignore. Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. Thus to Tennyson, a Utopian future was desirable, but that was no reason for a gentleman to be unrealistic about its prospects of ever coming into being. Tennyson published In Memoriam at the mid-century. In this poem, he attempted to reconcile the observed brutalities of nature with Divine purpose. Yet the possibility that nature is blind and purposeless, he faced squarely and courageously:

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LIV Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill T o pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. That not a worm is cloven in vain T h a t not a moth with vain desire Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire Or but subserves another's gain. LV Are God and Nature then at strife T h a t Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear. But even the sacrifice of individuals to preserve either their species or their predators does not seem to be the purpose of nature. Nature, apparently, is simply slipshod: LVI 'So careful of the type?' but no. From scarped cliff and quarried stone She cries, Ά thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go. T h o u makest thine appeal to me: I bring to life, I bring to death: T h e spirit doth but mean the breath: I know no more.' And he, shall he,

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Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation's final law— Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw, With rapine shriek'd against his creedNo more? A monster then, a dream, A discord. Dragons of the prime That tear each other in their slime, Were mellow music match'd with him. T h e r e is hope though in progress. As evolution continues, the brutal struggle for existence may be ameliorated, the suffering of some may bring happiness to others: CXVIII They say, T h e solid earth on which we tread In tracts of fluent heat began And grew to seeming random forms, The seeming prey to cyclic storms, T i l l at the last arose the man; Who throve and branched from clime to clime, T h e herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place If so he type this work of time. . . . T o shape and use. Arise and fly T h e reeling Faun, the sensual feast Move upward, working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.

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Not only cunning cast in clay Let Science prove we are, and then What matters Science unto men. At least to me? I would not stay. Let him, the wiser man who springs Hereafter, up from childhood shape His action like the greater ape But I was born to other things. In T w o Voices, published in 1853, six years before the Origin of Species, Tennyson discussed evolution briefly, a n d included a verse which suggests a possible reconciliation of evolution with a non-literal interpretation of Genesis: I said, 'When first the world began, Young nature thro' five cycles ran And in the sixth she moulded man.' In Maud, published in 1855, he gave a description of t h e struggle for existence, stark in its simple viciousness: A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its way: For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; T h e mayfly's torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear'd by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey. We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man: He now is first, but is he the last? Is he not too base?

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T h e scientist himself is far from admirable: T h e m a n of science himself is fonder of glory a n d vain A n eye well-practiced in n a t u r e , a spirit b o u n d e d and poor.

It was some years after the Origin of Species before Tennyson again considered the moral problem raised by the impact of evolution on the current religious concepts; but in the 1880's he returned to the subject many times. In his first post-Darwinian reference to the ethics of natural selection, he showed what we should expect if such ethics ever became the conventional standards of human conduct. The Promise of May was published in 1882. This work is in the form of a play, but it served only to show that Tennyson was not a dramatist. T h e hero-villain about whom the play is built is a character named Edgar, an upper class cad, whose main purpose in the play is to seduce a rustic maiden. In the following passage, natural selection is used to justify the behavior of cads: Edgar:

' W h a t are we,' says the blind old m a n in Lear? 'As flies to the Gods; they kill us for their sport.' T h e Gods! b u t they, the shadows of ourselves, H a v e past forever. It's N a t u r e kills, A n d not for her sport either. She knows nothing. M a n only knows, the worse for him! for why C a n n o t he take his pastime like the flies? A n d if my pleasure breeds another's pain, Well—is not that the course of N a t u r e too, F r o m the d i m d a w n of being—her m a i n law W h e r e b y she grows in beauty—that her flies Must massacre each other? this p o o r N a t u r e !

In The Ancient Sage, published three years later, Tennyson gives a passing endorsement of Lamarckism:

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And in the fatal sequence of this world An evil thought may soil thy children's blood. In Despair, published the same year, he describes the feelings of those who had renounced the kindly religion of Christ for an unfeeling science, and were convinced that they lived in a universe where wrongs were not redressed a n d where there Avas no recompense for suffering. T h i s w o r l d where natural selection operated was dreary beyond description: V Hoped for a dawn and it came, but the promise had faded away, W e had passed from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier day; He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire, T h e guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire— Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down by the strong, Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder, and wrong. VIII But pity—the Pagan held it a vice—was in her and in me, Helpless, taking the place of the pitying God that should be, Pity for all that aches in the grasp of an idiot power, And pity for our own selves on an earth that bore not a flower; Pity for all that suffers on land or in air or the deep, And pity for our own selves till we long'd for eternal sleep. XV Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of pain, If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain, And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space,

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Motherless evermore of an ever vanishing race, When the worm shall have writhed its last, and the last brother-worm will have fled From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of a world that is dead? T w o years later, however, in Epilogue, Tennyson recognized clearly that the use of might was justified at times: But since our mortal shadow, ill T o waste that earth began— Perchance from some abuse of Will In worlds before the man Involving ours—he needs must fight T o make true peace his own, He needs must combat might with might Or Might would rule alone. From Locksley Hall: Sixty Years After, published in 1887, we can bring together and organize the many scattered passages wherein Tennyson expressed his views on the ethics of the evolutionary process. H e had admitted the possibility of Lamarckism and, in consequence, was not an equalitarian. T h e differences between individuals and races seemed to him to be too deep and fundamental to be reduced easily or quickly. In the following passage, the narrator, i n comforting his grandson who has just been jilted, says: She the worldling born of worldlings—father, mother—be content, Even the homely farm can teach us there is something in descent. H e also assumed somewhat naively that other and lesser races envied the happy state of the Europeans: Indian warriors dream of ampler hunting grounds beyond the night; Ev'n the black Australian dying hopes he shall return a white.

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T h e simple faith and wishful thinking of those who saw virtue in the mass of mankind is exposed by the reminder: France had shown a light to all men, preached a Gospel, all men's good: Celtic Demos rose a Demon, shriek'd and slaked the light with blood. F o r those who believed that all m e n were equal o r who sought to make political profit out of the belief, he expressed his contempt: Envy wears the mask of Love, and, laughing sober fact to scorn, Cries to Weakest as to Strongest, 'Ye are equals, equal born.' Equal-born? Ο yes, if yonder hill be level with the flat, Charm us, Orator, till the Lion look no larger than the Cat. Till the Cat thro' that mirage of overheated language loom Larger than the Lion,—Demos end in working its own doom. You that woo the Voices—tell them 'old experience is a fool,' Teach your flatter'd kings that only those who cannot read can rule. Tumble Nature heel o'er head, and, yelling with the yelling street Set the feet above the brain and swear the brain is in the feet.

Do your best to charm the worst, to lower the rising race of men: Have we risen from the beast, then back into the beast again. Tennyson, however, did not always equate social status with ability: Here and there a cotter's babe is royal-bom with right divine: Here and there my lord is lower than his oxen or his swine.

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Returning to his youthful vision of a reformed and progressive earth, he wrote: All the full-brained, half-brained races, led by Justice, Love and Truth: All the millions are at length with all the visions of my youth? All desires quenched by Science, no man halt, or deaf or blind: Stronger ever born of weaker, lustier body, larger mind? Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue— I have seen her far away—for is not Earth as yet so young?— Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill'd, Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till'd, Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles, Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles. T h e same Malthusian question which arose in Locksley Hall, however, intrudes again, and the beatific vision begins to fade. Reality returns: Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, thenAll her harvests all too narrow—who can fancy warless men? . . . Is then evil but an earth? or pain in every peopled sphere? We'll be grateful for the sounding watchword 'Evolution' here. Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good. And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud. As we can readily see, Tennyson had done his full share in emphasizing the ugly and brutal aspects of natural selection, and thus he stimulated the squeamish to reject Darwin's explanation of evolution. This rejection of natural selection fits perfectly into the biological evasions of the Marxians. Tennyson also despised the ethical standards of social Dar-

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winism and, as we have noted previously, perhaps the only positive and creditable aspect of Marxian biology is that it did oppose social Darwinism. So, in this stand, Tennyson was on the side of the Marxians and like the Marxians, he viewed the rising industrialists with something less than enthusiasm. Because of his background and moral standards, he looked upon the climbing commercial classes and their ethos with the scorn of the aristocrat rather than with the envy of the proletarians; but he and the proletarians were in agreement in their opposition to the bourgeoisie: But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels, And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels. Even the aesthetic standards of the rising Victorian business classes he found ugly: Yonder lies our young sea-village—Art and Grace are less and less: Science grows and Beauty dwindles—roofs of slated hideousness. It was utterly impossible for him to translate noblesse oblige into "business is business" (Sometimes expressed as, "I ain't in business for my health!") because, for one reason, the laissez-faire economy, operating in a society dominated by wealthy industrialists and merchant princes, developed slums, and he could not stomach slums. Again, his eloquence was on the side of the proletariat: Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? There among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet. Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street. There the Master scrimps his haggard sempstress of her daily bread, There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead.

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There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor, And the crowded couch of incest in the warrens of the poor. Such conditions as these, of course, would not persist in any reasonable universe. There must be hope in the future. Equalitarian revolutions were certainly not the answer, for they had brought blood and chaos, demagogues and tyrants. They had raised stupidity to high estate, but the underdogs still suffered unjustly. What the remedy was, he did not know, but some remedy there must be. God could not allow such conditions to exist indefinitely: Far away beyond her myriad coming changes earth will be Something other than the wildest modern guess of you and me.

§4 It is not feasible to treat in any detail the tacit biological assumptions of the great French writers of the left. One French work, however, should be mentioned as its raison d'etre is a humanitarian and ethical rejection of natural selection. Its moral is strikingly similar to that found in Tennyson's The Promise of May. The work in question is La Lutte pour la vie (1889) by Alphonse Daudet. Here, the amoral villains are "struggle for lifers," and here their jungle ethics are suitably castigated. Daudet's reaction against his concept of natural selection is one of the most violent on record. It undoubtedly helped to form an emotional and intellectual milieu unfavorable for an objective presentation and impersonal judgment of natural forces. His preface to the English edition (1899) opens as follows: Ί certainly do not blame the great Darwin, but the hypocritical knaves who invoke his authority, who assume to transform a single observation, a scholar's single discovery, into an article of

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the Code, and to apply it systematically. Ahl you consider those fellows great men, able men! But I tell you that they are nothing of the sort! There can be no greatness without kindliness, compassion, human sympathy. I tell you that these theories of Darwin are villainous in their application, because they seek out all that is brutish in a man's nature, and arouse all that still remains on four paws in the quadruped become biped.' These words, in the mouth of one of my characters, summarize the exalted idea of my work and its far-reaching title; too farreaching indeed, if we take the words The Struggle for Life literally. Assuredly I am not so presumptuous as to attempt to describe in one evening, any more than in one book or series of books, that battle for existence of which we never see more than one little corner, our own, like the soldier lost to sight in the bloody melees described by Stendhal and Tolstoi', over which the same mysterious destiny will always hover, veiled and obscure, despite the recent invention of smokeless powder. No, I have simply attempted to place upon the stage a few specimens of this new breed of little savages who make use of the Darwinian phrase, "struggle for life," as a pretext and excuse for all sorts of villainies and infamies. This type did not exist among use before the war [War of 1870]. 'France is sentimental, it will probably become scientific,' Gambetta used frequently to say; and I remember how fully I shared his ideas, with what ardor those about him adopted the brutish Saxon formulae: 'The strong devours the weak; the survival of the fittest,' etc. Suddenly came the crime of Lebiez and Barre, scientific murder based upon the Darwinian theories, behind which these two bandits undertook to take refuge—Lebiez, who, after the deed, had the ghastly self-possession to deliver a discourse in the Quartier des Ecoles on the struggle for life, and to repeat it in part before the examining magistrate.

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§5 Jack London (1876-1916) is a source of both satisfaction and embarrassment to the Marxians. He is liked for many reasons. First, he was born into a proletarian family and this is very good indeed. Second, he became a very popular and influential author, but one whose heart remained with the people. Third, he developed into a very effective and persuasive revolutionist, a man whose writings and speeches converted many to socialism. T h e satisfaction the Marxians take in London is limited, however, and now much of what he preached has to be explained away. This is not really Jack London's fault, for, since his day, a portion of the party line has had to go underground for tactical reasons. T h e result is that he must now be corrected and part of his work deplored, even though it is compatible with what Marx taught and with what the Communist leaders still believe. This subterranean portion of the Marxian line includes the real Communist doctrine of race, the doctrine which they denounce as "racism," "white chauvinism," "bourgeois prejudice," etc. London himself was always honest and frank—sometimes naively so. Consequently, much of his ideology must now be corrected. He was no politician and, even if the Marxian line had not changed in recent years, his frankness would still be embarrassing. His writings, however, have been standard literary fare for too long a time and are far too popular to be suppressed. Actually, the Communists have little or no desire to suppress them, for they still contribute valuable revolutionary propaganda. T h e Communists follow a much more reasonable course; Jack London's books are distributed, but his "mistakes" are pointed out by those whose standing is such that they can indicate what is true and what is in

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"error." Philip S. Foner in Jack (1947) states, p. vi:

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It is true that the oft cited contradictions in Jack London produced decided flaws in his social philosophy and ultimately weakened his attachment to the main source of strength in American life, the people themselves. And from page 36: From them [Spencer, Kidd, Haeckel] he did obtain, however, pseudo-scientific justification for the most serious flaw in his thinking—the doctrine of white supremacy, a doctrine which was to remain with him to the end of his life. One of the persistently recurring themes in London's stories is the supremacy over all other peoples of the white man. T h e historians of literature have apparently accepted this judgment and have fallen neatly into line. For example, Willard T h o r p decries this belief of London's (American Writers on the Left, p. 603): He [London] boasted that he was a socialist and he gave generously to the cause, but he got what socialism he had through personal contacts and desultory reading, and his naturalism (with its ugly implication for Nordic superiority) was always at war with it. And Maxwell Geismer, in Rebels and Ancestors (Cambridge, 1953), follows right along, using the correct phrases. From page 214: But the equally barbaric race thinking of the 1900's whose foremost literary exponent London himself became—and those distorted principles of social Darwinism which became, during the epoch such a fundamental part of middle class thought in the United States—was from the very start the rationale of an economic struggle.

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Actually, as we shall see, London's concept of race was much more complex than these quotations would indicate, and he is in complete agreement both with the founders of communism and with modern Soviet secret doctrine, even if the agreement must now be denied publicly. Organic evolution made a profound impression on London. In fact, it was the real basis of his personal philosophy and it furnished the core for the majority of his short stories and novels. More than any other writer of the twentieth century, he was concerned with what had brought man into being and with the forces of nature that had shaped him and his society. In fact, his overall biological orientation so directed his imaginative writings that the majority of his stories would have been pointless without it. He was also, as we have indicated, an orthodox Marxian socialist. Now, the amalgamation of socialism with Marx's doctrine of evolution comes out as Marxian biology, but, in London's case, with important qualifications. London was intellectually honest and logical, and his beliefs were always in accord with his information. He never discarded any idea of importance for the mere reason that it disturbed his tranquility or his philosophy. He was always able to change his philosophical concepts as his knowledge increased and, as long as he lived, he never ceased to grow. He could not limit his thinking arbitrarily as Marx did, and thus his biology was never as limited as Marx's was. But evolution, as he understood it, was always compatible with the ideal of a collectivistic society. The evolution he believed in, however, was very different from the evolution theory of today. As we have stated, London thought very clearly and honestly, but there were serious gaps in his information. His education was sporadic and defective. Most of what he learned, he got through an insatiable thirst for promiscuous

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reading. When we evaluate his biological beliefs, we should take into consideration that his sources were pre-Weismannian, and that most of his own published work appeared as early as the first decade of this century. It is true that he makes one reference to Weismann in his novel Before Adam (1906), but the passage shows that he had missed entirely the meaning of Weismann's work. In fact, he got the meaning exactly reversed but this was a layman's technical error. We should never underestimate the influence of Jack London's biology on the thinking of the intelligentsia of forty years ago. It helped to spread the impression that Darwin and Marx somehow were linked geniuses, that they were fellow scientists, whose evolutionary thoughts had placed man and his society on a new intellectual basis. Both the biological and the social sciences seemed to be opening new intellectual vistas, and the progressive circles of the time assumed that the Darwinian and Marxian trends were in harmony and that the biology of Darwin agreed with and even supported the Marxian theory of society. It might appear at first glance that we would have real difficulty in discovering just what London believed about evolution. A story teller, of course, has the privilege of dreaming up any kind of a universe that fits the exigencies of his tale, nor does he have to believe in the reality of what his imagination has created. He may believe that he himself lives in a very different world, a real world. With Jack London, however, the difficulty does not arise. He looked upon himself as a realist, as one who wrote of real life—of nature in the raw. His biological world was self-consistent and it always corresponded in all its details with the knowledge of the nineteenth-century scientists who were his mentors. He tried to describe life as he saw and understood it. True,

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the evolution he believed in was very romantic and full of dramatic clashes, of thrilling struggles between heroes and villains, between prophets and atavisms, but his characters were always real—at least to their creator. The people he wrote of and plots he devised are also consistent with the preWeismannian concept of evolution. London accepted the inheritance of acquired characters and even made it the focal point of his doctrine of evolution. He even went further than most of the Lamarckians and accepted Samuel Butler's belief in inherited memory, or, as he liked to call it, "racial memory." Indeed, without racial memory, his concept of evolution would have been dull and anemic and lacking in those romantic overtones which were so useful to him as a teller of tales. London recorded his belief in racial memory in many short stories; it even furnished the theme for several of his longer works. This use of racial memory, moreover, was no mere literary convention, no mere technique for getting a story told. It appears over and over again, and in many places where it serves no purpose of purely literary composition. London stated his belief precisely in White Fang (1905), the romance of a wolf who developed into a contented friend and ally of man: The cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his. In dim ways he recognized in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the other animals of the Wild. Not alone out of his own eyes, but out of the eyes of all his ancestors was the cub now looking upon man—out of the eyes that had circled in darkness around countless winter campfires, that had peered from safe distances and from the hearts of thickets at the strange, two-legged animal that was lord over living things. The spell of the cub's heritage was upon him, the fear and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated experiences

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of the generations. The heritage was too compelling for a wolf that was only a cub. Had he been full-grown, he would have run away. As it was, he cowered down in a paralysis of fear, already half proffering the submission that his kind had proffered from the first time a wolf came in to sit by a man's fire and be made warm. T w o years earlier, London had described a transition the reverse of White Fang's, that of Buck, a dog, who became the leader of a wolf pack. Here, the inherited memory furnished the real theme of the story and was expressed in its famous title, The Call of the Wild (1903): He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams. There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more frequently now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in the other world which he remembered. London published Before Adam in 1906. Here, he used inherited memory as a device for telling a tale of prehistoric

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times in the first person. Here, also, he recorded his belief in detail: This, my professor told me, was a racial memory. It dated back to our remote ancestors who lived in trees. With them, being tree-dwellers, the liability of falling was an ever-present menace. Many lost their lives that way; all of them experienced terrible falls, saving themselves by clutching branches as they fell toward the ground. Now a terrible fall, averted in such a fashion, was productive of shock. Such shock was productive of molecular changes in the cerebral cells. These molecular changes were transmitted to the cerebral cells of progeny, became, in short, racial memories. Thus, when you and I, asleep or dozing off to sleep, fall through space and awake to sickening consciousness just before we strike, we are merely remembering what happened to our arboreal ancestors, and which has been stamped by cerebral changes into the heredity of the race. There is nothing strange in this, any more than there is anything strange in an instinct. An instinct is merely a habit that is stamped into the stuff of our heredity, that is all. It will be noted, in passing, that in this falling dream which is so familiar to you and me and all of us, we never strike bottom. To strike bottom would be destruction. Those of our arboreal ancestors who struck bottom died forthwith. True, the shock of their fall was communicated to the cerebral cells, but they died immediately, before they could have progeny. You and I are descended from those that did not strike bottom; that is why you and I, in our dreams, never strike bottom. According to London, racial memory, not metempsychosis, gives us those brief glimpses of another life. This is shown clearly in the following passage, also taken from Before Adam. On the other hand, in Star Rover, published in 1915, London is somewhat ambiguous and the point is not made explicit, and in this latter work metempsychosis can also

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explain the memories recovered by the hero through the suspension of animation: I do believe that it is the possession of this other-personality— but not so strong a one as mine—that has in some few others given rise to belief in personal reincarnation experiences. It is very plausible to such people, a most convincing hypothesis. When they have visions of scenes they have never seen in the flesh, memories of acts and events dating back in time, the simplest explanation is that they have lived before. But they make the mistake of ignoring their own duality. They do not recognize their other-personality. They think it is their own personality, that they have only one personality; and from such a premise they can conclude only that they have lived previous lives. But they are wrong. It is not reincarnation. I have visions of myself roaming through the forests of the Younger World; and yet it is not myself that I see but one that is only remotely a part of me, as my father and my grandfather are parts of me less remote. This other-self of mine is an ancestor, a progenitor of my progenitors in the early line of my race, himself the progeny of a line that long before his time developed fingers and toes and climbed up into the trees. Two peculiar errors of London's will have to be recognized before we can get an accurate picture of his background in science. His biology is strictly the biology of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel, and others of their time. He knew the names of later workers, but he never understood the implications of their work. He even cited Weismann to prove the inheritance of acquired characters, missing entirely the consequences of the distinction between soma and germ plasm. From Before Adam: This medium is what Weismann terms 'germplasm.' It carries memories of the whole evolution of the race. These memories are

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dim and confused, and many of them are lost. But some strains of germplasm carry an excessive freightage of memories—are, to be scientific, more atavistic than other strains. And, in the Star Rover, he stated (and would Mendel have been surprised?): I am all of my past as every protagonist of the Mendelian law must agree. All my previous selves have their voices, echoes, promptings in me. For London, the inheritance of acquired characters justified socialism. Obviously, a competitive economic system, a laissez-faire economy, provided copious opportunity for personal failures and the failures, together with their families, would degenerate supposedly whenever they sank into unfavorable environments. T h e evil effects of these h u m a n degradations, he believed, would become incorporated in the race. Thus, to him, capitalism was disgenic and if the race were ever to realize its evolutionary potential, capitalism would have to be superceded by a more eugenic system. In The People of the Abyss (1903), he described the racial deterioration of those English who had been forced down into the slums by the competition of their more vigorous countrymen. His pictures of the city's dregs, of course, were shocking on purely moralistic grounds; but he believed that the real dangers of the slums and of living in them were biological. H e even printed the photograph of a London waif and labeled it A Descendant of Sea Kings. T h e following quotations are taken from the edition of 1906. From page 45: At the best, city life is an unnatural life for the human; but the city life of London is so utterly unnatural that the average workman or workwoman cannot stand it. Mind and body are

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sapped by the undermining influences ceaselessly at work. Moral and physical stamina are broken, and the good workman, fresh from the soil, becomes in the first city generation a poor workman; and by the second city generation, devoid of push and go and initiative, and actually unable physically to perform the labor his father did, he is well on the way to the shambles at the bottom of the Abyss. And yet the quality of the life is good. All human potentialities are in it. Given proper conditions, it could live through the centuries, and great men, heroes and masters, spring from it and make the world better by having lived. F r o m page 184: T h e true British merchant seaman has passed away. T h e merchant service is no longer a recruiting ground for such sea dogs as fought with Nelson at Trafalgar and the Nile. Foreigners, largely man the merchant ships, though Englishmen still continue to officer them and to prefer foreigners for'ard. In South Africa the colonial teaches the Islander how to shoot, and the officers muddle and blunder; while at home the street people play hysterically at mafficking, and the War Office lowers the stature for enlistment. I t could not be otherwise. T h e most complacent Britisher cannot hope to draw oS the life blood, and underfeed, and keep it up forever. London was aware, however, that factors other than Lamarckian were also at work. U n l i k e the Communists of today, he did not feel it necessary to deny natural selection in order to save his socialism. T o him, as to the biologists who lived a half century earlier, both Lamarckian and Darwinian factors seemed responsible for human evolution. F r o m page 177: A glance at the confirmed inefficients at the bottom demonstrates that they are, as a rule, mental, physical and moral wrecks.

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T h e exceptions to the rule are the late arrivals, who are merely very inefficient, and upon whom the wrecking process is just beginning to operate. All the forces here, it must be remembered, are destructive. T h e good body (which is there because its brain is not quick and capable) is speedily wrenched and twisted out of shape; the clean mind (which is there because of its weak body) is speedily fouled and contaminated. The mortality is excessive, but, even then, they die far too lingering deaths. Here, then, we have the construction of the Abyss and the shambles. Throughout the whole industrial fabric a constant elimination is going on. The inefficient are weeded out and flung downward. Various things constitute inefficiency. London did not even feel it necessary to deny ex cathedra a biological difference in the social classes. From page 220: Class supremacy can rest only on class degradation; and when the workers are segregated in the Ghetto, they cannot escape the consequent degradation. A short and stunted people is created— a breed strikingly differentiated from their masters' breed, a pavement folk, as it were, lacking stamina and strength. The men become caricatures of what physical men ought to be, and their women and children are pale and anaemic, with eyes ringed darkly, who stoop and slouch, and are early twisted out of all shapeliness and beauty. T h e last two quotations show that London believed in the efficacy of natural selection as well as in the inheritance of acquired characters. If he had believed in the inheritance of acquired characters only, he would not have noted the selectivity of the slums. If he had accepted natural selection alone, he might have looked very logically upon the Abyss as a benefit to the English race in spite of its inhumanity ( " T h e y die far too lingering deaths"); for it would then have appeared as a gigantic culling machine which, by extirpating the stupid and the clumsy, would raise the average of the

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rest. But London believed in both factors, for he could not ignore any of the evidence which was available to him. His information was very fragmentary, however, by our present standards. Marx and Engels had accepted natural selection in part. Marx had even written (January 16, 1861): "Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis of natural selection for the class struggle in history," but Marx had denounced Malthus and any selective action of population pressure. London, on the other hand, recognized what the overproduction of people could mean and in a remarkable story, The Unparalleled Invasion (1910), which he placed in the future (i.e., 1976 A.D.), he told how China started to expand and how the Chinese people engulfed and displaced their neighbors, only to be exterminated by the rest of the world which united against them. Incidentally, London described the liquidation of the Chinese through the use of biological warfare. T o London, the struggle for existence was inherent in nature, but he thought that it would result ultimately in peace and progress. He described the struggle for existence clearly in The Call of the Wild: . . . He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed. In The Sea-Wolf (1903), London described one of his herovillains, Wolf Larsen, who was, as such characters should be,

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a Nietzschean atavism, strong, brutal, and savage. Larsen gave his concept of life precisely: Ί believe that life is a mess,' he answered promptly. 'It is like a yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. T h e big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. T h e lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?' And, a little later in the story: 'Not the least bit. Might is right, and that is all there is to it. Weakness is wrong. Which is a very poor way of saying that it is good for oneself to be strong, and evil for oneself to be weak—or better yet, it is pleasurable to be strong, because of the profits; painful to be weak, because of the penalties. Just now the possession of this money is a pleasurable thing. It is good for one to possess it. Being able to possess it, I wrong myself and the life that is in me if I give it to you and forego the pleasure of possessing it.' 'But you wrong me by withholding it,' I objected. 'Not at all. One man cannot wrong another man. He can only wrong himself. As I see it, I do wrong always when I consider the interests of others. Don't you see? How can two particles of the yeast wrong each other by striving to devour each other? It is their inborn heritage to strive to devour, and to strive not to be devoured. When they depart from this they sin.' T h e narrator of the story, who represents the author in part, passes judgment on Larsen as follows: . . . He was certainly a handsome man—beautiful in the masculine sense. And again, with never-failing wonder, I remarked the total lack of viciousness, or wickedness, or sinfulness, in his face. It was the face, I am convinced, of a man who did no wrong.

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And by this I do not wish to be misunderstood. What I mean is that it was the face of a man who either did nothing contrary to the dictates of his conscience, or who had no conscience. I am inclined to the latter way of accounting for it. He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely primitive that he was of the type that came into the world before the development of the moral nature. H e was not immoral, but merely unmoral. T h u s far, the biology of L o n d o n may seem a far cry f r o m the biology of Marx. L o n d o n had not felt called upon to deny the struggle f o r existence, or to flinch f r o m its consequences. H e pursued the idea to its final conclusion and found that it ultimately led to salvation. It is true that he admired, even worshipped, strength, but he had learned that strength was increased by co-operation, by union. T h e atavistic individual, the lone wolf, was truly a hero, but a tragic hero w h o was doomed to extinction. T h e

well-integrated

group was stronger than any individual could ever be. I n The

Strength

of the Strong

(1908), he spelled out this idea

in detail and drew the usual socialistic moral. T h o s e w h o cooperated w o n because they were the fit. T h e social virtues, altruism, co-operation—even self-sacrifice—were justified biologically f o r they made gregarious living possible and the strength of the strong was the strength of the group. L o n d o n believed in the class struggle as much as M a r x did; and he also, like Marx, considered that a non-violent revolution was a silly perversion and that the socialists w h o believed in it were stupid and mistaken. I n a letter written a f e w months before his death, he resigned f r o m the Socialist party because it fell into reformism and was losing its militancy: . . . M y fighting record in the Cause is not, even at this late date, already entirely forgotten. Trained in the class struggle, as

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taught and practiced by the Socialist Labor Party, my own highest judgment concurring, I believed that the working class, by fighting, by never fusing, by never making terms with the enemy, could emancipate itself. Since the whole trend of Socialism in the United States during recent years has been one of peaceableness and compromise, I find that my mind refuses further sanction of my remaining a party member. Hence, my resignation. L o n d o n was always a consistent enemy of the bourgeois ideal. H e never believed in competition per se and he saw one point clearly which the social-Darwinians had missed. H e saw that adaptation or fitness depends upon the surrounding conditions and that evolution always proceeds differently in different environments. In What Communities Lose by the Competitive System (1900), he stated that natural selection would always function, u n d e r any and all conditions, b u t u n d e r some circumstances its results would be lamentable. In fact, his basic objection to capitalism lay in his belief that it favored a n d gave survival value to a mean and ignoble type. "Commercial selection means race prostitution, and if continued, race deterioration." Capitalism, thus, was disgenic, b u t L o n d o n was far too honest to assume that a Marxian society automatically produced biological health. H e stated the problem clearly and p u t it u p to the socialists directly in Wanted: A New Law of Development (1902). It is interesting to compare his frank challenge to the socialist ideology with the usual anti-scientific evasions of the environmentalists: And likewise, when the common man's day will have arrived, the new social institutions of that day will prevent the weeding out of weakness and inefficiency. All, the weak and the strong, will have an equal chance for procreation. And the progeny of all, of the weak as well as the strong, will have an equal chance for survival. This being so, and if no new effective law of develop-

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ment be put into operation, then progress must cease. And not only progress, for there is high probability that deterioration would set in. It is a pregnant problem. What will be the nature of this new and most necessary law of development? Can the common man pause long enough from his undermining labors to answer? Since he is bent upon dragging down the bourgeoisie and reconstructing society, can he so reconstruct that a premium, in some unguessed way or other, will still be laid on the strong and efficient so that the human type will continue to develop? Can the common man, or the uncommon men who are allied with him, devise such a law? Or have they already devised one? And if so, what is it? The answer rests with the common man. Dare he answer? It is Jack London's attitude toward race which the Marxians now find most embarrassing. Not that London is at all un-Marxian—the contrary is true—and this is what is embarrassing. Marx and Engels are frankly racists, as we have recorded (pp. 109 ff.). In fact, they had to be racists because of their belief in the inheritance of acquired characters. Anyone who accepts this type of inheritance must believe in the existence of superior races (those who have lived in good environments) and of inferior races (those who have lived in bad environments). London, however, published his beliefs openly and honestly, and for this he is condemned. He is guilty of "Racism," "White Chauvinism," and several other bad words. True, he does admire the "blond beast" of Nietzsche (as an atavism), and he was greatly impressed with the record of the white race. He also drew the line between good and bad races, and his good stocks were very good indeed and his bad stocks were quite depraved. Moreover, he was very precise as to the races he admired and those for whom he had only contempt. In Adventure (1911), he discussed the human races and their evolutionary progress in

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great detail. It is interesting to learn just where he drew his racial lines—which races he considered good and which bad— and how greatly his racial standards differed from those of the Nazis. H e did not believe in just one master race but in many different superior stocks. All who had evolved sufficiently were good—much better, of course, than those whose evolution had been arrested. For example, he drew his line right between the Polynesian and the Melanesian races. T h e former were real gentlemen and ladies, the latter little better than apes. In its broader aspects, however, his idea of racial inequality coincided almost completely with that held by today's leading Communists, for the Communists today have to believe in the inheritance of acquired characters. W e have the expert testimony of H. J . Muller as to just what the Communists really think about the breeds which they hope to convert to their way of life. Naturally, their beliefs are not advertised and are even, for tactful purposes, denied. T h e following passage is taken from Professor Muller's presidential address to the Eighth International Congress of Genetics, delivered on July 7, 1948: The disastrous effect which the Lamarckianism of the official creed must be having through its application of unscientific principles in the breeding of cultivated plants and domestic animals is evident to all geneticists. What is not so well known is the dangerous interpretation of genetics in man to which this doctrine leads. T o understand this, a few facts of the history of a dozen years ago may be recounted. Before it was decided to call off the Seventh International Genetics Congress that had been scheduled to be held in 1937 in the USSR, it had been proposed to allow it, provided all sessions and papers dealing with man were eliminated. At about the same time, the plans for a volume which was being prepared by leading geneticists of the world, designed to refute the Nazi racist doctrines, were abandoned. T h e

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clue was given when one of the men highest in the administration of applications of biological science, the head of agriculture in the Party, still asserted, even after having presided at most of the 1936 controversy on genetics, that evolution could not have occurred without the inheritance of acquired characteristics. On hearing this remark, the present writer asked the administrator whether this doctrine would not imply that the colonial, minority, and primitive peoples, those who had had less chance for mental and physical development, were not also genetically less advanced than the dominant ones. 'Ah, yes,' he replied in confidential manner, and after some hesitation, 'yes, we must admit that this is after all true. They are in fact inferior to us biologically in every respect, including their heredity. And that,' he added, 'is in fact the official doctrine.' T h e word 'official' here was his, although the italics are ours. And at this point we may interject the question 'Just who could be more official on this subject than this particular individual?' T h e answer to this seems clear. 'But,' continued our authority, 'after two or three generations of living under conditions of Socialism, their genes would have so improved that then we would all be equal.' (Italics again ours.) Here the cat is out of the bag. T h e Nazis, according to this confession, would be in large part right after all, although not completely so. But 'we,' the upholders of the 'official' doctrine, must not let the people, the masses, know about that, for it would cause them to doubt our sincerity, and so we must by all means avoid any airing of the subject and deny such statements if they are made. And then finally, after a few generations, the difficulty will have passed away, and genetics in man can be left to take care of itself. London's views on race are now lamented by the faithful and denounced as a very serious flaw in an otherwise admirable character. N o explanation is ever given of how this flaw arose in such a consistent Marxian as London. It just

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exists, and must be deplored. London's belief was self-consistent and logical and in keeping with his information. Its basic unity and logical coherence have generally been missed or, when understood by the Marxians, denied. London was really an aristocrat, and he believed firmly in aristocracy. This may seem odd in view of his class origin. His father was an itinerant astrologer, his mother a spiritualist. When he was eight months old, his mother married a migrant worker and farmer. As a child, he Avas often hungry. He became an unskilled worker, a hobo, a tramp, sailor, oyster pirate, etc. He really struggled up from the abyss he later depicted so eloquently. How then could he be an aristocrat? Needless to say, London's ideal aristocrats were not those of Tennyson. T o him an aristocrat was not one who was descended in the direct male line from a Crusader. His aristocrat was a man of strong muscles and clear brain, a man on the main line of evolution, a member of a highly evolved clan or even race, a man who was a natural leader of his fellows and who had evolved a great way beyond such a primitive atavism as Wolf Larsen. T h e hero of The Iron Heel (1907) is the type specimen of London's aristocrat. Ernest Everhard (notice the name!) is described by the heroine of the novel as follows: I have said he was afraid of nothing. He was a natural aristocrat—and this in spite of the fact that he was in the camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a superman, a blond beast such as Nietzsche has described and in addition he was aflame with democracy. London was a socialist because of his belief in aristocracy and because he saw in labor the raw material for aristocracy. Also, he recognized social Darwinism as a biological perversion. T h e labor leader was his aristocrat par excellence.

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Healthy laborers already had aristocratic muscles and, when properly educated, would develop aristocratic brains. T h e very struggle for their rights, if won, would insure that labor was worthy. In his letter of resignation from the Socialist party he stated: My final word is that liberty, freedom and independence are royal things that cannot be presented to nor thrust upon race or class. If races and classes cannot rise up and by their own strength of brain and brawn, wrest from the world liberty, freedom and independence, they never in time can come to these royal possessions . . . and if such royal things are kindly presented to them by superior individuals, on silver platters, they will not know what to do with them, will fail to make use of them, and will be what they have always been in the past . . . inferior races and inferior classes. Obviously, London would not have made a good social worker. H e was able, however, to harmonize the biology he knew with the requirements of the collectivistic society which he envisioned for the future. H e also had a tremendous influence on the social thinking of his generation. Today, much of his biology is rather ostentatiously deplored by the Marxians and probably sincerely rejected by those who are happier when they exclude themselves from the biological world.

§6 George Bernard Shaw is probably more responsible than any other single writer for the spread of Marxian biology among the intelligentsia, and he has done more, possibly, than any other man to isolate them from any real knowledge of the science itself. H e was witty, popular, an "advanced thinker," and a good Marxian. As a m e m b e r of the Fabian society and an intimate of the founding theoreticians of the

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British Labour party, he was naturally in touch with current socialist doctrines. As a successful and famous playwright and a leading advocate of socialism in Britain, he did much to make the doctrine reputable intellectually. Better than most, he realized that the rationality of the Marxian doctrines depended upon certain biological postulates, and he attacked that part of the science which cast doubt upon their validity. He assailed biology both violently and disingenuously, but he was so misinformed that he was able to influence only those who were ignorant of the subject. Among the intelligentsia of the world, however, his influencees are still in the majority. Throughout his entire career—and he lived to be ninetythree—he evinced an all-inclusive innocence of scientific standards and a complete inability to judge science fairly or to accept or reject scientific concepts on the basis of their available evidence.® Through some emotional quirk, he was impelled to resent bitterly a number of the advances made in scientific medicine, so much so, in fact, that he was a natural prey of quacks during the greater part of his life. H e became a vegetarian, an anti-vivisectionist, and an anti-vaccinationist. His play, The Doctor's Dilemma, attacks and misrepresents the medical profession. His dislike extended ο Blanche Patch, his secretary, records in Thirty Years with G. B. S. (London, 1951), p. 96: "I have told how he joined the British Interplanetary Society, aiming at the moon; and he was quite serious about the possibilities not only of doing the trip but of finding the moon inhabitated at the end of it. Established physicists he regarded with scorn, attaching no importance to the view usually put forward by 'our professional biologists and physicists' that the limits of temperature to which life is subject on this planet are universal limits." From page 191: "Moreover, the theory of the survival of the fittest was disturbing to Shaw's entire economic argument: for, he asked, did it not transform the competitive system itself into something 'positively scientific'? T h e giraffe, G.B.S. agreed, got its long neck by stretching it toward the tender tree tops and wishing it into existence."

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even to hospitals, for his secretary for thirty years, Blanche Patch, has recorded 7 what he wrote to a correspondent who asked his advice concerning giving a hospital some money: Radium treatment was not discovered by 'the Research people,' whose activities had had the effect of distracting attention and diverting funds from fruitful and essentially noble work in physics to useless enquiries and the pseudo-bacteriology which assumes that God made typhoid and tetanus bacilli, and duly let them loose in the Garden of Eden to be named by Adam along with the other animals. The silly people don't even know their own silly business. I assure you the Bible Society is a far worthier market for spare cash than the Research Societies. Bible science, such as it is, is sounder than the science of Pasteur and Lister, and is now much less blinder believed in. Shaw obviously held that science a n d religion were in conflict in spite of his attempt to synthesize a new scientific religion; and in the fields where they clashed, he definitely preferred religion. In this, at least, he was most un-Marxian. Religion is always right. Religion solves every problem and thereby abolishes problems from the Universe. Religion gives us certainty, stability, peace, and the absolutes. It protects us against that progress which we all dread. Science is the very opposite. Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without raising ten more problems. 8 B u t Shaw's objections to science were not merely due to the fact that it conflicted with his religion, even though it stood in direct opposition to the religion he invented and named "Creative Evolution" a n d which was an outgrowth of his "metabiology." H e also resented the fact that science 7 Ibid., p. 182. 8 Ibid.., p. 193. Shaw did not realize, of course, that if science solved problems without raising new ones, its progress would cease.

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conflicted with his many odd escapist devices and cure-all nostrums and that good scientists were generally impolite to quacks. E m o t i o n a l l y he sided with the charlatans, e.g., " I n the same way doctors who are up-to-date (say .00005 percent of all the registered practitioners and 20 percent of the unregistered ones) . . . " 9 H e even consulted charlatans on his own: Charlotte [Mrs. Shaw], who had a healthy scepticism for these strange treatments, was horrified when G. B. S. and I went to see the doctor who had the Abram's box, a device with quite a passing vogue in the United States. In a darkened room a specimen of the patient's blood was put on a slide; an indicator then diagnosed the illness, and treatment was thereupon prescribed. Shaw was treated five or six time, and either his boils were vanishing anyhow or the treatment indicated speeded them out of his system. 10 Shaw simply did not know what scientific evidence was. H e records the fact that when he was a child and was told that the family dog and parrot were not creatures like himself but brutes, he did not believe it. Later, when he heard of Darwin's views, he stated promptly that he had found that all out for himself before he was ten. H e had learned it apparently through his friendship with the dog and parrot; and " I am far from sure that my youthful arrogance was not justified." T h e proof that species had originated from other species which Darwin assembled so laboriously seemed to h i m useless. I t was just wasted effort. If very few of us have read the Origin of Species from end to end, it is not because it overtaxes our mind, but because we take in the whole case and are prepared to accept it long before we 9 Back to Methuselah, p. xiii. 10 Blanche Patch, op. cit., p. 65.

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have come to the end of the innumerable instances and illustrations of which the book mainly consists. Darwin becomes tedious in the manner of a man who insists on continuing to prove his innocence after he has been acquitted. You assure him that there is not a stain on his character, and beg him to leave the court; but he will not be content with enough evidence: he will have you listen to all the evidence that exists in the world.11 One would hardly infer from the above that Shaw had rejected utterly—even violently—Darwin's use of natural selection to explain evolution, or had even sought to discredit Darwin's explanation by a bit of word magic—by labeling natural selection "Circumstantial Selection." Even if he had read all the way through the Origin of Species, it would probably have made little difference. Scientific evidence just meant nothing to him at all. At no place in what he called his "biological pentateuch" did he feel the need of citing any data whatever. As we have stated, Shaw's biology and the biology of Marx and Engels came together and ended in exactly the same doctrine. Shaw, however, did not get his biology from the founders of communism. He started from entirely different postulates and he traveled a different road; but he, Marx, and Engels arrived at the same destination. He was a vitalist while the founders of communism were materialists; he was a teleologist, while for Marx and Engels the chief value of natural selection was that it allowed them to escape from teleology. Shaw was a complete Lamarckian, a disciple of Samuel Butler, and as naive an environmentalist as any of our present-day sociologists. Although Shaw scattered his biology throughout his plays where it can be found in the conversation of his various characters, we can spot, identify, and collect it easily. He also 11 Back to Methuselah,

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organized and presented it as a complete system in those of his works wherein he developed his religion of Creative Evolution. T h e first of these, chronologically, was Man and Superman (1903), but the significance of this opus was, as he claimed, missed by the general public. Consisting as it does of (1) the Preface, (2) the Play itself, including the famous Dream of Hell, (3) the Revolutionists' Handbook, and (4) Maxims for Revolutionists, it was far too brilliant a tour de force, as he himself admitted, to be very effective. Later, he published his Back to Methuselah (1920), where his doctrines were presented explicitly and in such a way that they could not be missed—even by the Shavians. T h e Preface to this latter play is little more than a treatise on Shaw's metabiology. In fact, he states that the play itself was written so that the work would reach a wider audience than he could reach by a mere biological tract. T h e play naturally contains numerous bits of his biological doctrines, but it is in the Preface that his whole biology, his "Creative Evolution," is spelled out in detail. No series of excerpts nor any bit of paraphrasing could do justice to the biology of this work. By the biologists, at least, it has to be seen to be believedl T h e whole should be read unaltered, just as Shaw wrote it, and when his works are finally in the public domain, it should be reprinted in some history of biology with only a few irrelevant passages omitted. Only in this way shall we ever get an adequate concept of the doctrines that helped to insulate the science of biology from those circles which revered Shaw as a deep and penetrating thinker. Shaw accepted Lamarckism completely and made it the very basis of his biology. On the other hand, he misrepresented and condemned natural selection, though he admitted that such selection cannot be refuted finally and logically. "When a man tells you that you are a product of Circum-

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stantial Selection solely, you cannot finally disprove it. You can only tell him out of the depths of your inner conviction that he is a fool and a liar. But this, though British, is uncivil, it is wiser to offer him the counter-assurance that you are the product of Lamarckian evolution . . ." (p. Iv). Later on, on the same page, he stated: " T h e stultification and damnation which ensued are illustrated by a comparison of the ease and certainty with which Butler's mind moved to humane and inspiring conclusions with the grotesque stupidities and cruelties of the idle and silly controversy which arose among the Darwinians as to whether acquired habits can be transmitted from parents to offspring." Weismann, of course, he censured and condemned, and he ridiculed and misrepresented the experiment of cutting off the tails of rats as if it were the experiment which caused the neo-Darwinians to reject Lamarck (see above, p. 125). "Such amazing blindness and stupidity on the part of a man [Weismann] who was naturally neither blind nor stupid is a telling illustration of what Darwin unintentionally did to the minds of his disciples by turning their attention so exclusively to the part played in Evolution by accident and violence operating with entire callousness to suffering and sentiment. A vital concept of Evolution would have taught Weismann that biological problems are not to be solved by assaults on mice." T h e Russians themselves could hardly condemn Weismann more eloquently or misrepresent his contributions more completely. Shaw was also misinformed as to Darwin. It was a mere piece of one-eyedness, and it was Darwin who put out Weismann's humane and sensible eye. He blinded many another eye and paralyzed many another will also. Ever since he set up Circumstantial Selection as the creator and ruler of the universe, the scientific world has been the very citadel of stupidity and cruelty. Fearful as the tribal god of the Hebrews was, nobody

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ever shuddered as they passed even his meanest and narrowest Little Bethel or his proudest war-consecrated cathedral as we shudder now when we pass a physiological laboratory . . . Darwin proclaimed that our true relation is that of competitors and combatants in a struggle for mere survival, and that every act of pity or loyalty to the old fellowship is a vain and mischievous attempt to lessen the severity of the struggle and preserve inferior varieties from the efforts of Nature to weed them out. O n e more reference to Weismann, one Lysenko himself could not better: "Weismann, a very clever and suggestive biologist, who was unhappily reduced to idiocy by NeoDarwinism." (p. xviii). According to Shaw, Neo-Darwinism was not only an inh u m a n and stupid biological doctrine, it was also responsible for World W a r I: "Neo-Darwinism in politics had produced a European catastrophe of a magnitude so appalling and a scope so unpredictable that, as I write these lines in 1920, it is still far from certain whether o u r civilization will survive it." (p. x). Neo-Darwinism also held out no hope for the f u t u r e as is shown by the following passage, a passage which, incidentally, has often been duplicated in the discussions in the Russian Academies when the Marxian line in biology was being drawn according to specifications. Shaw and the Russians show the identical misapprehension of what natural selection actually implies: What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the Neo-Darwinians, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement can come only through senseless accident which must on the statistical average of accidents be presently wiped out by other equally senseless accidents. Shaw was also like the Russians in his use of the "wave of the f u t u r e " propaganda technique, even to the misstate-

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ments of fact. T h e band-wagon appeal of the following excerpts is obvious: Nowadays, when we are turning in weary disgust from NeoDarwinism and Mechanism to Vitalism and Creative Evolution . . . (p· xxxv). Even now when Butler's eminence is unchallenged, and his biographer, Mr. Festing Jones, is enjoying a vogue like that of Boswell or Lockhart . . . (p. Iii). But a thorough-going Weismannite, if any still survive from those mad days . . . (p. liv). Since the discovery of Evolution as the method of the Life Force, the religion of metaphysical Vitalism has been gaining the definiteness and concreteness needed to make it assimilable by the educated critical man . . . (p. lxxxii). Creative Evolution is already a religion and is indeed now unmistakably the religion of the twentieth century, newly arisen from the ashes of pseudo-Christianity . . . (p. xc). Such quotations as the above could be continued almost indefinitely, for Shaw wrote an enormous volume of words. We shall have to stop, however, at some arbitrary point. So just one final quotation, also taken from the Preface to Back to Methuselah! It is entitled: "A sample of Lamarcko-Shavian Invective"; it was composed in 1906 but included in the Preface in 1920. Shaw apparently did not want it lost. From pages Ixi-lxii: I really do not wish to be abusive: but when I think of these poor little dullards the Neo-Darwinians, with their precarious hold of just that corner of evolution that a black-beetle can understand—with their retinue of twopenny-half-penny Torquenadas wallowing in the infamies of the vivisector's laboratory and solemnly offering us as epoch-making discoveries their demonstrations that dogs get weaker and die if you give them no food; that intense pain makes mice sweat; and that if you cut off a dog's

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leg the three-legged dog will have a four-legged puppy, I ask myself what spell has fallen on intelligent and humane men that they allow themselves to be imposed on by this rabble of dolts, blackguards, imposters, quacks, liars, and, worst of all, credulous conscientious fools. Better a thousand times Moses and Spurgeon [a then famous preacher] back again. After all you cannot understand Moses without imagination nor Spurgeon without metaphysics; but you can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience or decency. For Natural Selection has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live. T h i s is better even than anything Lysenko has written, for Lysenko lacked Shaw's facility with language. It also gives us an excellent view of Shaw's intellectual and scientific standards and helps us get a picture of his followers, the Shavians—the members of the cult who consider him a Great Mind, a real T h i n k e r . 1 2 12 Blanche Patch, op. cit., p. 243, cites Shaw's record as a prophet: "Nor can anyone have gained a name as prophet on a more slender achievement. H e was wrong about the two wars: Kitchener's estimate of three years for the one which lasted four was 'soldierly but not very sensible,' and he wrote to the Times demonstrating how the nex. yiad been made impossible by the 1939 pact between Russians and Germans. He assured me too, as I have noted earlier, that the Germans would not bomb London, and in 1942 he was certain that the war must end in a negotiated settlement. He was equally in error with lesser predictions, like the fate of the Jews in Palestine, the chances of the boxer Dempsey, and the future of Winston Churchill (who was going to fade away when the Party System came back)."

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§7 By this time, it should be evident that those who get their biology at second, third, or fourth-hand from the writings of the poets, story tellers, and playwrights get a biology that has little in common with the science of today. They acquire a complex of beliefs, however, which may approximate biology as it was once understood. But even when an allowance is made for the time required for the passage of knowledge from scientist to layman, all of the defects in their information are not explained, because all that they learn has also been filtered through a great deal of artistic temperament and that which does not come through the filter is simply lost. If, in addition, the information has to be transmitted through a Marxian ideology, it certainly could not arrive either sound or whole. Under such circumstances, the warped and distorted notions that pass for biology in the literary world cannot protect our men of letters against Communist propaganda. On the contrary, the background of their thinking should be favorable for an easy conversion to some form or other of the Marxian doctrine. In this connection, it is worth noting that Communist schools are not greatly concerned with spreading communism directly, but spend most of their efforts in giving their pupils a picture of life and society that is compatible with the Communist ideology. When all knowledge incompatible with the doctrines of Marx has been explained away or denounced as false, the conversion to communism is expected to follow routinely. T h e debt of Marxism to belles lettres is great—but here we are concerned only with the effects of the almost universal adoption of Marxian biology by the litterateurs. W e should emphasize, however, that until the last few years, very little of this biology came directly from the founders of commu-

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nism themselves, and almost all of it deviates in some respect from the present party line. But it still remains Marxian in all essentials, and its tenets are, in the last analysis, compatible with the presuppositions of a Communist society. T h e work of the three writers we have chosen to illustrate this warped complex of doctrines shows both their deviations from the science and the compatibility of their literary biology with the Marxian Weltanschauung. Again, we should emphasize that the three men of letters whose biology we have examined in some detail should not be taken as typical, or that their biological predilections are accepted by all of our better writers. But the conservative writers who accepted evolution did little to counteract the spread of Marxian biology. Most of them seemed to be indifferent to the broader philosophical aspects of science. They seemed to be uninterested in what caused evolution, even though they may have accepted the theory in their thinking and used it in their professional work. For example, Rudyard Kipling often referred to evolution, but he never considered its factors except in a single work, a book for children, the Just So Stories. Here, he explained just how the elephant got his trunk, the camel his hump, and the tiger his stripes, etc. As we all remember, his explanation is purely Lamarckian. T h e stories themselves are charming, and this suggests that the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired characters really belongs in the entertaining myths of childhood. On the other hand, Robert Bridges, a physician by training, knew too much science to be led into the prevailing distortions of biology. He was perhaps the only poet who took a definite stand hostile to Marxian biology. In To a Socialist in London (1903), he attacked the notion that an equal division of property would mean an abundance for

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all and he called attention to the basic implication of population pressure upon the assumption on which the escapists' Utopias were founded. He described natural selection honestly in Wintry Delights and in To Robert Burns, and, thus, he naturally offended the Marxians. Bridges, however, was never the popular and influential figure that Bernard Shaw was, and his influence on the intelligentsia has always been negligible. He stood almost alone and founded neither a school nor a cult. There never were any "Robertobrigians." T h e combined thinking of Tennyson, London, and Shaw covers an enormous range. Each was a truly unique individual, and each differed from the others in background, ideals, and competence. None of them agreed completely with Marx —even in their biology—and all would have had to forswear their "errors" if they were living in Moscow today. In some respects, they even agreed in their deviation from the present party line. For instance, they were all three vitalists,13 whereas Marx was a materialist. They were all three aristocrats in spirit—though very different aristocrats—and they had little confidence in the judgment or ability of demos.14 This attitude, of course, while castigated publicly by the party, is accepted completely in all Communistic dictatorships; so that here, Tennyson, London, and Shaw differ from the present13 T h e vitalism of Jack London is not as evident as that of Tennyson and Shaw. It shows, however, in occasional passages, e.g., from The Star Rover: "First of all, Bergson was right. Life cannot be explained in intellectual terms"; and later on in the story: "It was not because my body was enduring but because my spirit was enduring. And it was because, in earlier existences, my spirit had been wrought to steel-hardness by steel-hard experiences." Bernard Shaw's attitude toward the people is indicated by Blanche Patch (p. 179): "He had 'complete disbelief in government by the people and an equally complete hostility to government in any other interest than theirs.'" Again, page 172: "By democracy, he declared, he meant a social order aiming at the greatest available welfare for the whole population and not for a class; and there is no doubt at all that he sincerely believed what he said. It is equally beyond doubt that he had no intention whatever of allowing the whole population to decide what form that social order was to take."

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day Communists only in their greater frankness. As we have learned, the Communists consider frankness a senseless luxury. Tennyson, London, and Shaw have not been of equal service to the Marxians. Tennyson, the religious conservative, has given them little direct aid. His phrases, of course, have been adopted gladly, but he himself is now ignored. London's contribution, while of immense importance prior to World War I, now means much less. His revolutionary works and many of his stories are still popular in Communist lands, but his "backward" views on race must now be deplored and his "errors" in doctrine must be pointed out. T h e changes in the overt party line have thus diminished his usefulness. On the other hand, Shaw's value to the Communists is now greater than ever. His "teleology" can be dismissed easily as a harmless aberration in a man of genius, but the rest of his biology fits perfectly into the Marxian orthodoxy. His influence remains extremely potent among our own greatly over-expanded but under-educated intelligentsia. Shaw has become the real Apostle to the Eggheads. 15 Tennyson, London, and Shaw, like Marx and Engels, all believed that acquired characters were inherited. In this, they agree with the present official biology of Russia. T h e y are, of course, not alone among the writers in holding to this belief. In modern science-fiction, the Lamarckian doctrine underlies many visions of future societies. But even if Lamarckism permeates our whole literature and supplies our humanists with an intellectual background compatible with communism, it is no longer really essential to the true believers and their fellow-travelers. A relatively new and equally useful doctrine is now available and is already in wide use. This substitute tenet is a complete and all-embrac15

In a more literate age, known as "sophomores."

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ing environmentalism, which simply ignores all h e r e d i t y even that of acquired characters. T h e absence of all biological knowledge, thus, may soon become as useful to our men of letters as Marxian biology itself. It is interesting, though, to discover how the tacit postulates of those who know no formal biology fit into the framework of the Marxian system and how a complete ignorance of biology does not remove the necessity of making a number of tacit biological assumptions. Most of the biological background of our writers is implicit, even sub-conscious, but, even so, their plots furnish excellent propaganda for party line thinking. Some of the newer standardized situations, which their stories exploit, have been extremely useful in establishing the present lit'ry standards of the good, the true, and the beautiful. T h e progressive writers have even developed a new and now widely used plot stereotype which, incidentally, the Marxians approve highly. This genre we can best describe by the label "Southern." In "Southerns," the hero and heroine are routinely denied consummation; or, if they are allowed to achieve it, meet with disaster because of "race prejudice," "white chauvinism," or some other product of bourgeois narrow-mindedness. T h e y may even be foiled by some consequence of the capitalistic urge to delay the coming brotherhood of man, but this impediment to happiness must be presented very subtly. Old or wealthy Southern families are depicted, of course, as being far gone in decay except, perhaps, for one member, who may show signs of having an open mind and who may be converted ultimately to the modern progressive outlook and thus freed from his reactionary childhood prejudices. T h e popular Southern is now as completely stylized as the newsstand and drugstore Western, and as rigidly formalized as the proletarian novel of the

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nineteen-thirties. The recipes used in the construction of these better-selling and critically successful literary efforts, however, tell us a great deal about the prevailing literary atmosphere, and also about how little the men of letters know of science even in the "scientific" twentieth century. An appraisal of the science in our belles lettres gives us many clues as to why so many of the practicing intelligentsia have been so easily duped, and why so many of them are now so unhappy in the painful process of becoming un-duped.

1 0 . Marxian Biology in the Communist World §1 in Chapter III, Marx and Engels accepted some of the biological theories of their time but rejected others. At no time did they evaluate their data critically or draw their conclusions from any reasonable balancing of probabilities. As a result, their biology was limited —even crippled. Temperamentally, they were not the type who could either suspend judgment or search patiently for facts. They always knew exactly what they would believe and what they would not. They accepted only those parts of the science which were compatible with their social and economic doctrines. But so successful were they in their proselytizing that even today they are able to conjure the greater part of biology out of the minds of a considerable portion of mankind. > W E H A V E INDICATED

T h e Communists in Russia still follow the biological paths mapped out by the Founding Fathers. T h e tightly organized groups in the Kremlin, who now control the information which reaches one-third of the human race, are as exacting in their rulings as were Marx and Engels. They designate the biological doctrines that are suitable for their intellectuals to accept, and are so explicit in their directives that we 353

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have little difficulty in discovering just what their official science is and just how it differs from the biology of the free world. Its fundamental presuppositions are clear—but complications have arisen. A few of its recent accretions are equivocal, and some are even meaningless. But before we can analyze these befogging factors, we shall have to review the tenets that have become canonical in the Soviet Union—the tenets that can not be questioned by any Communist below the rank of current Dictator. No matter how competent a Soviet biologist may be, or how great his reputation in the free world, he still has to give lip service to the political biology of communism. But Marx and Engels and the present rulers of Russia are not the only ones who set the Line in biology. Other, but lesser, authorities have become entrenched and have risen so high that they can not be criticized adversely. But sometimes their pronouncements may be evaded if they are not questioned openly. In certain fields of research, scientists are not molested at all and are even allowed to follow wherever their discoveries may lead. But always, they must choose their language cautiously and they must never forget to render the proper verbal homage to the current reigning syndics. In physics and chemistry, where Marx and Engels bequeathed nothing more than a general philosophical orientation, scientists are not hampered as such, but this relative freedom does not extend to the biologists. In biology, Marxian directives are detailed and precise, and here escape is impossible. Moreover, Marx and Engels converted a few nineteenth-century biologists to their way of thinking; and the modern Communists have adopted these converts as precursors, as men of vision who were "correct" scientifically. In Russia, only the foolhardy would ever expose the mistakes of

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such honored forerunners as Timiriazev, Michurin, and Pavlov. T h e biological discoveries made after Marx died and when Engels was growing old belong in a different category. Naturally, Marx and Engels left no directives as to which of the future discoveries are to be admissible and which are not. T h u s the Marxians have some unavoidable freedom and, when new theories arise, the Communists may tolerate for a while and even encourage differences of opinion. Ultimately, of course, an official decision is reached and all discussion ceases. T h e line in biology is brought up to date and codified, and the deviationists find it expedient to recant. Discoveries accepted by the whole world may be discarded. Thus discoveries such as those made by Weismann, Mendel, and Morgan are rejected in spite of the fact that they form the basis of genetics and of all modern explanations of evolution. T h e Communist line also rejects other advances in biological theory and it excludes the application of genetics to human beings. T h e Communists naturally denounce eugenics as a reactionary delusion. There seems to be no apparent limit to what the good Marxians will do to any science that impinges on their ideology. Since 1948, all right-thinking Communists have learned to deny the very existence of the gene. T h e evil consequences of an official party line in one science soon spread to all intellectual fields. An official doctrine is naturally a threat to honest thinking and, as we have learned by experience, the collapse of integrity in any one discipline has repercussions in others. Where a science is not free, authority grows at the expense of rationality in as much as the information of even the best authoritarian systems include errors. And the errors, once they become sacred, tend to persist indefinitely. Even the minor mistakes

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of Engels are embedded in Communist doctrine. But amusing as these trivial blunders are, they are not to be laughed at. True, they are not disastrous, but they do extend the Party line to doctrines which have no logical connection with Communist theory, and they do increase somewhat the area from which scientific standards are barred. A much more serious defect lies in the fact that Soviet politicians have supreme authority in all intellectual and aesthetic fields. When the Central Committee of the Communist party decides a scientific question, disaster always threatens. We know now that the recent debacle in Russian biology, in Russian medicine and agriculture is due directly to the authoritative rulings of scientific illiterates. Another consequence of the political thought control is a very puzzling indeterminancy and vagueness in all Soviet biological publications. Soviet biologists now print no critical or logical interpretations of their data, and they never describe their experiments in enough detail for us to check them properly. Everything they publish gives the impression that they are taking no chances they can possibly avoid. And really we can not blame them. Soviet scientists have many desirable perquisites and special privileges; they would be less than human if they did not seek to maintain their status, but to maintain their status they have to be both clever and industrious. It is especially important for them to appear industrious, for, in the Communist world, everyone must work or, at least, everyone must appear to work. Soviet scientists have to prove that they toil—that they loaf not—and the only satisfactory evidence they can give of their industriousness is publication—so Russian scientists publish. But publication is dangerous because the application of the Party line may change without notice, and a biologist who has printed

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something the politicians do not like may suddenly find himself in trouble. A sensible precaution obviously is to print only what is safe and this presents a problem. T h e best insurance against disgrace and disaster is to make all printed statements ambiguous or even to make them in double talk. However, if the proper authorities receive the routine genuflections and the correct words are used throughout, the Commissars may never discover that the publication is meaningless. Soviet biologists who are clever play safe, for no one can foresee all the detailed fluctuations in the official biology. This lack of objective standards has introduced still another complication. In the absence of scientific integrity, there are no criteria for separating honest work from quackery—for distinguishing between scientists and frauds. Today, the biological personnel in Russia is so permeated with charlatans that even the political authorities have become helpless. They cannot separate the true from the false. T h e honest scientists and the quacks recognize each other, of course, but the politicians can not tell which is which. Some of the more plausible and aggressive charlatans have even succeeded in liquidating the biologists who opposed them, the biologists who maintained an un-Marxian attachment to their personal veracity and who were too honest and stubborn to follow the current line. At present, the faking of biological discoveries is a common practice. Nor is such dishonesty confined to the scientists behind the Iron Curtain. A few Communistic scientists in the free world are publishing data which they know are fraudulent, and are supporting conclusions which they know are false. These unhappy creatures belong to that fraction of our species which places a higher value on orthodoxy than on personal honesty. But from their own partisan standpoint their labors have not been in vain.

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T h e y have fooled some of their innocent and naive colleagues into helping them spread the desired misinformation. 1 Where Communists rule, biology contains many archaic errors. When such biology is applied to agriculture and medicine, the results are what we would expect. But it would be a mistake for us to write off all Russian science as negligible. Those sciences which are free from Marxian limitations or which are so technical that the Marxian line may be evaded by a few verbal twists are still healthy. All Russian science receives the full support of the state, and many of the Soviet sciences are still vigorous. T h e Russian mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, and chemists are doing work which deserves our full respect. These sciences, together with engineering, which contributes directly to Soviet military strength, suffer little from meddling commissars. Fortunately for the free world, however, the sciences which have experienced the Marxian blight also bear directly upon military potential. Possibly the single greatest deterrent to World W a r I I I is the present desperate state of Soviet agriculture. T h e shortage of food in Russia now makes any military adventure a little too hazardous to be undertaken lightly.

§2 As we have recorded in Chapter I I I , Marx and Engels departed from scientific biology (1) in misrepresenting Malthus' contribution to the theory of natural selection, hence to the theory of evolution; (2) in rejecting those aspects of natural selection which depend on population pressure (Engels, however, accepted population pressure as a selecting agent at times); (3) in accepting Lamarck's hypothesis of the ι Conway Zirkle, " T h e Citation of Fraudulent Data," Science, (1954).

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inheritance of acquired characters; and finally (4) in devising a complete and uncritical environmentalism. These aberrations, together with their accretions, are now dogmas in the Communist world; they now furnish the modern Communists with a substitute for biology. T h e basic contribution of Malthus to the thinking of Darwin and Wallace has already been recorded (p. 59 ff.), and also the misrepresentation of Malthus by Marx and Engels (p. 87 ff., 98 ff.). At present, derogatory or slanderous comments on Malthus so permeate Soviet literature that no short series of quotations could do them justice. T h e Communists have made their attitude perfectly clear and easily available to all who read English. Anyone interested can consult the original sources.2 Either Marx never read Malthus at all or read him very carelessly. In his letter to Engels of June 18, 1862, he made the misstatement ". . . whereas the whole point of Mr. Malthus lies in the fact that he does not apply his theory to plants and animals but only to man—with geometric progression—as opposed to plants and animals." Malthus, of course, had applied his geometrical progression to the entire animal and plant kingdom, and had stated, "Throughout the animal and vegetable kingdom, Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand: . . . T h e germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years." (See pp. 88, 89.) Apparently, Marx had confused the potentialities of all living creatures to increase exponentially with the actuality that 2 Ronald L. Meek, Marx and Engels on Malthus (London, 1953). Part I of this book consists of an essay "Malthus—Yesterday and Today" which gives the modern line. (See also the same author's paper of the same title in Science and Society, 18:21-51 (1954).

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the animals and plants, which furnish us with food, d o not do so. T h e factors which limit our food are, of course, (1) the a m o u n t of land in cultivation and (2) the yield per acre. O n the other hand, the ability of domestic animals and plants to reproduce themselves is limited only by the food they need a n d space at their disposal. In fact, it is the difference between the ability of animals and plants to reproduce and their ability to survive which makes natural selection possible. Such a b l u n d e r as Marx's would have been amusing b u t not important if it had been made by a lesser man—by someone who had not founded a cult. As it is, the blunder has consequences. Marx was not satisfied with making the b l u n d e r just once. H e repeated it in his Theories of Surplus Values: In his excellent work, Darwin did not see that his discovery of the "geometrical" progression in the animal and vegetable kingdoms overturns Malthus's theory. Malthus's theory is based precisely on the fact that he opposes Wallace's geometrical progression of human beings to the chimerical "arithmetical" progression of animals and plants. In Darwin's work, for example, in his discussion of the extinction of species, we find a naturalhistorical refutation of the Malthusian theory, not only of its fundamental principle but also of its details. Marx's boner, of course, is included in the official Communist biology. T h e following examples are typical: On June 18th, 1862, Marx is already approaching Darwin critically. He quite correctly recalls that Malthus attributed a geometrical progression in multiplication to the human race as opposed to the plants and animals on which man feeds and which multiply more slowly than can satisfy humanity's needs. Darwin transfers Malthus' teaching to plants and animals. . . .

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Perhaps, had Darwin not changed his habitual method of starting out from facts and not dragged Malthus in by the hair, it would have been a quite different one, and Marx would not have been compelled to say that Darwin was transferring to plants and animals the peculiarities of the English capitalist system. 3

T . D. Lysenko in his famous address, The Situation in Biological Science4 gives another example of the Marxian reaction to Malthus: Darwin's theory, appearing indisputably materialistic in its basic features, contains within itself a series of substantial errors. T h u s , for instance, it was a great blunder for Darwin to introduce reactionary Malthusian ideas into his theory of evolution, side by side with its materialistic principle. In our time this great blunder is magnified by reactionary biologists . . . Darwin's error of transferring into his own doctrine the madbrained reactionary Malthusian scheme on populations is u p to the present not realized by many. A true scientist-biologist cannot and must not ignore the erroneous parts of Darwin's doctrine . . . It must be clear to a progressively thinking Darwinist that, although the reactionary Malthusian scheme was adopted by Darwin, nevertheless essentially it contradicts the materialistic principles of his own doctrine. It is easy to notice that Darwin himself, being a great naturalist who had laid the foundation of scientific biology and created and epoch of science, could not be satisfied with Malthus' scheme which he accepted, but which as a matter of fact essentially contradicts the phenomena of living nature.

Lysenko's speech was approved by Stalin himself, and it 3 L. B. Komarov, Marx and Engels on Biology (New York, 1935), pp. 193, 197. 4 This was the opening address given at the Lenin Academy of Agriculture on July 31, 1948. It was also the opening gun in the action which destroyed genetics in Russia.

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was of exceptional importance in that it announced the biological line in Russia as of 1948. T h e plants and domestic animals, however, did not cooperate with the commissars, and five years later in 1953 Lysenko himself was having troubles. Russian agriculture was beginning to show the effects of the Party line, and a debate had broken out in the biological journals and even in the popular press. T h e Russian agriculturists were seeking desperately for a stance which would be both "correct" and at the same time not injurious to agriculture. V. Dobrokhvalov published a summary of the discussion in the October, 1953, issue of Novy Mir.6 Here the author indicated that Marx's boner had not lost its official status. On the one hand, Darwin's theory objectively refuted Malthusianism (since Malthus asserted that human society multiplies in geometric progression, while animals and plants multiply in arithmetic). On the other hand, Darwin committed a great methodical error, not merely in failing to realize the reactionary and pseudo-scientific nature of Malthusianism, but in trying to present an analogy between phenomena of social life and of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The classic writers of MarxismLeninism repeatedly pointed out this mistake of the great naturalist. Dobrokhvalov then proceeds to quote and rebuke N. D. Ivanov, a leading opponent of Lysenko. Although Ivanov has some political backing and may criticize Lysenko, he can not go to the extreme—safely, that is—of contradicting Marx. Marx's gaff is still indorsed. N. D. Ivanov attempts to show that the Darwin theory is free of Malthusianism, and does not breathe the spirit of formal logic. 5 V. Dobrokhvalov, "On the Biological Species and Iu Formation," translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 6:(18): 12-17 (June 16, 1954).

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He writes: "We cannot agree with indicting Darwin for Malthusianism. Darwin's evolutionary doctrine not only is not based on Malthusianism, but on the contrary refutes the reactionary Malthus theory of the impossibility of growth of population. While Malthus asserted that only people are capable of multiplying in geometric progression, and the means of their existence —including plants and animals—are incapable of thus increasing, Darwinism affirms the exact opposite, that plants and animals, constituting an important part of man's means of existence, are likewise capable of multiplying in geometric progression." In addition to what we have said above, let us note that this assertion by N. D. Ivanov contradicts the well-known statements by the classic writers of Marxism-Leninism, the convictions of most Soviet biologists, and the propositions of such outstanding thinkers as N. G. Chernyshevsky, I. I. Mechnikov, A. N. Beketov, and others; finally, the words of Charles Darwin himself. Ivanov f o u n d that he had indeed gone too far and he backed down hastily. Even the editor of the Bulletin of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, Ν . V . Sukachev, w h o had accepted Ivanov's paper for publication, joined in the "correction": 8 "Responsibility for a misleadingly worded passage i m p l y i n g acceptance of Malthusian laws on overpopulation, which were contained in the paper cited above, is admitted by the author and the editorial staff." T h e s e examples illustrate not only the Marxian rejection of Malthus' contribution to evolution theory but also their total rejection of population pressure as a selecting agent in nature. Darwin's natural selection is acceptable only in so far as it furnishes a hypothesis to compete with teleology in explaining biological adaptation. Lysenko, w h o can always be counted on to carry any doctrine to absurd lengths, has even gone so far as to deny all intraspecific competition in β Plant Breeding Abstracts, 24; 1571 (1954).

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nature. H e indicated that well-behaved plants and animals just never rival others of their kind. This has led me to a reconsideration of the problems of intraspecific and interspecific conflict and competition, and after deep and many-sided consideration and study of this problem, to a rejection of an intraspecific struggle and mutual assistance of the individuals within a species and the recognition of an interspecific struggle between different species. Unfortunately I have as yet thrown but little light in print upon the theoretical content and practical significance of these problems. (Op. cit.) T h i s notion of Lysenko's is not just an isolated absurdity. It has actually had practical repercussions. In their shelter belts, the Russians have planted acorns in clusters firm in the conviction that no communist oak seedling w o u l d ever crowd out or shade a fellow oak. 7

§3 W h e n M a r x and Engels endorsed the inheritance of acquired characters, the doctrine was a respectable scientific hypothesis. Later, after it had been investigated intensively, it was abandoned, but it was abandoned slowly and with the greatest reluctance. In fact, a m o n g the older biologists, a n u m b e r of die-hards never gave it up; b u t by the early twentieth century, it was no longer a serious explanation of evolution. T h e doctrine had been discarded everywhere because science was truly cosmopolitan before W o r l d W a r I and political boundaries did not protect outgrown scientific τ In reforestation, clump planting is often justified. It saves replanting if the seeds have a low percentage of germination. Young seedlings close together often protect each other from high winds, etc. As they increase in size, however, they must either be thinned out or their growth will be slowed. In nature, however, most of the seedlings lose the "struggle for existence" and only a very small percentage develop into mature trees.

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hypotheses. Even in Russia, the doctrine was dying, but in every country a few conservative scientists remained true to what they had been taught when they were young. A peculiar combination of events in Russia, however, reversed the trend. T h e revolution of 1917 brought Marxian ideology into a dominant political position, and the theoreticians of the revolution accepted the inheritance of acquired characters as it was a necessary prerequisite of their social philosophy. Naturally, the triumphant Marxians tended to favor those biologists who remained Lamarckian and, if such biologists held other beliefs compatible with communism, they could expect material advancement. Within the orbit of the revolution, any prominent Lamarckian was assured of a sympathetic hearing and practically unlimited state support, even though he belonged on the lunatic fringe. T w o staunch Lamarckians acquired tremendous prestige and soon rose to positions which any scientist might envy. These fortunate ones were (1) the competent physiologist, I. P. Pavlov, and (2) the uneducated plant breeder and nurseryman, I. V. Michurin. Lenin himself made them official authorities in their fields and they soon reached a point no scientist has ever reached outside of Russia. T h e y were credited with discovering truth itself, and in the Soviet Union no one now may point out their errors. But this is not all—they have risen further. Michurin received his apotheosis at a session of the Lenin Academy of Agriculture (July-August, 1948), and Pavlov his at the joint meeting of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and the U.S.S.R. Academy of Medicine (June-July, 1950). In spite of the ultimate triumph of Lamarckism, its road to victory was not smooth. It is true that Lenin himself made Pavlov and Michurin his personal proteges, but he also supported Vavilov and other good scientists. Apparently, he

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never told those he supported what "truths" they were to discover, and as long as he lived, the sciences flourished. Indeed, it was not until the 1930's that the heavy hand of bureaucratic ignorance fell upon the biological sciences and reduced them to quackery. But even during the decades when biology throve, a Marxian underground was active and before long the more prescient biologists began to scent trouble. T h e good scientists remained in control, however, and the earlier Marxian attacks were repulsed. T h e first prominent Russian scientists who tried to prove experimentally that acquired characters were inherited was I. P. Pavlov. Pavlov remained a convinced Lamarckian his entire life in spite of a very unpleasant incident in his investigations. In an essay, The Reflex of Freedom,s he cites an incident from The River of Life, a story by Alexander Kuprin. Kuprin had described how a student had been conditioned by his earlier experiences until he had the mentality of a slave, but Pavlov went even further. Pavlov believed that all such conditioning, and indeed that conditioned reflexes, in general, were heritable. He stated (p. 286, op. cit.): In Kuprin's story, The River of Life, there is described the suicide of a student who was tormented by his conscience after having betrayed his companions to the police. From a letter of the suicide, it was evident that he was the victim of the reflex of slavery inherited from his mother who was a prijivalka [upper class servant]. If he had had an insight into his condition, he would first have understood his limitation, secondly he might by systematic measures have developed control and successful suppression of this reflex. 8 First read before the Petrograd Biological Society in May, 1917. Printed in an English translation in 1928 (in Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes, tr. by W. Horsley Gantt, London, n.d. The Introduction, however, is dated 1928).

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Pavlov's own endeavors to prove the inheritance of conditioned reflexes were disastrous. At the International Congress of Physiology in Edinburgh in 1923, he announced: T h e latest experiments (which are not yet finished) show that the conditioned reflexes, i.e., the highest nervous activity, are inherited. At present some experiments on white mice have been completed. Conditioned reflexes to electric bells are formed, so that the animals are trained to run to their feeding place on the ringing of the bell. The following results have been obtained: T h e first generation of white mice required 300 lessons. Three hundred times was it necessary to combine the feeding of the mice with the ringing of the bell in order to accustom them to run to the feeding place on hearing the bell ring. T h e second generation required, for the same result, only 100 lessons. T h e third generation learned to do it after thirty lessons. The fourth generation required only 10 lessons. The last generation which I saw before leaving Petrograd learned the lesson after 5 repetitions. The sixth generation will be tested after my return. I think it very probable that after some time a new generation of mice will run to the feeding place on hearing the bell with no previous lesson.9 Pavlov, however, was a sincere scientist and an honest m a n . In his book published four years later, he made the following retraction: Experiments which have been communicated briefly at the Edinburgh International Congress of Physiology (1923) upon hereditary facilitation of the development of some conditioned reflexes in mice have been found to be very complicated, uncertain and moreover extremely difficult to control. They are at present being subjected to further investigation under more stringent conditions. At present the question of hereditary transβ Science, 58:359-61 (1923).

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mission of conditioned reflexes and of the hereditary facilitation of their acquirement must be left entirely open.10 Further details are given by B. G. Gruenberg: In an informal statement made at the time of the Thirteenth International Physiological Congress, Boston, August, 1929, Pavlov explained that in checking up these experiments it was found that the apparent improvement in the ability to learn, on the part of successive generations of mice, was really due to an improvement in the ability to teach, on the part of the experimenter! And so this "proof" of the transmission of modifications drops out of the picture, at least for the present.11 In Russia, however, Pavlov still remains the supreme authority in physiology and psychology, and in these fields an experimenter will be "in error" if he goes beyond Pavlov or pursues his thinking in a "non-Pavlovian direction." 12 Michurin, 13 unlike Pavlov, was a scientific innocent. He had the sound idea of improving Russian horticulture by importing hardy stock from Siberia and North America, crossing them with local varieties and searching through the seedlings for superior plants. Such a procedure, which follows standard practices, should produce valuable hardy varieties. Michurin, however, was not in touch with what was being done in the biological sciences outside of Russia, nor did he have the faintest conception of what a controlled scientific experiment was. Consequently, his interpretations were completely post hoc and very naive. He made some rather κ» I. P. Pavlov, Conditioned Reflexes, tr. and ed. by G. V. Anrep, (Oxford, 1927), footnote, p. 285. 11 B. G. Gruenberg, The Story of Evolution (Garden City, New York, 1929), footnote, p. 327. 12 See Scientific Session on the Physiological Teachings of Academician I. P. Pavlov (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1951). 13 All data on Michurin are derived from Ivan Vladiminovich Michurin: Selected Works (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1949).

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silly errors. For example, he confused graft chimeras with true hybrids, and he claimed he could teach his plants to become winter hardy (but he insisted that only a few seedlings could learn the trick, p. 22). He reported that he had made many plant-crosses which other botanists have never been able to duplicate. He was a true innocent when he wrote: "In dealing with interspecific crosses definitely known to be difficult, I have often achieved some success by adding a very small amount of pollen from the maternal parent to the pollen of the male parent" (p. 207). This is what he actually wrote and is perhaps the most simple-minded confession in all botanical literature. It explains why other horticulturists could not repeat his crosses and why his "hybrids" all came within the normal range of seedling variation in the mother species. Michurin's notions had little influence until after the Bolsheviks came into power and after the attacks on genetics began to succeed. His biology, of course, is Marxian, but as long as good biologists were free to reject it, it could do little damage. As early as 1905, he claimed that acquired characters were inherited (p. 16); and in 1915, when he was sixty years old, he showed that he did not understand what Mendel had done, e.g., he sought to refute Mendel by such irrelevant statements as the following: "Furthermore, in crosses between certain plants entirely new characters sometimes appear among the first-generation hybrids or among the hybrid seedlings of the second or third generation, characters that had never occurred either in the paired parent plants or in their nearest ancestors" (p. 103). This inability of Michurin to understand Mendel was destined to have serious consequences for genetics. In 1948, after "Michurin science" was endorsed by the Central Com-

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mittee of the Communist party and thus became official doctrine, Lysenko wrote (p. xix): V. I. Lenin and J . V. Stalin discovered I. V. Michurin and made his teaching the possession of the Soviet people. By their great paternal attention to his work, they saved for biology the remarkable Michurin teaching. T h e Party, the Government, and J . V. Stalin personally, have taken an unflagging interest in the further development of the Michurin teaching.

If the Central Committee could not evaluate Michurin's biology, they could at least recognize his Communist orthodoxy, and his orthodoxy was beyond reproach. In 1934, he had made the ringing declaration (p. 487): Only on the basis of the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin can science be fully reconstructed. T h e objective world —Nature—is primary; man is part of Nature, but he must not merely outwardly contemplate this Nature, he can, as Karl Marx said, change it. T h e philosophy of dialectical materialism is an instrument for changing this objective world; it teaches how to actively influence Nature and how to change it; but only the proletariat is capable of consistently and actively influencing and changing Nature—this is what the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—those unexcelled titanic minds—tell us.

T h e first real attempt to establish Lamarckism by political action occurred in 1926 when an effort was made to bring Kammerer to Russia. Paul Kammerer was a Viennese zoologist who claimed to have proved that acquired characters were inherited. 14 He based his claims chiefly on two series of experiments. He stated first that he could make the black viviparous Alpine salamander (Salamandra maculosa) and the black and spotted oviparous lowland salamander (forma 1* Paul Kammerer, The Inheritance Boni and Liveright, 1924).

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taenitata) acquire each the characters of the other. He made another series of experiments with the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricians), the male of which lacks the pigmented thick thumb pads which some other toads possess. Kammerer claimed that he could make the male of this species inherit thumb pads. These claims were challenged by William Bateson as early as 1919, and a very acrimonious debate ensued. 15 Kammerer replied l e to Bateson's attacks, insisting on the accuracy of his work and the authenticity of his preserved specimens. Bateson tried to examine Kammerer's specimens but could not because no matter where he went Kammerer and his specimens managed to be elsewhere. Bateson never caught Kammerer, but the chase ended in 1926. In that year, G. K. Noble of the American Museum of Natural History, and Hans Przibram, director of the institute where Kammerer worked, examined the famous preserved salamanders and toads. They reported their sensational findings in adjacent papers in Nature (118:209, 1926). T h e acquired characters, which Kammerer claimed to have made hereditary, turned out to be India ink. Kammerer admitted the fraud in a letter to the Presidium of the Communist Academy of Moscow—the letter in which he announced his impending suicide—but he claimed to have been personally innocent of deception and to be ignorant of the identity of the person who was responsible for the chicanery. 17 Western biologists as a whole have tended to excuse Kammerer and blame the fakery on some overzealous is Bateson's attacks on Kämmerer were published in Nature, 111:388 (1923); 112:391, 899 (1923). U Nature, 111:637 (1923); 112:237 (1923). IT Science, 64:593 (1926).

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assistant. But to exonerate Kammerer, they would have to explain his seven years' evasion of his critics' demands to allow them to examine his sophisticated evidence. In Russia, however, attempts were made immediately to rehabilitate Kammerer, a n d after twenty-two years, in 1948, these attempts were extended to the free world. Because of this, we should pay more attention to Kammerer a n d his fakery than we would to an ordinary quack who has no ideological or political support. His confession still needs emphasis. T h e following letter was published in Science (64:593-94, 1926): Vienna, September 22, 1926. T o the Presidium of the Communist Academy, Moscow. Respected Comrades and Colleagues: Presumably you all know about the attack upon me made by Dr. Noble in Nature of August 7, 1926. The attack is based upon an investigation of the exhibits of alytes (toads) with heat stripes, proving my theory, made by Dr. Noble with Professor Przibram in the Vienna Biological Experimental Institute and with my permission. T h e principal matter of importance in this is an artificial coloring, probably with India ink, through which the black coloring of the skin in the region carrying the stripes is said to have been faked. Therefore it would be a matter of deception that presumably will be laid to me only. After having read the attack, I went to the Biological Experimental Institute for the purpose of looking over the object in question. I found the statements of Dr. Noble completely verified. Indeed there were still other objects (blackened salamanders) upon which my results had plainly been "improved" post mortem with India ink. Who besides myself had any interest in perpetrating such falsifications can only be very dimly suspected. But it is certain that practically my whole life's work is placed in doubt by it. On the basis of this state of affairs I dare not, although I myself

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have no part in these falsifications of my proof specimens, any longer consider myself the proper man to accept your call. I see that I am also not in a position to endure this wrecking of my life's work, and I hope that I shall gather together enough courage and strength to put an end to my wrecked life tomorrow. I am not stopping the packing up of the things destined to be taken with me. First, because it would attract the attention of my family, which must not know anything of my intention before it is carried out; and second, because I am thus making my last will and testament giving my library into the care of the Communist Academy at Moscow, so that this will compensate it for all the efforts it has wasted upon me. Finally, I ask that my heartiest farewell greetings be given to the following friends . . . With the plea that you will forgive me for having made you all this trouble, I am, Yours devotedly, PAUL KAMMERER Kammerer's confession was clearly held to be inadmissible by the Marxian biologists. T h e University of Moscow, which has a museum containing the busts of the great evolutionists continued to include Kammerer's in the collection; and foreign geneticists w h o visited Russia the year following his death reported that some of their guides a n d translators thought that Kammerer was a persecuted and martyred friend of the workers. T h e first major attempt to preserve Kammerer's reputation was the production of a film called Salamandra. T h i s has been described in detail by Professor Richard Goldschmidt, 1 8 f r o m whom the following quotation is taken: T h e film Salamandra turned out to be nothing but a propaganda film for the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired chari s Science, 109:219-27 (1949).

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acters. It uses the tragic figure of Kammerer, his salamanders, and mixed up with them his midwife toads for the story. T h e importance attached to the subject is revealed by the fact that nobody else but the then all-powerful commissar for education, Lunacharsky, is the author of the film, that his wife plays the leading lady and that Lunacharsky himself appears on the screen in one scene, playing himself. Leaving out the interwoven love story written to fit the beautiful Mme. Lunacharsky, the plot is this: In a central European University a young biologist (model Kammerer) is working. He is a great friend of the people and endowed with all the qualities of a communist movie hero. He works with salamanders and has succeeded in changing their color by action of the environment, and one day the supreme glory is achieved, the effect is inherited. T h e bad man of the play, a priest, has learned of this and comes to the conclusion that this discovery will spell the end of the power of the church and the privileged classes, and he decides to act. He meets at night in the church (I recognized with surprise that these pictures were taken in the glorious double cathedral of Erfurt in Thuringia) with a young prince of the blood whom he had succeeded in having appointed as assistant to the pseudo-Kammerer. (This is obviously a typical occupation for a German prince.) Here in the dark sacristy the plot is hatched. T h e prince (or the priest?) proposes to pseudo-Kammerer that he announce his glorious discovery at a formal University meeting, and the scientist gladly accepts. During the following night the priest and the prince enter pseudo-Kammerer's laboratory to which the prince has the key, as he poses as the scientist's devoted collaborator. They open the j a r in which the proof specimen of salamander is kept in alcohol, and inject the specimen with ink. T h e n follows the scene at the University meeting. All the professors and the president appear in academic robes; the young scientist is introduced and makes a brilliant speech announcing the final proof of the inheritance of acquired characters. When the applause has ended, the priest (or was it the assistant? I am quoting entirely

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from memory) steps up, opens the jar, takes out the salamander and dips it into a jar with water. All the color runs out of the specimen. An immense uproar starts and pseudo-Kammerer is ingloriously kicked out of the University as an impostor. Sometime later we see the poor young scholar walking the streets and begging with an experimental monkey who had followed him into misery. Nobody thinks of him any more, when one of his former Russian students arrives and tries to call on him. Finally she succeeds in finding him completely down and out in a miserable attic. At once she takes the train to Moscow and obtains an interview with Lunacharsky (this is the scene where he appears in person) who gives orders to save the victim of bourgeois persecution. Meanwhile, pseudo-Kammerer has sunk so low that he decides to make an end of it. The very moment he tries to commit suicide the Russian student returns with Lunacharsky's message and prevents him from taking his life. The last scene shows a train in which pseudo-Kammerer and the Russian savior are riding east and a large streamer reads 'To the land of liberty.' But in spite of this very moving picture and the other routine misrepresentations, Marxian biologists suffered a body blow in Kammerer's suicide. Genetics was reprieved for ten years. Indeed, genetics flourished in Russia as never before, for the great scientist and executive, Ν. I. Vavilov, remained in control of all genetical and agricultural research, and under his direction several thousand cultivated plants were imported as raw material for breeding new and useful types. T h e geneticists of the world were so impressed with the progress of their Soviet colleagues that they decided to hold an International Genetics Congress in Moscow in 1937. But in December, 1936, the Marxian biologists struck. T h e y were not victorious, but they earned at least a draw. T h e Russian invitation to the Congress was withdrawn, b u t Vavilov maintained his official position. T h r e e years later, in 1939, the Marxian biologists returned to the attack, and

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this time they succeeded both in disposing of Vavilov and in putting Lysenko in charge of all agricultural research. Vavilov's days were numbered; he was arrested in August, 1940, and died somewhere in Siberia in 1942. His death, however, was not enough. T h e Communists tried—very stupidly, as it turned out—to make him an un-person. They erased his name from all their records. It no longer occurs in the lists of either the living or dead members of the Russian Academy of Science. T h e Bolshevik Encyclopedia now omits all mention of him, and in Russia it is as if he had never lived. Vavilov, however, was known and admired throughout the world, and the only way he can ever become an unperson is for communism to triumph everywhere. But the liquidation of Vavilov showed that genetics was doomed and we are all familiar with the sequel. 19 In 1948, genetics was finally outlawed, five geneticists recanted, and the Communists made "Michurin science" official wherever they rule.

§4 An all-prevailing environmentalism is as characteristic of Marxian biology as is belief in the inheritance of acquired characters. Logically, the two doctrines are in conflict, but this fact need not be emphasized and few Marxians are aware of it. A complete environmentalism, of course, excludes automatically any consideration of variables due to differences in heredity. T o the environmentalist, every human being is essentially like every other human being—an amorphous mass which can be worked into any shape desired. According to this view, differences in genetic potential are too insignificant to make any important differences in the end product. If Conway Zirkle, Death of a Science in Russia (Philadelphia, 1949). In 1956, the Communists were trying to rehabilitate Vavilov.

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the conditioning is good and the raw human material standardized, the finished product need show no serious flaws. This environmentalism, moreover, is not limited to Marxian biology, but permeates a great deal of thinking which ostensibly is not Marxian at all. It is to all intents and purposes the same environmentalism which permeates our own social sciences, but this does not imply any guilt by association, for our social sciences are certainly not Communistic. We should note, however, that birds \vho flock together often have comparable tastes and like intellectual standards. Environmentalism has always attracted those who seek a cheap and easy way to improve mankind. Frequently it is merely a form of escapism, but an escapism which contains some delusions of grandeur. T h e world is to be reconstructed and the environmentalists are the forward-looking and progressive fraction of mankind who will do the job. T h e oldfashioned Demiurges, who made things as they are and who blundered so egregiously, are to be removed and the world reconstructed without delay by new and more enlightened planners. Michurin wrote: "We cannot wait for favors from nature; we must wrest them from her"; and this slogan has become the rallying cry of the Michurinists. It was the big promise and the Soviets relied upon it to create a new agriculture, but after five years they discovered that their population was growing faster than their food supplies and that they were threatened with serious agricultural shortages. T h e triumph of Michurin environmentalism in Soviet agriculture can be traced to two factors. First, it was the big promise, the ringing declaration of intentions, and all those who doubted were denounced as reactionaries and saboteurs. Second, it was compatible with—almost a corollary to—the basic Communist assumptions. Its validity could not be established experimentally, of course, but this was a flaw which

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did not appear on the surface—a flaw which could be hidden by double-talk. Using words with new a n d undefined meanings or redefining technical terms was the simplest and easiest method of obscuring unwelcomed facts—at least to those who were not scientists. T h u s Lysenko redefined heredity: Our definition of the phenomenon of heredity differs from that which has been accepted in genetics u p to the present time. We understand heredity as the property of a living body to require definite conditions for its life, its development and to react definitely to various conditions. We understand the term heredity as referring to the nature of the living body. Hence, the meaning of the expressions "the nature of the living body" and "the heredity of the living body" are, in our opinion, nearly alike . . . Consequently to find the conditions of the external environment which are demanded by a living body (an organism) for the development of certain characters or properties will amount to investigtaion of the nature, i.e., of the heredity of those characters and properties.20 B u t even before Lysenko came into power, Marxian environmentalism was so entrenched that any biologist who reported hereditary variables in h u m a n beings could expect a very short career. As early as 1936, Professor G. G. Levit came u n d e r fire for permitting in his institute "the developm e n t of scientific views hostile to Soviet theory and friendly to Nazis"; a n d Professor Shtyvko was attacked for an article h e wrote on the skeletons of Russians who had died in the famine. H e had claimed they were intermediate between the skeletons of Germans and those of the yellow races. H e had also said that the Buryat Mongols, a Siberian people, were the mental equals of twelve-year-old Europeans, and this was something which should not have been said openly. 20 T . D. Lysenko, Heredity and its Variability, tr. by Th. Dobzhansky (New York: King's Crown Press, 1946). T h e statement is, of course, gibberish.

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Environmentalism is so important to the Communists that they would preserve it at all costs, even if it meant the suppression of scientific discoveries and the destruction of research institutions. Newman 21 reported that work on identical twins at the Maxim Gorky Institute was terminated suddenly in 1939 a n d nothing f u r t h e r was heard of the psychologists in charge of the work. Careful measurements of identical twins raised u n d e r different conditions, has given us our most valuable data on the hereditary and environmental variables in h u m a n society. Intelligence tests also give results which are difficult to harmonize with the view that environment is the sole cause of variation. Hence, in Russia, all such tests are opposed. Moreover, the results of the tests were discouraging. . . . The revolt against testing came first from the teachers and from parents. Teachers found that IQ tests gave results contradicting those obtained by individual observation in school, with a wide margin of error. Moreover, they found that such tests underrated especially children from unfavorable environments. [Quite true, but are there unfavorable environments in the U.S.S.R.?] Above all, the generally accepted norms seemed to deny the possibility of educating the children needed to provide sufficient people qualified up to the necessary standard.22 Americans who have worked in Russia furnish more evidence of Communist environmentalism. Professor H. J. Müller even accounts for the rise of Lysenko by his use of the all-powerful political status of the doctrine: What causes the Communist officials to push Lysenkoism so strongly? T o me, the answer is obvious: it is the type of mind 21 Η . H . Newman, Multiple human births (Chicago, 1940). 22 C. G. T . Giles, " W h y Soviet teachers oppose intelligence tests," Soviet Journal, 14:11-15 (1953).

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that sees things as only black and white, yes and no, and so cannot admit the importance of both heredity and environment. Believing that it has found the complete answer to all the world's ills, through its particular way of manipulating environment, the Communist Party regards as a menace any concept that does not fit patly into its scheme for mankind. T h e genes do not fit into that concept, in its opinion, hence the existence of the genes must be denied. 23 A n d Professor C. D. Darlington states: T h e rise of Hitler to power gave new life to the forces working against Western science in general and against genetics in particular. Hitler's doctrine was founded on giving a distorted predominance to a distorted genetics. His theory assumed the permanent and unconditional, and homogeneous, genetic superiority of a particular group of people, those speaking his own language. T h e easy retort was obviously to repudiate genetics and put in its place a genuine Russian, proletarian, and if possible Marxist science. For this purpose very little research was necessary: the classical personalities and achievements of Timiryazev and Michurin were there ready to hand . . . A government which relies on the absence of inborn class and race differences in man as a basis of its political theory was naturally unhappy about a science of genetics which relies on the presence of such differences among plants and animals as the basis of evolution and of crop and stock improvement. 24 W e need a d d little more to complete the account of the m a j o r tenets of Soviet biology. T h e doctrines have grown, of course, a n d some of the accretions are odd and interesting, b u t many of them are as technical and as obscure as the 23 H. J . Muller, "Back to Barbarism Scientifically," Saturday Review of Literature, December 11, 1948. 2 4 C. D. Darlington, " T h e Retreat from Science in Soviet Russia," Nineteenth Century, 142:157-168 (1947).

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Soviet scientists could possibly make them. T h e best examples of the muddled obscurantisms are, of course, in the works of Lysenko 25 himself, but the first real objective description of Russian biology, and in many respects the best, is the one by Hudson and Richens, 20 although it was published before the final debacle. In 1949, shortly after Michurinism became official in the Communist countries, Karel Hruby of Czechoslovakia published a short account of the doctrine in Vesmir which included an English summary. This the writer 27 has reprinted in a more accessible periodical. Perhaps the most fascinating accounts of Soviet biology are to be found in the Communist press of the free world. These contributions owe their charm to the squirmings of the authors as they adjust themselves to sudden and unannounced changes in the Party line. Party line biologists have to prove that they had accepted only the admissible doctrines and that they had always accepted them—in spite of what they had published previously. Most of these squirmings have appeared in fugitive pieces and will be lost unless a special effort is made to preserve them. A few of the contortions are in book form, however, and books are easily preserved. Only two examples of these books need be mentioned here, one by Morton 28 and one by Sigal. 28 25 T . D. Lysenko, Heredity and Its Variability (New York: King's Crown Press, 1946). The Science of Biology Today (New York, 1948). 26 p. s. Hudson and R. H. Richens, The New Genetics in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Imperial Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics, 1946). 27 Conway Zirkle, "The Theoretical Basis of Michurian Genetics," Jour. Heredity, 40:277-78 (1949). 28 Alan G. Morton, Soviet Genetics (London, 1951). 29 J. Sigal, Michourine, Lyssenko et le probleme de l'htriditi (Paris, 1951).

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§5 During his long life, Friedrick Engels expressed himself on a number of minor biological questions. His remarks are gratuitous and erratic trivia, and have no logical bearing on the postulates of his social philosophy. A few of them, however, are worth examining for they have become incorporated in Soviet biology. We noted earlier (p. 83) that Engels happened to write that K. Wolf (in 1759) was the first to attack the notion that species were completely stable. As a result of this gaff, Soviet historians of biology begin their accounts of evolution with a reference to K. Wolf and ignore the evolutionists who precede him. Engels also criticized the great scientist, Rudolph Virchow, who developed the basic concepts of cellular pathology and who established the fact that living cells arose only through the division of pre-existing cells (p. 119). Here again Engels' remarks had consequences, and here the consequences were serious because they made Russian medicine vulnerable to a very stupid quackery. In 1953, the world was startled by the bulletins issued by the group of physicians who attended Stalin during his terminal illness. The bulletins contained even minor details of his treatment; the physicians tried everything including the application of leeches. T h e physicians evidently did not know who would pass on the merits of their work, they took no unnecessary chances, and left out no treatment for which they might be criticized for omitting. Their inclusion of an archaic practice, however, should surprise no one, for Engels is still a medical authority in Russia. One of the best—and most horrible—examples of medical standards in Russia is a contribution of Academician A. Speransky published in the (Russian) Medical Worker (Feb-

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ruary 16, 1950). It is entitled " O n the Present State of Medical Science." In it, the author tells how he wants medicine to develop in the future. H e believes that cellular pathology should be discarded completely and its place taken by progressive, forward-looking neural pathology. In the following passage, he shows how Western medicine lacks a proper orientation: 3 0 In the first place the deadly influence of the remnants of capitalism still has an effect on the minds and daily work of a certain section of medical workers. These remnants are kept alive also by the influence of foreign medical science which supports the anti-evolutionary, anti-materialistic and idealistic theories of the pathology of Virchow, Ehrlich, Pasteur, Koch and others. In the second place there is obvious an insufficiently deep, and at times purely formal mastery of the Marx-Lenin ideology, in particular of the Marx-Lenin teaching on development; an incapacity to use this tool for correctly setting and solving problems of theory and practice in a particular sphere. In the third place this is a result of the influence of the past, of old-established authorities, who set up trends perfectly suitable to their times, but trends which have become reactionary in the present stage of development. Finally, in this may be detected the influence of education and upbringing which corresponded, both in letter and spirit, to Virchow's cellular pathology. T h e more direct and progressive technique which he advocates is to treat the central nervous system directly when anything goes wrong: for does not the central nervous system control the whole body? The new methods of curative interference proposed by us (dur30 The following quotations are taken from the English translation in the Occasional Papers, No. 10 (November, 1950) published by the Society for Freedom in Science.

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ing the Soviet Period) were not the result of chance "findings" or empiricistic discoveries, but the result of a new, seriously considered trend in pathology. They have not only been justified in clinical practice, but, and this is the main point, they have explained the very nature of the morbid process. This refers, for example, to: the therapy of somatic diseases by prolonged sleep; to the therapy of non-pulmonary forms of tuberculosis by means of special forms of excitation of the nerve-reception apparatus of the lung; to the treatment of lobar pneumonia by the method of intercutaneous novocainization of definite areas and the treatment of ulcers by novocaine infiltration of the cutaneous zones by hyperalgesia; the treatment of certain forms of pulmonary tuberculosis by the alcoholization of the peripheral stump of the diaphragmatic nerve, the treatment of brussellosi, hypertonic disease and many others. On the basis of these theoretical theses Prof. Α. V. Vishnevski has worked out and applied on a wide scale, in clinical practice, the method of novocaine blockade in various forms. At the same time it has been possible in a new way to estimate the mechanisms of efficacy of many old, including ancient, forms of curative intervention, which arose as a result of empiricism. Where such medical standards exist, the death rate should b e relatively high—even a m o n g those who never deviate from orthodoxy. B u t a high death rate is a minor matter, easily corrected by a high birth rate. T o d a y , Russia expects every woman to do her duty. 8 1 A t any rate, there are still plenty of Russians and, if there were many more, the problem of 81 Pravda, July 4, 1954, contained the following recognition of heroism: " T h e Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet awarded the honorary title of Mother Heroine, together with Mother Heroine orders and certificates of the USSR Supreme Soviet Presidium, to a large group of mothers who have given birth to and raised ten or more children. One hundred forty-one received the honorary title in the Russian Republic, 23 in the Uzbek Republic, three in the Georgian Republic, 21 in the Armenian Republic and two in the Turkmenian Republic." Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 6:(27):2 (August 18, 1954).

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feeding them would be acute—and this problem cannot be solved by consulting Engels. T h e following quotation is comic relief, pure and simple. It is from the Soviet Monitor of June 4, 1950: 3 2 For the work described here, Madam Lepeshinskaya received a Stalin prize, first class. Olga Lepeshinskaya has succeeded in proving that the formation of new cells in the living organism occurs not only through multiplication of cells themselves but also through their development directly from so-called non-cellular matter, which is always present in the organism. A few days ago, Professor Lepeshinskaya reported on her work at a conference at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. She proved the possibility of the development of biological organisms and cells from the non-structural albumen of eggs of various birds. This research proved that egg albumen is not merely a lifeless nourishing medium, but living matter capable of developing and forming cells. The work carried out by Professor Lepeshinskaya and her colleagues has introduced many new elements into the study of the properties of living matter and evoked the lively interest and earned acclamation of prominent Soviet scientists who have noted the great significance of these researches for biology and medicine. Thus Academician Trofim Lysenko said that the data obtained by Professor Lepeshinskaya in studying the origin and development of the cells of living matter constituted a major contribution to the development of the theory of Soviet Michurin biology. They help to gain a correct understanding of the phenomena of a new formation in the organic world, to comprehend and to explain the emergence of new kinds of organisms within the old species. 32 Translated in Occasional in Science.

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Professor Lepeshinskaya's work was also highly assessed by Academicians Alexander Oparin, Evegni Pavlovsky, Alexei Speransky, Nikolai Anichkov and others. The conference recommended Soviet biologists, agrobiologists and medical workers to start wide-scale research in the field of development of living matter and its non-cellular form and to utilize in medicine and agriculture the results achieved by Professor Olga Lepeshinskaya and her colleagues.

§6 Many of the additions to Marxian biology in Russia are trivial, as we have noted above. Others are accidental and capricious, and have no logical connection with the rest of the doctrine. T h e one characteristic that all such accretions have is that none of them contradicts anything that Marx and Engels taught. But Marxian biology also has negative aspects; it denies many of the discoveries made d u r i n g the last seventy-five years. In this it is more consistent, in that it rejects and, if the occasion demands, misrepresents every advance incompatible with its basic assumptions. O n the other hand, the doctrines it incorporates fall into no simple pattern. T h e erratic and even frivolous nature of the additives can be traced to a single source, to the fact that, in the last analysis, the doctrine is not in the custody of the Soviet scientists. T h e Soviet politicians reserve the right to decide what new biological theories are admissible and the right to initiate new biological trends. T h e final authorities in Russia, of course, are the self-confessed experts on MarxismLeninism. T h e s e experts are intelligent enough to recognize deviation from their faith but are too uninformed scientifically to build a non-trivial substitute for biology. T h i s political dictation to science is so stupid that the

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Communist apologists in the free world have—somewhat belatedly, as it turns out—denied that it exists. 33 At first, however, they defended the practice as a new and progressive something or other. Shortly after Lysenko's triumph in August, 1948, Milton Howard 34 wrote: What this reveals is that these writers simply do not have the slightest comprehension of what is new, creative and intellectually liberating in the leadership which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union exercises in every phase of life in the USSR. T o these journalists the word "politician" signifies Congressmen, a Cabinet member, a Senator or President Truman. When they hear that "the Politicians" in the USSR have taken a stand on a matter of biology, they jump to the conclusion that it is as if Congress were to take a vote on the theory of evolution, and they shudder at the thought. The Soviet Union was brought into existence by a group of men, led by Lenin, through the application of a new and invincible science. That science is Marxism . . . In short, the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, far from "interfering" in the arts and sciences of the Soviet Union, are the veritable leaders in the arts and sciences of their country. T h e r e is nothing in the Marxian philosophy, of course, which would deny the desirability of political dictation to science. An editorial in Pravda (August 27, 1948) contains a very revealing passage: How could this situation [the failure of the Academy of Sciences to foresee a major shift in the Party line] arise? This occurred above all because the Praesidium of the Academy of 33 T h e consequences of this political dictation have been described by Michael Polanyi in " T h e Autonomy of Science," Scientific Monthly, 60:14150 (1945). 34 Column in The Daily Worker, January 16, 1949.

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Sciences and the Bureau of the Biological Department forgot the most important principle in any science—the Party principle. They pegged themselves to a position of political indifference and "objectivity." The USSR Academy of Sciences forgot the instructions given by V. I. Lenin that "partisanship" is inherent in materialism, and that materialism, whatever phenomena are being considered, must stand openly and directly on the viewpoint of a definite public group. For Soviet scientists this viewpoint is the interests of the working people, and the basis for their world outlook is dialectical materialism. In a letter to Stalin published in the same issue of Pravda, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences admits its delinquency and acknowledges openly the subservience of scientists to politicians: The Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences, USSR, and the Bureau of the Division of Biological Sciences made a grave error in giving support to the Mendelist-Morganist movement to the detriment of progressive Michurinist teaching. The Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences inadequately directed the biological institutes of the Academy of Sciences and retained opponents of Michurinist teaching in guiding positions. As a result, the scientific institutes of the Division of Biological Sciences contributed very little to the solution of the practical problems of socialistic construction. The Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences promises you, dear Iosif Vissarionovich, and through you, our Party and Government, determinedly to rectify the errors we permitted, to reorganize the work of the Division of Biological Sciences and its institutes, and to develop biological science in a true materialistic Michurinist direction. When the Nobel laureate, Professor H. J . Muller, resigned from this Academy, the Presidium accepted his resignation

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and published their acceptance in Pravda (December 14, 1948). T h e following passage is f r o m this article: Muller declares that in its decision on the biological question the Academy of Sciences was motivated by political goals, that science in the Soviet Union is subject to politics. We, the Soviet scientists, are convinced that the entire experience of history teaches that there does not exist and cannot exist in the world a science divorced from politics. The fundamental question is with what kind of politics science is connected, whose interests it serves—the interests of the people or the interests of the exploiters. Soviet science serves the interests of the common people; it is proud of its connection with the policy of the Soviet State, which has no other aims but the improvement of the welfare of the workers, and the strengthening of peace and progress of democracy . . . In May, 1951, an article appeared in Vosprony filosfii attacking the basic philosophical concepts of Einstein. It quoted a well-known statement of Lenin's: In this connection Lenin stated: " T o expect impartial science in a society of wage slavery is the same sort of simple-minded nai'vetd as to expect impartiality from factory owners in the matter of raising workers' wages and reducing capital's profits." Lenin also more than once emphasized that in denying the partisan nature of its science, the bourgeois was trying to deceive the proletariat. There is not and cannot be any place for neutrality and impartiality in the field of any scientific theory. Not much reflection is needed to realize what kind of "pure" science General Eisenhower is concerned with developing as President of Columbia University. Nor have provable instances been lacking of politicians giving directives to scientists a n d plotting the f u t u r e course

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for science to follow, instances which now can be ignored but which can not be denied by the faithful. Stalin himself published a single paper in Pravda (June 20, 1950) which reversed exactly the development of Soviet linguistics. T h i s action of Stalin's was not concealed by the true believers, but was proclaimed abroad. Stalin's demand for flattery would make concealment impossible, as is shown by the following letter from the joint session of the Academy of Sciences, U.S.S.R., and the Academy of Medicine, U.S.S.R., dated July 4, 1950. It contains the tribute: You, as a pre-eminent scientist, produce works which are without equal in the history of progressive science. Your work Concerning Marxism in Linguistics is a model of genuine creative science, a supreme example of how science should be developed and advanced. It has created a revolution in linguistics, it has ushered in a new era in Soviet science generally. Lysenko even told how the politicians packed the Academy itself with Michurinists. H e gave the Party full credit for doing the packing. We Michurinists should frankly admit that until the present we have as yet not adequately succeeded in making use of all the excellent opportunities established in our country by the Party and the Government for a complete exposure of the Morganist metaphysics, which was introduced entirely from an inimical, alien, reactionary biology. The Academy, just recently supplemented by a significant number of Academician-Michurinists, is now obligated to fulfill this most important task. This will be important scientifically in the task of cadre preparation, and in the task of increasing aid to the collective and state farms. Morganism-Mendelism (the chromosome theory of heredity) is still taught in different variations in all the biological and agronomical institutes, while the teaching of Michurinist genetics has essentially, in all intents and purposes, not been introduced.

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Often even in the highest official scientific circles of biologists the adherents of the doctrines of Michurin and Williams were in the minority. Until the present time they have even been in the minority in the membership of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. T h a n k s to the care of the Party, the Government, and personally of Comrade Stalin, the situation in the Academy has now been radically changed. O u r Academy was enlarged and soon in the next elections it will be even more enlarged by a notable number of new academicians and corresponding-member Michurinists. T h i s will establish a new arrangement and new possibilities for the future development of Michurinist teaching in the Academy. N o r was S t a l i n inactive i n c h a n g i n g biological L y s e n k o w r o t e a letter to Pravda

doctrine.

( M a r c h 8, 1953), b e m o a n i n g

t h e i r r e p a r a b l e loss which m a n k i n d suffered w h e n Stalin died. H e stated: Comrade Stalin pointed out the paths for development of the theory of Michurinist materialist biology. T h a t Comrade Stalin found time even for detailed examination of the most important problems of biology is especially well known to me as a biologist. H e directly edited the plan of my paper, On the Situation in Biological Science; in detail explained to me his corrections; provided me with directions as to how to write certain passages in the paper. Comrade Stalin paid close attention to the results of the work of the August (1948) session of the Lenin Ail-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences [in which "progressive, materialistic, Michurinist biology triumphed over reactionary Mendelism-Morganism"]. Lenin discovered Michurin; Stalin nurtured our cadres of Michurinites; Stalin disclosed a series of most important biological principles. 3 5 35 Translated by Ivan D. London in Science, 118:32 (1953).

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Perhaps the most publicized instance of political dictation in Soviet science occurred when Lysenko arose to make the closing remarks in the session of the Lenin Academy of Agriculture which outlawed genetics. Lysenko said: ComradesI Before proceeding to the concluding remarks, I consider it my duty to declare the following: "I have been asked in one of the memoranda as to the attitude of the Central Committee concerning my paper. I answer: the Central Committee of the Party has examined my report and approved it." (Tremendous applause, passing into an ovation. All rise.) Pravda (August 8) describes the scene as follows: This communication by the President aroused general enthusiasm in the members of the session. As if moved by a single impulse, all those present arose from their seats and started a stormy, prolonged ovation in honor of the Central Committee of the Lenin-Stalin Party, in honor of the wise leader and teacher of the Soviet people, the greatest scientist of our era, Comrade Stalin. T h e impact of this announcement was immediate and devastating. Three geneticists recanted as soon as they could get the floor. P. M. Zhukovski's recantation included the following passage: 86 It is said here (and it is a justified reproach) that we do not carry on a struggle in print against foreign reactionaries in the field of biological science. I declare here that I will wage this war and will give it political significance. I think that it is necessary, finally, that the voice of Soviet biologists be heard on the pages of our scientific publications on the great ideological abyss that separates us. And only the alien scientist who will understand 86 These recantations were published in full in Conway Zirkle, The of a Science in Russia (Philadelphia, 1949).

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that the bridge must be crossed toward us, and not toward him, may depend on our attention. Let the past which separated us from T . D. Lysenko (true, not always) pass into oblivion. Believe me, that today I make a Party step and appear as a true member of the Party, i.e., honorably.

S. I. Alikhangan's recantation included the following: I call upon my comrades to draw very serious conclusions from what I say. I, as a Communist, cannot and must not obstinately contrast, in the ardor of controversy, my personal views and conceptions against the entire progressive course in the development of biological science. On leaving this session the first thing I must do is to revise not only my relationship to the new, Michurinist science, but likewise all my former scientific activity. I call upon my comrades to do the same. I cannot think of my existence without active and useful activity for the good of Soviet society and Soviet science. I believed in our party and our ideology when I went into battle with my soldiers. And today I sincerely believe that, as a scientist, I act honestly and truthfully and go with the Party and with my Country, and if you, comrades, do not do likewise, you will be found lagging behind, you will fall behind in the progressive development of science. Science does not tolerate indecision and lack of principle. From tomorrow, I will begin to rid not only my own scientific activity of old, reactionary, Weismannist-Morganist views, but will also begin to remake, to break in two all of my students and comrades.

A. R. Zhebrak's recantation was made in a letter to Pravda. It was published on August 15. T h e first paragraph reads: As long as both courses in Soviet genetics were recognized by our Party and the controversies concerning these courses were considered as creative discussions of the theoretical problems of

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modern science, furthering the search for truth through controversy, I persistently defended my views which differed on particular questions with the views of Academician Lysenko. Now, however, since it has become clear to me that the fundamental aspects of Michurin's direction in Soviet genetics are approved by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), then I, as a member of the Party, do not consider it possible for me to retain those views which are recognized as erroneous by the Central Committee of our Party. Other examples of the subordination of scientific thinking to the intellectual limitations of the Soviet politician could be cited almost indefinitely. Even the learned academies and the leading and opulently supported scientists are not free from the most stupid doctrinal limitation. Enough instances have been cited, however, to indicate the overall pattern, but one last example must be quoted, for it is a most humiliating grovel. It occurs in a letter to Stalin from the Presidium of the Academy of Medicine (published in Pravda, September 15, 1 9 4 8 ) : Dear Iosif Vissarionovich: T h e grand session of the Presidium of the Academy of Medical Sciences, USSR, devoted to a discussion of the status and mission of medical science in relation to the directive on biology, addresses you, our beloved leader and teacher, with profound love and gratitude for the constant concern and aid which you have extended to progressive Soviet science as its great leader and friend. All our best achievements and the entire progressive trend of our science, dear Iosif Vissarionovich, are due to you. You have given great support to progressive Soviet scientists and innovators, headed by Academician T . D. Lysenko, in their long struggle against hostile idealistic tendencies of the Weis-

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mann-Morgan type, and to the progressive Michurin teaching in biology . . . T h e Academy of Medical Sciences, USSR, with all its scientific collectives, is faced with the urgent task of eradicating the reactionary doctrines of Weismann-Morganism from medical science . . . We promise you, our dear leader, to rectify in the shortest possible time the mistakes we have permitted to occur, and to reconstruct our scientific work in the spirit of the directives issued by the great Party of Lenin and Stalin. We promise you to master fully the great Michurin teaching and to utilize it for the further development of Soviet medicine. We will fight for the Bolshevik Party spirit in medicine and public health and will eradicate hostile bourgeois ideology and servility before foreign isms in our midst. Promoting criticism and self-criticism in scientific work, we will labor indefatigably to fulfill your wise instructions and to develop medical science for the welfare of our people, the builders of Communism. W e can readily see that those apologists who now deny the political control of science in Russia have a most difficult road ahead. T h e i r twistings and turnings should be of great interest to future historians of science.

§7 T h e first time a scientist delves into the publications of the Soviet biologists, he is apt to be shocked by an all-pervading and deeply entrenched dishonesty, a dishonesty which permeates the whole and which is accepted so routinely that it seems invincible. T h e fraudulent claims, of course, cannot be exposed by the Russians w h o are honest, for all sources of publication are in the hands of the government. T h i s means that all editorial policy is controlled by politicians w h o are too incompetent technically to evaluate the current false-

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hoods. T h e individual Soviet scientist is completely helpless. What he writes may never be printed and what he says in public may be held against him. Even the Communist authorities have become helpless because they have cut themselves off from reliable sources of knowledge. In the last analysis, they cannot believe what their scientists tell them, because they have liquidated so many of them for saying the wrong thing that now the scientists are cowed and tell their masters only what they believe their masters want to hear. Even so, disaster may strike the most subservient scientist. When a Soviet scientist has lost favor, and when the attacks which are to obliterate him have begun, his erstwhile comrades often join the chorus, expose his chicanery, and speed him on his way. As this is written, Lysenko himself is accused of fraud by Professor Ν. V. Turbin, who had recently been one of his most pugnacious followers. T h e outcome of the accusation is still in doubt, but the odds seem to indicate that Lysenko's days are numbered. Where quackery is protected by politicians and where honest scientists are afraid to tell the truth, mendacity cannot be destroyed. Even where science is free, a simple falsehood is often difficult to disprove. T h e operation may involve marshalling a great many facts, repeating complex experiments, and devoting much time and effort to detailed and boring work. T o correct the numerous and often repeated falsehoods in Soviet biology would require many volumes of tedious, technical exposition, but to denounce the dishonest statements without correcting them is—and should be—unconvincing. Fortunately, some of the Marxian biologists are both ignorant and stupid, while others—the more intelligent ones who know what they are doing—have been very careless. As a result, they are all more vulnerable than their well-entrenched political positions would lead us to

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believe; and we can reveal a number of instances of their willful dishonesty, instances which illustrate the kind of misinformation they spread so assiduously. T h e Marxian biologists have stated consistently that modern genetics is "anti-Darwin" a n d that Western geneticists are hostile to the theory of evolution. Many examples of this falsehood have been noted elsewhere, 37 and only two will b e cited here. In his address to the Lenin Academy of Agriculture, Lysenko stated: Weismannism followed by Mendelism-Morganism, which appeared at the beginning of the century, directed its "sword" against the materialistic foundations of Darwin's theory of evolution. Weismann called his conception neo-Darwinism, but it was essentially a complete denial of the materialistic aspects of Darwinism and surreptitiously introduced idealism and metaphysics into biology. 38 In the session of the Lenin Academy of Agriculture held in the evening of August 2, 1948, Academician Μ. B. Mitin stated: Representatives of the Mendelist-Morganist trend—Morgan, Johannsen, De Vries and others—directed all the deductions of their research against Darwin, against his evolutionary teaching, against the theory of natural selection. Further spread of Mendelism-Morganism serves as a patent confirmation that this trend in biology is directed pointedly against the theory of evolution, against the very idea of evolution in nature. 39 T o refute the above falsehoods, it is only necessary to point out that our modern explanation of evolution rests in 37 Conway Zirkle, Death of a Science in Russia (Philadelphia, 1949). 38 Op. cit., p. 102. It does not require a semantic analysis to show that this statement has no operational meaning. 39 Op. cit., p. 150.

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great part on the work of the scientists denounced by Lysenko and Mitin. (See Chapter VI.) Kammerer's confession and suicide was, as we have indicated, a real blow to the Marxian biologists. His public exposure probably allowed genetics to last an additional ten years in Russia. We have already described the Communist attempts to rehabilitate him locally (p. 373). In 1948, the Communists undertook to spread his rehabilitation to the free world and their efforts give us another indisputable example of their dishonesty. Details of these attempts have been recorded elsewhere, 40 so only the high spots need be mentioned here. Academician N. G. Belensky, who spoke in the same session of the Academy as did Academician Mitin, quoted Kammerer's work on salamanders as proof of the inheritance of acquired characters. His speech was included in the official proceedings, which were translated and printed in English. 41 In the English edition of the proceedings, Belensky devoted two pages to listing and endorsing Kammerer's data, and wrote nothing whatever about its admitted fraudulence. Two years later, the misinformation had spread and Kammerer's data were being cited in Britain. T h e following quotation is from Alan G. Morton: 42 " T h e classical experiments of Kammerer are certainly very striking, and it is unfortunate that they should have been surrounded by so much irrelevant prejudice. It is no argument to say that they have 40 Conway Zirkle, " T h e Citation of Fraudulent Data," Science, 120:189 (1954). 41 The Situation in Biological Science: Proceedings of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Science of the USSR, verbatim report (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1949), pp. 93-95. 42 Alan G. Morton, Soviet Genetics (London: Lawrence R. Wishart, 1951), p. 34.

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not been confirmed merely because no one else has undertaken the necessary laborious investigation." In another two years, Kammerer's claims had become incorporated in the history of science. Philip G. Fothergill 4 3 devoted two pages to describing Kammerer's data on salamanders and nowhere does he mention the fact that Kammerer had written: "Indeed there were still other objects (blackened salamanders) upon which my results had plainly been 'improved' post mortem with India ink." More recently, Stephen F. Mason 44 referred casually to Kammerer: "Kammerer in 1924 observed colour changes in salamanders which he claimed were induced by, a n d were adaptive to, environmental changes." A review of a book of J. S£gal 45 indicates that he had followed the Party line. T h e anonymous reviewer—obviously no Communist—helped to spread the idea that the western geneticists had been unfair to Kammerer. " H e [J. S£gal] very rightly criticizes geneticists for making n o effort to repeat the experiments of Kammerer and others in proof of the inheritance of acquired characters." 46 All those who quote Kammerer, of course, are not citing fraudulent data knowingly. Indeed, there is internal evidence that some are writing in complete innocence. A single knowing misrepresentation, however, may start a chain reaction. A n d not only Kammerer is involved. Academician Belensky (op. cit.) quoted a great many other data which had been discredited by later and m o r e careful work, which he ignored. 43 Philip G. Fothergill, Historical Aspects of Organic Evolution (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953), pp. 256-58. 44 Stephen F. Mason, Main Currents of Scientific Thought: A history of the sciences (New York: Henry Schuman, 1953), p. 437. « J. Sigal, Michourine, Lyssenko et le probUme de VMridite (Paris, 1951).