Herbert Spencer:
Social Darwinism, 1857
Herbert Spencer (18201903) was thinking about ideas of evolution and progress before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859). Nonetheless, his ideas received a major boost from Darwin's theories and the general application of ideas such as "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought is known as "Social Darwinism". It would be possible to argue that human evolution showed the benefits of cooperation and community. Spencer, and Social Darwinists after him took another view. He believed that society was evolving toward increasing freedom for individuals; and so held that government intervention, ought to be minimal in social and political life.
Here Spencer specifically discusses race and class.
From Herbert Spencer. Progress: Its Law and Cause
The current conception of Progress is somewhat shifting and indefinite. Sometimes it comprehends little more than simple growth-as of a nation in the number of its members and the extent of territory over which it has spread. Sometimes it has reference to quantity of material products-as when the advance of agriculture and manufactures is the topic. Sometimes the superior quality of these products is contemplated; and sometimes the new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When again we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to the state of the indivdual or people exhibiting it; whilst, when the progress of
Knowledge, of Science, of Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception of Progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. It takes in not so much the reality of Progress as its accompaniments-not so much the substance as the shadow. That progress in intelligence which takes place during the evolution of the child into the man, or the savage into the philosopher, is commonly regarded as consisting in the greater number of facts known and laws understood: whereas the actual progress consist in the produce of a greater quantity and variety of articles for the satisfaction of men's wants; in the increasing security of person and property; in the widening freedom of action enjoyed whereas, rightly understood, social progress consists in those changes of structure in the social organism which have entailed these consequences The current conception is a teleological one. The phenomena are contemplated solely as bearing on human happiness. Only those changes t are held to constitute progress which directly or indirectly tend to heighten human happiness. And they are thought to constitute progress simply because they tend to heighten
human happiness. But rightly to understand Progress, we must inquire what is the nature of these changes, considered apart from our interests. Ceasing, for example, to regard the successive geological modifications that have taken place in the Earth, as modifications that have gradually fitted it for the habitation of Man, and as therefore a geological progress, we must seek to determine the character common to these modifications-the law to which they all conform. And similarly in every other case. Leaving out of sight concomitants and beneficial consequences, let us ask what Progress is in itself.
In respect to that progress which individual organisms display in the course of their evolution, this question has been answered by the Germans. The investigations of Wolff, Goethe, and Van Baer have established the truth that the series of changes gone through during the development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an animal, constitute an advance from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure. In its primary stage, every germ consists of a substance that is uniform throughout, both in texture and chemical composition. The first step in its development is the appearance of a difference between two parts of this substance; or, as the phenomenon is described in physiological language-a differentiation. Each of these differentiated divisions presently begins itself to exhibit some contrast of parts; and by these secondary differentiations become as definite as the original one. This progress is continuously repeated-is simultaneously going on in all parts of the growing embryo; and by endless multiplication of these differentiations there is ultimately produced that complex combination of tissues and organs constituting the adult animal or plant. This is the course of evolution followed by all organisms whatever. It is settled beyond dispute that organic progress consists in a change from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.
Now, we propose in the first place to show, that this law of organic progress is the law of all progress. Whether it be in the development of the Earth, in the
development of Life upon its surface, the development of Society, of Government, of Manufactures, of Commerce, of Language, Literature, Science, Art, this same evolution of the simple into the complex, through a process of continuous
.... In the course of ages, there arises, as among ourselves, a highly complex political organization of monarch, ministers, lords and commons, with their subordinate administrative departments, courts of justice, revenue offices, &c., supplemented in the provinces by municipal governments, county governments, parish or union governments - all of them more or less elaborated. By its side there grows up a highly complex religious organization, with its various grades of officials from archbishops down to sextons, its colleges, convocations, ecclesiastical courts, &c.; to all which must be added the evermultiplying independent sects, each with its general and local authorities. And at the same time there is developed a highly complex aggregation of customs manners, and temporary fashions, enforced by society at large, and serving to control those minor transactions between man and mar which are not regulated by civil and religious law. Moreover it is to be observed that this everincreasing heterogeneity in the governmental appliances of each nation, has been accompanied by an increasing heterogeneity in the governmental
appliances of different nations all o which are more or less unlike in their political systems and legislation in their creeds and religious institutions, in their customs and ceremonial usages.
Simultaneously there has been going on a second differentiation of a still more familiar kind; that, namely, by which the mass of the community has become segregated into distinct classes and orders of workers. While the governing part has been undergoing the complex development above described, the governed part has been undergoing an equally complex development, which has resulted in that minute division of labour characterizing advanced nations. It is needless to trace out this progress from its first stages, up through the caste divisions of the East and the incorporated guilds of Europe, to the elaborate producing and distributing organization existing among ourselves. Political economists have made familiar to all, the evolution which, beginning with a tribe whose members severally perform the same actions each for himself, ends with a civilized community whose members severally perform different actions for each other; and they have further explained the evolution through which the solitary producer of any one commodity, is transformed into a combination of producers who united under a master, take separate parts in the manufacture of such commodity. But there are yet other and higher phases of this advance from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in the industrial structure of the social organism. Long after considerable progress has been made in the division of labour among different classes of workers, there is still little or no division of labour among the widely separated parts of the community: the nation continues comparatively homogeneous in the respect that in each district the same occupations are pursued. But when roads and other means of transit become numerous and good, the different districts begin to assume different functions, and to become mutually dependent. The calico manufacture locates it self in this county, the woollencloth manufacture in that; silks are produced here, lace there; stockings in one place, shoes in another; pottery, hardware, cutlery, come to have their special towns; and ultimately every locality becomes more or less distinguished from the
rest by the leading occupation carried on in it. Nay, more, this subdivision of functions shows itself not only among the different parts of the same nation, but among different nations. That exchange of commodities which freetrade promises so greatly to increase, will ultimately have the effect of specializing, in a greater or less degree, the industry of each people. So that beginning with a barbarous tribe, almost if not quite homogeneous in the functions of its members, the progress has been, and still is, towards an economic aggregation of the whole human race, growing ever more heterogeneous in respect of the separate functions assumed by separate nations, the separate functions assumed by the local sections of each nation, the separate functions assumed by the many kinds of makers and traders in each town, and the separate functions assumed by the workers united in producing each commodity.
Not only is the law thus clearly exemplified in the evolution of the social organism, but it is exemplified with equal clearness in the evolution of all products of human thought and action; whether concrete or abstract, real or ideal…
We might trace out the evolution of Science; beginning with the era in which it was not yet differentiated from Art, and was, in union with Art, the handmaid of Religion; passing through the era in which the sciences were so few and rudimentary, as to be simultaneously cultivated by the same philosophers; and ending with the era in which the genera and species are so numerous that few can enumerate them, and no one can adequately grasp even one genus. Or we might do the like 0 with Architecture, with the Drama, with Dress. But doubtless the reader is already weary of illustrations; and our promise has been amply fulfilled. We believe we have shown beyond question, that that which the German physiologists have found to be the law of organic development, is the law of all development. The advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive
differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its surface; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether
contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggregation of races; it is seen in the evolution of Society in respect both of its political and economical organization; and it is seen in the evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, down to the novelties of yesterday, that in which Progress essentially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous.
Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species (1859)
Opposition to evolutionary theory has always been most vigorous among those who felt that their
religious beliefs required them to reject it. Darwin was acutely aware of this fact and tried whenever he
could to accommodate religious sensibilities. In the following overview of his theory of natural selection
he emphasizes not only how much more rational the theory is than the claim that each species was
separately created, but argues that it is marvelous and worthy of a majestic creator as well. In the final
paragraph he lays down the basic elements of his theory: that individuals in every species tend naturally
to vary from the norm, and that when there are so many members of a species sharing an ecological
niche that they are competing for survival, only those who whose variations give them decisive
advantages will survive. They will pass these characteristics on to their descendants. Despite many
disagreements among scientists about the details of evolution, some of which are mentioned in the
footnotes below, most of them agree that a century and a half of accumulated evidence supports the broad
outlines of this elegant theory which explains nature's oddities, failures and even occasional ugliness as
the products of chance operations rather than of an omnipotent god.
What examples does Darwin give of features of nature that seem like errors ("less than perfect")?
As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favorable variations, it can produce no
great or sudden modifications; it can act only by short and slow steps. (1) Hence, the canon of
"Natura
non facit saltum," (2)
which every fresh addition to our knowledge tends to confirm, is on this theory
intelligible. We can see why throughout nature the same general end is gained by an almost infinite
diversity of means, for every peculiarity when once acquired is long inherited, and structures already
modified in many different ways have to be adapted for the same general purpose. We can, in short, see
why nature is prodigal in variety, though niggard (3) in innovation. But why this should be a law of nature
if each species has been independently created no man can explain.
Many other facts are, as it seems to me, explicable on this theory. How strange it is that a bird, under the
form of a woodpecker, should prey on insects on the ground; that upland geese which rarely or never
swim, should possess webbed feet; that a thrush-like bird should dive and feed on sub-aquatic insects; and
that a petrel should have the habits and structure fitting it for the life of an auk! and so in endless other
cases. But on the view of each species constantly trying to increase in member, with natural selection
always ready to adapt the slowly varying descendants of each to any unoccupied or ill-occupied place in
nature, these facts cease to be strange, or might even have been anticipated.
We can to a certain extent understand how it is that there is so much beauty throughout nature; for this
may be largely attributed to the agency of selection. That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not
universal, must be admitted by every one who will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at
certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most
brilliant colors, elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and sometimes to both sexes of many
birds, butterflies, and other animals. With birds it has often rendered the voice of the male musical to the
female, as well as to our ears. Flowers and fruit have been rendered conspicuous by brilliant colors in
contrast with the green foliage, in order that the flowers may be easily seen, visited, and fertilized by
insects, and the seeds disseminated by birds. How it comes that certain colors, sounds, and forms should
give pleasure to man and the lower animals,--that is, how the sense of beauty in its simplest form was first
acquired,--we do not know any more than how certain odors and favors were first rendered agreeable.
As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the inhabitants of each country only in
relation to their co-inhabitants; so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country,
beaten and supplanted by the naturalized productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the
contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human
eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee,
when used against an enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in such great
numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of
pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at
ichneumonidae (4) feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars; or at other such cases. The wonder
indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want (5) of absolute perfection have
not been detected. . . .
Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been
independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter
by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should
have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I
view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long
before the first bed of the Cambrian (6) system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.
Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness
to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far
distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of
species in each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left no descendants, but have become
utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the common
and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups within each class, which will
ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal
descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary
succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole
world. (7) Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural
selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend
to progress towards perfection. (8)
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing
on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and
to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each
other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the
largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction;
Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of
Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from
famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of
the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having
been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone
cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
(1) One modern school of thought rejects Darwin's gradualism, arguing that sudden and widespread change after long periods of stability has been more
characteristic of evolutionary history. (2) Nature makes no leaps.
(3) Miserly. (4) A kind of wasp. (5) Lack.
(6) About 700,000,000 years ago
(7) Darwin has in mind not only the Biblical flood, but theories of nature which attributed all traces of large-scale change to various catastrophes. Ironically, most modern Darwinians have integrated the belief in at least one great cataclysm--the cometary impact which evidently ended the age of the dinosaurs--into evolutionary theory.
Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
Despite the widely-recognized failure of Freudian psychotherapy to heal
disturbed people effectively and the rejection of many of his major theories
Freud remains one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.
Freud's basic insight that our minds preserve memories and emotions
which are not always consciously available to us has transformed the way
humanity views itself ever since. Freud said that there had been three great
humiliations in human history: Galileo's discovery that we were not the
center of the universe, Darwin's discovery that we were not the crown of
creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control of our own
minds. The tendency of modern people to trace their problems to childhood
traumas or other repressed emotions begins with Freud. One of Freud's
more important discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious
surface in disguised form during dreaming, and that the remembered
fragments of dreams can help uncover the buried feelings. Whether the
mechanism is exactly as Freud describes it, many people have derived
insights into themselves from studying their dreams, and most modern
people consider dreams emotionally significant, unlike our ancestors who
often saw them either as divine portents or as the bizarre side-effects of
indigestion. Freud argues that dreams are wish-fulfillments, and will
ultimately argue that those wishes are the result of repressed or frustrated
sexual desires. The anxiety surrounding these desires turns some dreams
into nightmares.
Dreams are not comparable to the spontaneous sounds made by a musical
instrument struck rather by some external force than by the hand of a
performer; they are not meaningless, not absurd, they do not imply that one
portion of our stockpile of ideas sleeps while another begins to awaken.
They are a completely valid psychological phenomenon, specifically the
fulfillment of wishes; they can be classified in the continuity of
comprehensible waking mental states; they are constructed through highly
complicated intellectual activity.
But as soon as we delight in this discovery, a flood of questions assails us.
If, according to dream analysis, the dream represents a fulfilled wish, what
creates the astonishing and strange form in which this wish-fullfillment is
expressed? What transformation have the dream thoughts undergone to
shape the manifest dream which we remember when awake? Through what
means has this transformation taken place? What is the source of the
material which has been reworked into the dream? Where do the many
peculiarities which we notice in dream thoughts come from, for instance
that they may be mutually contradictory? Can a dream tell us so mething
new about our inner psychological processes? Can its content correct the
opinions that we have held during our waking hours?
I suggest that we set these questions aside for the moment and follow one
particular path further. We have learned that a dream represents a fulfilled
wish. Our next concern will be to discover whether this is a universal
characteristic of dreams. . . We must leave open the possibility that the
meaning may not be the same in every dream. Our first dream was a wish
fulfillment; but perhaps another will prove to be a fulfilled fear; a third
might contain a reflex; a fourth may simply reproduce a memory. Are there
other wish-dreams? Or perhaps nothing but wish-dreams exist.
It is easy to demonstrate that dreams often have the character of blatant
wish-fullfillments; so much so that one wonders why the language of
dreams was not understood long ago. For instance, there is a dream that I
can experience at will, experimentally, as it were. When I eat sardines,
olives, or other strongly salted foods in the evening, I am awakened in the
night by thirst. But the awaking is always preceded by a dream with the
same content: I gulp the water down; and it tastes delicious to me as only a
cool drink can when one is dying of thirst; and then I wake up and really
have to drink. The cause of this simple dream is the thirst which I feel when
I awaken. This feeling causes the desire to drink, and the dream shows me
this desire fulfilled. It thereby serves a function which I can easily guess. I
am a good sleeper, unaccustomed to being awakened by any need. If I can
slake my thirst by dreaming that I am drinking, I don't need to wake up in
order to be satisfied. Thus this is a convenience dream. The dream is
substituted for action, as so often in life.
wish-fulfillment, it could be completely egotistical. A love of convenience
is not really compatible with consideration for others. The introduction of
the funerary urn is probably another wish-fulfillment; I was sorry that I
didn't own the vessel any more--just as the water glass beside my wife was
inaccessible. The urn also fit the growing salty taste which I knew would
force me to wake up.
I very commonly had such dreams of convenience in my youth. Always
used to working deep into the night, it was always difficult for me to wake
up early. I used to dream then that I was out of bed and standing in front of
the washstand. Eventually I had to recognize that I was not up, but
meanwhile I had slept some more. The same lazy dream in a particularly
witty form was told to me by one of my colleagues who evidently shared
my sleepyheadedness. The landlady he rented rooms near the hospitals
from had strong instructions to wake him up at the right time every
morning; but she had a difficult time carrying out these orders. One
morning he was sleeping especially sweetly. The woman called into the
room, "Mr. Pepi, get up. You have to go to the hospital. " At that point the
sleeper dreamed that he was lying in a bed in a room in the hospital, on
which was a placard which read "Pepi H., medical student, age 22."
Dreaming, he said to himself, "Since I am already in the hospital, I don't
have to go there," so he turned over and slept on. Thus he openly confessed
the cause of his dream.
It is just as easy to discover wish-fulfillment in some other dreams that I
have collected from normal people. A friend who knows my dream theory
and had shared it with his wife said to me one day, "I must tell you that my
wife dreamed yesterday that she had her period. You know what that
means." Certainly I knew; since the young woman had dreamed that she
had her period, it meant that her period had not come. I could well believe
that she would liked to have enjoyed her freedom a little longer before
beginning the burdens of motherhood. It was a clever way of announcing
the onset of her pregnancy. Another friend writes me that his wife recently
dreamed that she noticed drops of milk on her blouse front. This is always a
sign of pregnancy, but not a first pregnancy; the young mother wanted to
have more milk for the second child than she had had for the first. . . .
These examples will perhaps be enough to show that dreams which can
only be understood as wish-fullfillments, and which clearly reveal their
content, occur often and under manifold circumstances. These mostly short
and simple dreams stand out pleasantly in contrast with the confused and
overly complex dream compositions which have mostly absorbed the
attention of writers. . . .
We recognize that we might have gotten at the understanding of the
concealed meaning of dreams by the shortest path if we had simply
followed common ways of speaking. Proverbs indeed sometimes speak
dismissively of dreams; people think they are being properly scientific
when they say, "Dreams are froth." But in common usage dreams are
predominantly the fulfillers of dreams. We cry out, delighted, "I would
never have imagined such a thing even in my wildest dreams" when we find
that reality has surpassed our expectations. . . .
There still remain anxiety dreams (1) as a special subdivision of dreams
with a painful content whose interpretation as wish-fulfillment dreams will
be most unwillingly accepted by the unenlightened. However, I can deal
briefly with anxiety dreams here; they do not represent another aspect of the
problems posed by dreams; rather it is a matter of understanding above all
neurotic anxiety. The anxiety that we feel in dreams is only apparently
explained by the dream's content. When we try to discover the meaning of a
dream's content, we note that the anxiety felt in a dream is no better
explained by its content than the anxiety felt in a phobia (2) is explained by
the mental image which induces the phobia. For instance, is it quite true
that one may fall out of a window, and therefore one may reasonably exert
a certain amount of caution around a window; but this does not explain why
in its phobic form the fear is so powerful and the sufferer pursued by the
fear far beyond its cause. The same explanation is valid for phobias as for
anxiety dreams. The anxiety is in both cases only loose ly linked to the
association, and actually derives from another source.
Since dream anxiety is intimately related to neurotic anxiety is must explain
the first by reference to the second. In a short publication on anxiety
neurosis . . . I argued that neurotic anxiety derives from sexual life, and is
the expression of unsatisfied desire which has been diverted from its goal.
This formula has since then been proven valid. It enables us now to say that
the sexual content of anxiety dreams is the result of transformation of
sexual desire.
