Another human distinction is the increase of the part played by
environment in man as opposed to animals (in determining his
biologically effective nature). Environment plays not merely a large
part, but a preponderating one, in his development after the first
year or so of his life. Tradition provides a special environment,
made by man for man’s own development; and men brought up in markedly
different traditions arrive at different end-results just as surely and
obviously as do men of markedly different hereditary tendencies arrive
at different end-results even though exposed to similar traditions.
Traditions are infinitely complex things: there are world traditions,
national traditions broad and narrow, class traditions and traditions
of profession and trade, traditions of predilection, of art, of
religion: and men may be exposed in their development to the combined
influence of a number of these. But the net result of the diversity of
tradition is an extraordinary diversity of end-result. “_Nihil humanum
alienum a me puto_”--Terence could only say this with truth in the
sense that there are certain fundamental emotions and instincts found
in all men, and also certain aspects of environment shared by all
humanity--the sun and moon, earth, water, and fire, space and time,
parents and society, and so on and so forth.
I make no apologies for the length of this preliminary analysis,
since it is precisely by the neglect of preliminary analysis that
most attempts to correlate biology and sociology have failed. The
salient fact emerges that with man there has been a radical change in
evolutionary method.
As space is limited, I am here only proposing to consider three of the
chief contributions which biology can make to sociology--on the idea of
progress, on the relation between individual and community, and on the
applicability of the doctrine of the struggle for existence to man.
As regards the idea of progress, biology can make a clear and
unequivocal contribution: whereas man is biologically so young, his
evolution is yet so chaotic and divergently directed, that it is very
hard to arrive at definite conclusions from the study of his history
alone. It has been a source of constant surprise to me that more use
has not been made of biological data in the controversy over this
question. In the little book recently edited by Mr. Marvin on various
aspects of the concept of Progress, there was no article dealing with
biological progress; and even in Professor Bury’s notable book, _The
Idea of Progress_, biology was as little and as unsatisfactorily drawn
upon as in Dean Inge’s writings on the subject.
We have already seen that a certain direction obtains in organic
evolution. Into the details of this process I have not here the time
to go; we must be content with the brief enumeration which has already
been given of the qualities of organisms whose maximum level, and to a
lesser degree whose average, have increased during evolution.
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