To sum up, we may say that the crude application to human affairs of
the doctrine of the struggle for existence, torn from its biological
context, isolated and over-emphasized, is wholly unwarranted. On the
other hand, a struggle does continue, both of the direct and indirect
type defined by Darwin: and there is no prospect of it ceasing to play
an important part in human biology. Co-operation is not, any more than
competition, to be taken as the sole desirable principle. Panaceas of
this sort do not exist, except to make bubble reputations and quack
fortunes. Even within such a highly organized co-operative unit as
the mammalian body a struggle continues--the different tissues are
in competition with each other for food, and if the available supply
diminishes below the necessary level, some tissues will be drawn upon
by other more successful competitors, and the struggle will lead to an
end-result in which the proportion of the various kinds of cells comes
to be very different from what they were in the normal well-nourished
body.[24] That is a purely biological example. In man, since the
unification of the community is of a low order, it is inevitable that
individuals and sections will continue in some form of competition with
each other: not only this, however, but the additional fact that man’s
mental organization reacts strongly to the stimulus of competition make
it probable that a “struggle” of some sort will not only be inevitable
but up to a point beneficial in any form of society. What is more, once
co-operation exists, competition between the co-operative units is
necessary to bring out the full efficiency of their combination.
All that the biologist can do is to point out that neither the
one-sided application of the principle of struggle nor of that of
co-operation is biologically sound. But, as everywhere else in human
conduct, after the broad principles have been grasped, success lies
always in a delicate, continuous adjustment of conflicting claims, in
what one may call a personal conscious effort. Struggle is universal:
but by itself it can only lead to a certain stage of evolutionary
progress.
The half-baked moralist may lay down the law about right and wrong
with the most positive assurance; but, by not paying attention to the
necessity for sweet reasonableness, give-and-take, unselfishness, for
thought about the thousand and one details of daily conduct, he may be
making himself and his wife thoroughly unhappy, ruining his family’s
chances, and, as a matter of fact, be thoroughly immoral without once
suspecting it.
It is in a very similar way that the militarist, for instance,
fortifying himself in the doctrine of the struggle for existence with
what he regards as an impregnable sanction for his theories, is in
reality acting immorally because not attempting to envisage the whole
problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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