I. The Struggle for Existence

Kant, like Plato, had divided mankind into two parts, a natural and a supernatural, an animal and an angelic. But the strong desire to bring the entire world, including our intellectual functions, under a unitary conception, and to exclude all factors besides the natural from it, or in other words the materialist method of thought, was too deeply grounded in the circumstances for Kant to be able to paralyze it for any length of time. And the splendid progress made by the natural sciences, which began just at the very time of Kant’s death to make a spurt forwards, brought a series of new discoveries, which more and more filled up the gap between man and the rest of nature, and among other things revealed the fact that the apparently angelic in man was also to be seen in the animal world, and thus was of animal nature.

All the same the Materialist Ethics of the nineteenth century, so far as it was dominated by the conceptions of natural science, equally in the bold and outspoken form which it took in Germany, as well as in the more retiring and modest English, and even now French version, did not get beyond that which the eighteenth century had taught. Thus Feuerbach founded morality on the desire for happiness, Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism, took on the other hand from the English the distinction between moral or altruistic feelings, and the egoistical, both of which are equally rooted in human nature.

A great and decided advance over this position was first made by Darwin, who proved in his book on the Descent of Man, that the altruistic feelings formed no peculiarity of man, that they are also to be found in the animal world, and that there, as here, they spring from similar causes, which are in essence identical and which have called forth and developed all the faculties of beings endowed with the power of moving themselves. With that almost the last barrier between man and animal was torn down. Darwin did not follow up his discoveries any further, and yet they belong to the greatest and most fruitful of the human intellect, and enable us to develop a new critique of knowledge.

When we study the organic world, it shows to us, in contrast to the inorganic, one very striking peculiarity: We find in it adaptation to end. All organized beings are constructed and endowed more or less with a view to an end. The end which they serve is nevertheless not one which lies outside of them. The world as a whole has no aim. The aim lies in the individuals themselves, its parts are so arranged and fitted out, that they serve the individual, the whole. Purpose and division of labor arise together. The essence of the organism is the division of labor just as much as adaptation to end. One is the condition of the other.

The division of labor distinguishes the organism from inorganic individuals, for example, crystals. Even crystals are distinct individuals with a distinct form. They grow, when they find the necessary material for their formation under the requisite conditions, but they are through and through symmetrical. On the other hand the lowest organism is a vesicle much less visible and less complicated than a crystal, but a vesicle whose external side is different, and has different functions to the inner.

That the division of labor is one which is suitable for the purpose, that is, one which is useful to the individual, renders his existence possible, or even ameliorates it, seems wonderful. But it would be still more wonderful if individuals maintained themselves and procreated with a division of labor which was not suitable for the purpose, which rendered their existence difficult or even impossible.

But what is the work which the organs of the organism have to accomplish? This work is the struggle for life, that is, not the struggle with other organisms of the same kind, as the word is occasionally used, but the fight with the whole of nature. Nature is in continual movement and is always changing her forms, hence only such individuals will he able to maintain their form for any period of time in this eternal change who are in a position to develop particular organs against those external influences which threaten the existence of the individual as well as to supply the place of those parts which it is obliged to give up continually to the external world. Quickest and best will those individuals and groups assert themselves, whose weapons of defence and instruments for obtaining food are the best adapted to their end, that is best adapted to the external world, to avoid its dangers and to capture the sources of food. The uninterrupted process of adaptation, and the selection of the fittest, by means of the struggle for existence produce, under such circumstances as usually form themselves on the earth since it has bourne organized beings, an increasing division of labor. In fact the more developed the division of labor is in a society, the more advanced does that society appear to us. The continual process of rendering the organic world more perfect is thus the result of the struggle for existence in it – and that probably for a long time to come will be its future result, that is as long as the conditions of our planet do not essentially alter. Certainly we have no right to look on this process as a necessary law for all time. That would amount to imputing to the world an end which is not to be found in it.

The development need not always proceed at the same rate. From time to time periods can come, when the various organisms, each in its way, arrive at the highest possible degree of adaptation to the existing conditions, that is, are in the most complete harmony with their surroundings. So long as these conditions endure they will develop no farther, but the form which has been arrived at will develop into a fixed type, which procreates itself unchanged. A further development will only then occur when the surroundings undergo a considerable alteration, when the inorganic nature is subject to changes which disturb the balance of the organic. Such changes, however, take place from time to time, either single, sudden and violent, or numerous and unnoticed, the sum total and effect of which, however, equally brings on new situations, as for example alterations in the ocean currents, in the surface of the earth, perhaps even in the position of the planet in the universe, which bring about climatic changes, transform thick forests into deserts of sand, cover tropical landscapes with icebergs and vice versa. These alterations render new adaptations to the changed conditions necessary, they produce migrations which likewise bring the organisms into new surroundings, and produce fresh struggles for life between the old inhabitants and the new incomers, exterminate the badly adapted and the unadaptable individuals and types, and create new divisions of labor, new functions and new organs or transform the old. It is not always the highest developed organisms which best assert themselves by this new adaptation. Every division of labor implies a certain one-sidedness. Highly developed organs, which are specially adapted for a particular method of life, are for another far less useful than organs which are less developed, and in that particular method of life less effective, but more many-sided and more easily adaptable. Thus we see often higher developed kinds of animals and plants die out, and lower kinds take over the farther development of new higher organisms. Probably man is not sprung from the highest type of apes, the man apes, which are tending to die out, but from a lower species of four-handed animals.