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Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185

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After Darwin Morality in a Secular World

Jeff O’Connell Florida State University [email protected]

Michael Ruse Florida State University [email protected]

Abstract

In the second half of the nineteenth century, many people lost their faith in the Chris- tian God. Nevertheless, they were eager to show that this move towards a secular world picture did not mean the end of morality and that it could continue as much before. In a Darwinian age this was not possible and the Christian cherishing of the virtue of meekness was replaced by a moral respect for vigor and effort directed both towards self-realization and to the well-being of society. We compare the British moves to those promoted by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. There are significant sim- ilarities but also differences that reflect the British industrialized notion of progress versus the German idealistic notion of progress.

Keywords

Christianity – morality – Charles Darwin – Thomas Henry Huxley – Friedrich Nietzsche

1 The Problem of Morality

After her death, a friend wrote of the novelist George Eliot:

I remember how, at Cambridge, I walked with her once in the Fellows’ Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May; and she, stirred some-

what beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men—the words God, Immortality, Duty—pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how incon- ceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second, and yet how peremp- tory and absolute the third. Never perhaps have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensing Law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned toward me like a sibyl’s in the gloom; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates. And when we stood at length and parted amid that columnar circuit of the forest trees, beneath the last twilight of starless skies, I seemed to be gazing, like Titus at Jerusalem, on vacant seats and empty halls—on a sanctuary with no Presence to hallow it, and heaven left lonely of a God. Myers 1881, 47

Eliot spoke for many as the nineteenth century moved towards its end. God had been, if not vanquished or killed, then at least downgraded. His nature and His existence seemed no longer to be so very pressing. German higher criticism had shown that much of the bible was less a divine inspiration and more the collected tales and rules of a nomadic people in the mid-East. Science, evolutionary theorizing particularly, had offered alternative, secular pictures of life’s origins, and had made us humans part of the story rather than the favored creation of a good god in the sixth day (Bowler 1984).

2 Social Darwinism

It was not the end of God so much that worried people, but the implications. If we can no longer rely on the authority of the deity, then are we any better than the brutes, the lion and the tiger, the ox and the sheep and the pig? Above all, what price morality?Why should anyone do anything of moral value, why cher- ish the right over the wrong? Why not rape and pillage like the worst savages, like those Viking raiders long past? Why be good? “Why indeed?” According to popular lore, soon after Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859)— especially in America and Germany, and especially among businessmen (in the former) and the military (in the latter)—its message gave birth to a whole new philosophy, appropriately so-called “Social Darwinism” (Ruse 2017b). It was argued that life is little more than a bloody struggle for existence—sometimes metaphorical (as in business) and sometimes literal (as in the military)—and

SecularDownloaded Studies from 1 (2019)Brill.com09/30/2021 161–185 10:53:18AM via free access after darwin 163 there are no moral rules other than success and failure. The former is good; the latter is bad. It was realized that this is not exactly a warm and friendly position, so rather than ascribe it directly to everybody’s hero, Charles Darwin, it was argued that the true foundation of this thinking is to be found in the writings of Darwin’s fellow English evolutionist, Herbert Spencer. He is well known for his tough stand on social issues, and these—commonly known as laissez faire—seem to be a straight transfer from biology and the Darwinian process of struggle and selection.

We must call those spurious philanthropists, who, to prevent present misery, would entail greater misery upon future generations. All defenders of a Poor Law must, however, be classed among such. That rigorous necessity which, when allowed to act on them, becomes so sharp a spur to the lazy and so strong a bridle to the random, these pauper’s friends would repeal, because of the wailing it here and there produces. Blind to the fact that under the natural order of things, society is constantly excreting its unhealthy, imbecile, slow, vacillating, faithless members, these unthink- ing, though well-meaning, men advocate an interference which not only stops the purifying process but even increases the vitiation—absolutely encourages the multiplication of the reckless and incompetent by offering them an unfailing provision, and discourages the multiplication of the competent and provident by heightening the prospective difficulty of maintaining a family. Spencer 1851, 323–324

Supposedly, this kind of thinking dominated through the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Spencer was wildly popular in America and hence it is no surprise to find Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner writing: “A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be … The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest” (Sumner 1914). Moving the other way to Europe, just listen to General Friedrich von Bern- hardi, pushed out of the German army because he was signaling a little too bluntly the General Staff’s intentions. In his best-selling Germany and the Next War (1912), he left no place for the imagination. “War is a biological necessity,” and hence: “Those forms survive which are able to procure themselves the most favourable conditions of life, and to assert themselves in the universal econ- omy of nature. The weaker succumb.” Progress depends on war: “Without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy budding elements, and a universal decadence would follow.” And, anticipating horri-

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 164 o’connell and ruse ble philosophies of the twentieth century: “Might gives the right to occupy or to conquer. Might is at once the supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just decision, since its decision rests on the very nature of things” (Bernhardi 1912, 10, quoted by Crook 1994, 83). Little wonder that Adolf Hitler parroted this sort of thing in Mein Kampf (1925). Redressing this common view, intensive scholarship has shown that in major respects it is a parody to and even beyond falsehood, starting with the fact that the term “Social Darwinism” was barely used in the nineteenth century and then not in any context mentioned above. It only came into prominence and today’s usage with the publication of American historian Richard Hofstadter’s (admittedly groundbreaking) work, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944). Starting with Herbert Spencer, what really drove him to his words was his social situation around 1850. It had nothing to do with Darwin’s Origin, the publication of which lay ten years in the future. Spencer may not even have been an evolutionist at that earlier time! Sounding like former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at her most militant, the causal clue for both Spencer and Thatcher is that they came from the lower-middle classes, in the British Midlands, raised in non-conformist (dissenters’) families. This means they were outside the upper echelons of society and there was an element of resentment—a feeling that the state benefits those in power or those that are totally unworthy and that the hard working and illustrious (themselves) do not get the respect that they deserve. Later, when he had become an evolutionist, Spencer embraced a much more organic view of the state, seeing necessary cooperation—as the heart and lungs both serve the same body—and even later (probably showing Quaker influ- ences of his youth) he spoke strongly against the waste resources of militarism and as strongly in favor of international cooperation and trade. In like fashion, American businessmen were certainly more than capable of very rough tac- tics, but here too the story is more nuanced. Andrew Carnegie, for instance, responsible for the dreadful, union-busting Homestead Strike in Pittsburgh in 1892 (when he reduced the wages of his employees at his steel works), used his great fortune to sponsor public libraries. His philosophy was that of encourag- ing the brightest to rise up in society, however humble may be their origins. His emphasis was on the success of the fittest (like himself!) rather than the non- success of the non-fit. German General von Bernhardi hated the English and their culture and owed at least as much if not more to home-grown philosophies, like that of Hegel. Hitler is a footnote (Richards 2013). He was not—to put it politely—a well-read man and much of his philosophy was picked up almost literally on the street. Above all, as his fondness for Wagner shows well, Hitler too was in the stream of nineteenth-century, Germanic thinking.

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3 A More-Tempered View

Thus far, we sound like out-and-out revisionists, arguing that Darwin (and Spencer) had little or no effect on thinking about morality.This is not our intent at all. Having cleared the decks, as it were, we are ready for our positive case.We argue strongly that the coming of evolution—and, if not exclusively, Darwin’s theory of evolution in particular—did have major effects and it was a significant factor in the move from a religious world of Christianity to the secular world—or at least the possibility of a secular world—in which we live today. Start with Charles Darwin and with the dilemma that was faced by evolutionists like him (Browne 1995, 2002). Morality had to be kept up and justified, whatever the truth status of Christianity. For Darwin, no less than for George Eliot (an enthusiastic evolutionist), nothing else was even remotely on the table. Revealingly, in his Descent of Man, about our species, published in 1871 twelve years after the epoch-making Origin of Species, Darwin quickly brushed off the God question, but spent many, many pages talking about morality, its nature and its evolution. In the village of Downe in which Darwin and his family lived, his closest friend was the local Anglican clergyman, John Brodie Innes. Between them they ran the “Coal and Country Club,” helping the working class to save for difficult times, and making sure that no one went without proper housing and fuel and care. “Wonderful charitable people the Darwins were,” said the village carpenter. “Used to give away penny tickets on bread for the baker. I’ve given away thousands and thousands. And very good to the poor for blankets and coal and money till they got run on” (Browne 2002, 452). In similar mode, Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s “bulldog,” the man who invented the word “agnostic,” got elected to the first London School Board in 1871. “He opted for selective Bible-reading, ‘without any comment,’ to instill moral principles.” A Victorian above all, Huxley insisted that the reading “be selective: the Old Testament was as much vice as virtue. Who would want the lasciviousness of Lot’s daughters or Joseph’s seduction taught?” (Desmond 1997, 403) Huxley even went so far as to argue in a late essay that morality is opposed to evolution and that we must strive against our inner animal demons (Huxley 1893). It is our contention that what people may have wanted and what they finally ended up getting may not have been exactly the same thing. We do not argue that everyone changed, but we do argue that there were subtle differences between the (Christian) morality that they inherited and the (secular) morality with which they ended. Christianity is inherently Providential, and this reflects into its morality. Save for the Blood of the Lamb, we are lost. Pride and force will get you nowhere. Humility is the key. In contrast, whether they were right about this, starting with Darwin the Victorians took evolutionary thinking as inher-

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 166 o’connell and ruse ently progressive (Ospovat 1981). Upwards through personal effort. Everything was a striving higher—“monad to man” was the old way of saying things— and this reflects into its morality (Bowler 1990). You have to make an effort for success. Putting yourself down will get you nowhere. There is at the end of things considerable overlap in moralities—religious and secular—but thanks to the underlying philosophies, there are differences reflecting these philosophies (Ruse 2005). We write initially of Britain, but we think that the changes we are finding and explaining are broad and extend to other cultures. To show this, having first looked at the British picture, we shall look at the thinking of the noto- rious philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, writing in the period we are studying. Nietzsche is well known for proclaiming the “death of God” and for insisting on a new morality. We shall argue that closer examination reveals that he was indeed radical but not necessarily that radical and that in respects his thinking shows remarkable parallels with the British, a group whom incidentally he never lost the opportunity to denigrate. We do not say the two systems are identical and we shall point to differences both in what was claimed and the forces bringing the systems about. That—similarity and difference—in itself tells us something interesting, not the least of which is the subtle ways in which continental (especially Germanic) thinking about progress paralleled and yet differed from British thinking about progress (Ruse 1996; Richards 1992, 2003). Hence, at least a sub-theme of what we write is that, just as one gets extreme, let us say perverted, versions of thoughtful British extensions of Darwinism, as in the thinking of William Graham Sumner, something similar is to be found in Germany, as in the thinking of Friedrich von Bernhardi.

4 Morality after Darwin

If God guarantees Christian morality, what happens if God is gone? Given that Darwin was offering a non-Christian, rival story of human origins, it was natural to see if, with respect to morality, he could fill the gap. From Darwin, people learnt that it was all as a question of showing how being decent to one’s fellow humans is as much an adaptation helping in the struggle to survive and reproduce as are more conventional adaptations like hands and eyes and penises and vaginas. On the one hand, Darwin invoked what today is known as “reciprocal altruism,” meaning you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours (Trivers 1971). If I give you help when you need it, you are more likely to give me help when I need it. On the other hand, he invoked a proto-version of what today is known as “kin selection,” namely if I help those to whom I am related, all of those in

SecularDownloaded Studies from 1 (2019)Brill.com09/30/2021 161–185 10:53:18AM via free access after darwin 167 what Darwin knew of as the “tribe,” then in a biological sense I am helping myself (Maynard Smith 1982). Darwin did not have the idea of genes, but he sensed that relatives share the same units of heredity and if one reproduces, all reproduce. “It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an advancement in the standard of morality and an increase in the number of well-endowed men will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another” (Darwin 1871, 1, 166). Of course, just helping your friends and family hardly constitutes what we would call morality. Many would say it only really starts when you are helping strangers and perhaps even enemies. Darwin was aware of this, thinking that once morality started close to home, as it were, it would spread out to encom- pass all human beings. What exactly should be the nature of this morality that folk like Darwin—and those who followed him like Thomas Henry Huxley— were cherishing and promoting? If you look at Darwin and Huxley themselves, it is the Christian ethic that they have in mind. What was this ethic? The Ser- mon on the Mount is a good start. Quote from the King James Version, which is what they would have read and used.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5, 3–5

There was going to be no objection to much of this or to the rest of the Beat- itudes. “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” We are not sure where Darwin and Huxley would have stood on being called “the children of God,” but they would certainly have endorsed the moral worth of being peacemakers. What about the remark on the blessed virtues of being meek? Are they really going to inherit the earth? Morally, should they inherit the earth? You can ask the philosophers, especially those who write on evolution and ethics. As it happens, if you search through Herbert Spencer’s very long Principles of Ethics published in 1892, you find that “meek” does not even make the index, let alone the text. In his very important and influential The Methods of Ethics, the philosopher Henry Sidgwick does mention meekness as a virtue; but, immediately, he qualifies his approval: “most moralists have allowed instinctive resentment for wrong to be legitimate and proper: and we all think punishment ought to be inflicted for offences, and also that there is a righteous anger and a virtuous indignation” (Sidgwick 1874, 298). Not much turning the other cheek here. Let

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 168 o’connell and ruse us look therefore at less self-conscious sources in general Victorian culture. In this pre-TV and film age, given the huge popularity of fiction, turn there. The novelist Thomas Hardy, raised an Anglican but losing his faith in the 1860s, wrestled explicitly with this issue of meekness. He was not against the meek, many of his heroes and heroines were meek, but he knew full well that there wasn’t going to be much inheriting of this earth. Giles Winterbourne found this out in the Woodlanders. At most, as he dies of pneumonia for having in a rainstorm relinquished his home for a woman of little moral worth, he got a lament from a long-suffering and neglected would-be lover, Marty: “If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!—But no, no, my love, I never can forget ‘ee; for you was a GOOD man, and did good things!” (Ingham 2003, 115). Then there is the thoroughly decent, but incredibly unfortunate, central figure in Jude the Obscure. If ever there was someone who followed St Paul— “Charity sufferth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil”—it was he. Much good did it do him. As his girlfriend says, as she walks out on him: “Your worldly failure, if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man.The devoted fail … ‘Charity seeketh not her own’” (Hardy 1895, 437). Hardy’s aim throughout his novels is to show how even the best of us is ground down by the blind forces of fate. That was his lament, from the begin- ning of his non-belief. Being meek may indeed be being good, but it is not a formula for success. It is a recipe for failure and for suffering. If your eschato- logical world vision is that in the end God is going to put all to right, you may be able to excuse and accept this. You will be rewarded precisely because you are meek. You won’t deserve the reward, any more than anyone else, but God will take note of your effort and your fate and decide accordingly. But what if there is no God? He will not reward you. What then? Here we see the positive side to evolutionary thinking swing into action. Progress means being successful. Darwin himself was explicit about this. The winners were those with bigger brains that they then have used to succeed over others. Meekness has no place here.

If we look at the differentiation and specialisation of the several organs of each being when adult (and this will include the advancement of the brain for intellectual purposes) as the best standard of highness of organ- isation, natural selection clearly leads towards highness; for all physiolo- gists admit that the specialisation of organs, inasmuch as they perform in

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this state their functions better, is an advantage to each being; and hence the accumulation of variations tending towards specialisation is within the scope of natural selection. Darwin 1961, 134

In other words, in the world of evolution, it is all-important to accentuate the positive. Less metaphorically, to show energy and guts and determination. Pas- sivity is not a virtue. New Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing makes the point. There are two writers, one quite brilliant who goes nowhere and dies, the other less talented but ending with the dead man’s wife and the editorship of a pres- tigious journal. Why all of this? Because the survivor has vim and vigor, a will- ingness to have a crack at things, no matter how daunting. At one point in the novel, Jasper (the eventual success) is out with a girlfriend, Marion. They are standing on a bridge spanning railway tracks.

“You hear?” Marian had just caught the far-off sound of the train. She looked eagerly, and in a few moments saw it approaching. The front of the engine blackened nearer and nearer, coming on with dread force and speed. A blinding rush, and there burst against the bridge a great volley of sun- lit steam. Milvain and his companion ran to the opposite parapet, but already the whole train had emerged, and in a few seconds it had dis- appeared round a sharp curve. The leafy branches that grew out over the line swayed violently backwards and forwards in the perturbed air. “If I were ten years younger,” said Jasper, laughing, “I should say that was jolly! It enspirits me. It makes me feel eager to go back and plunge into the fight again.” “Upon me it has just the opposite effect,” fell from Marian, in very low tones. Gissing 1891, 63

Marion ends the novel still in the single state. The remarried wife knew what she wanted. “She did not ask for high intellect or great attainments; but vivac- ity, courage, determination to succeed, were delightful to her senses” (219). She also had the right philosophy: “though she had never opened one of Darwin’s books, her knowledge of his main theories and illustrations was respectable” (397). You might say that none of this has much to do with morality; but that— as (we shall see) comes through very clearly with Nietzsche—is to miss the point. In the post-Darwinian world, we have got to stop thinking of morality

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 170 o’connell and ruse as Mother Teresa moments injected into the regular course of life, and more as an ongoing attitude to living. Jasper, taking on the editorship of the Vic- torian equivalent of the Times Literary Supplement or the New York Review of Books, is contributing more to the general wellbeing and happiness of his fellow humans than the unsociable dead genius or the wimpy former girlfriend. In this post-Darwinian era, a cherishing of morality was right there. George Eliot need not fear. In fact, she herself in her two last great novels, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, set about showing precisely that (Ruse 2017a). This morality is in important respects Christian-based. There is something more. There is a struggle for existence out there and you had better be prepared to fight for your place. That is not anti-morality. That is part of morality. The good person may not succeed, but they do give it a full try. Courage and energy count.

5 Progress and How to Achieve It

Turning from fiction to real life, the truly inspiring example of the moral man after the Origin is Thomas Henry Huxley (Desmond 1997). Pulling himself up from a very modest background, he worked incessantly—often driving himself into breakdowns—to reform and improve his society. He radically reorganized and infused science teaching in higher education, paying special attention to the needs of the medical profession. He was a major figure in founding the new science university in South Kensington and at once took on a major administra- tive role. As noted earlier, he sat on the first London School Board and was the dominant force in its early deliberations and decisions. He worked for the gov- ernment on fisheries. He lectured non-stop at the popular level. He reformed the Royal Society. That is all before we get to debating with all and sundry, from Cardinal Manning to the prime minister, William Gladstone. Huxley’s short essays count among the best ever written. Struggle and the hope of success are good things, and your moral code should and must reflect this. Meekness is no great virtue.Thanks to the underlying commitment to progress, the world of evolution took up Christian morality and gave to it a distinctive new twist. A twist that reflects the peculiar nature of British thinking about progress, something rooted in the rise of industri- alism in the eighteenth century. Advance comes from getting out there and striving in the market place—having a better product than your competitor, getting a better sales force, doing things more efficiently so you can drop your prices. Struggling, pushing, fighting.The British evolutionists, spurred on by the general notion of progress, adopted a largely Christian ethic but (in line with British industrial notions of progress) infused it with demands of strength and

SecularDownloaded Studies from 1 (2019)Brill.com09/30/2021 161–185 10:53:18AM via free access after darwin 171 productivity. Their thinking is a turn to a kind of (pre-Christian, Aristotelian) virtue ethics, focused on the health and vigor of the individual and on the good that such virtues would do for society generally (Hursthouse 1999). In arguing as we do, we take a somewhat different direction from the most important recent book on post-Origin morality, Thomas Dixon’s The Invention of Altruism. In many ways, he sets the stage for what we say here. Dixon’s focus, however, is on the invention and development of the concept of “altruism,” which he thinks defined much of the thought in this period. This is a concept coming from the thinking of August Comte, where the stress is on the wellbeing of the group, and of efforts to speak to this, rather than on the Adam-Smith- like thesis that group benefits emerge from the pursuit of self-interest. We are obviously picking up on a somewhat different strand of thought developing at the same time, a strand which focused on establishing a secular morality based not so much on altruism as on individual vitality and strength. We stress that these accounts are not contradictory. Dixon focuses largely on popular- izers of evolutionary ideas like Arabella Buckley, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, and Henry Drummond, who really were trying to foster altruism as a means to the improvement of society. We focus on a different group of people—although strongly overlapping in contact and influence—who saw in evolutionary ideas a different moral alternative, one premised on strength and directed at the growth and development of the individual, which in turn would help to ensure social progress. It is a testament to the richness of evolutionary thinking such diverse views on morality could emerge from different readings of the same texts. The difference between our account and Dixon’s is emblematic of two conceptions—both common in England at this time—of the best means to progress. On the one hand are those in the broadly socialist camp, who look to the good of the community to foster the well-being of the individuals within that community. On the other is the broadly individualist camp, who look to the good of the individual to foster the well-being of the whole. Dixon, who focuses on the first, rightly notes that no one could describe Comte or his British evolutionists as socialists in any sense, but shows that their moral ideas slowly transmogrified, through the work of a certain set of populariz- ers, into a kind of socialist creed. Ironically, our thinkers (drawn from the second camp) who helped to establish a kind of individualism, which predi- cated social health upon individual vitality, were precisely those—Darwin and Huxley for instance—often taken up in the cause of altruism and its politi- cal consequences. It is ironic because, whatever use was made of their names and ideas, our thinkers tended not to be socialists. Darwin for one was strongly against unions and Huxley always joked in a serious sort of way that tempera-

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 172 o’connell and ruse mentally he was a conservative. He was against Home Rule (for the Irish) and was made a member of the Privy Council by the Conservative prime minister, Robert Cecil, 3rd marquis of Salisbury, in 1892.

6 Friedrich Nietzsche

Across the Channel, Friedrich Nietzsche was likewise thinking hard about the issues that so excised the evolutionists, morality and how we are to have and maintain it in a godless world of natural science. For Nietzsche, as much as for the Darwinians, it was a world “after Darwin.” “We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive man from the “spirit,” from the “god-head”; we have dropped him back among the beasts” (Nietzsche 1920, §14). The kind of world described by Darwin was a world in which Christian morality no longer made sense. For how could the kinds of moral imperatives typical of Christianity possibly arise in such a world? Talk- ing in particular about the imperative to treat others equally, Nietzsche asked:

But whence sounds this imperative? How can man himself possess it, since, according to Darwin, he is precisely a creature of nature and nothing else, and has evolved to the height of being man by quite other laws: precisely, in fact, by always forgetting that other creatures similar to him possessed equivalent rights, precisely by feeling himself the stronger, and gradually eliminating the other, weaker examples of his species? Nietzsche 1983, §7

We live in a very different kind of world after Darwin. It is no longer a world guided by the loving hand of a good God. That much is clear. “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him—you and I” (Nietzsche 2001, §125). It is also clear that this fact has sweeping implications for morality: “now that this faith has been undermined, how much must collapse because it was built on this faith, leaned on it, had grown into it—for example, our entire European morality” (Nietzsche 2001, §343). Of course, Nietzsche was well aware of the attempts made, on the part of “the English,” to resuscitate some form of Christian morality in this new, God- less, Darwinian era. But he was sharply critical of them. As he said about George Eliot:

They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency

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… In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipa- tion from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there. We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. Nietzsche 1954, Expeditions §5

The same “English consistency,” he thought, held true of Darwin and Spencer and other evolutionists, for each tried to show that morality—in the traditional, Christian sense—was a product of evolution, which meant that the death of God did not mean the death of morality as we knew it. Nietzsche saw all such as making the dishonest attempt to ground a Christian form of morality, with its emphasis on selflessness, in an evolutionary world view grounded in self- interest. Each had failed to own up to the ultimate consequence of the death of God, which was the death of Christian morality, and instead had sought relief from this consequence in the idea that evolution could mold us into the good moral beings that God wanted us to be. Very early on, Nietzsche concluded that evolutionary theory could not account for a Christian form of morality. In 1873, when he was just twenty-nine, he published a stinging rebuke of the German theologian-turned-scientist David Friedrich Strauss for trying to ground morality in evolution. Strauss’s early book The Life of Jesus (1835) played a key role in Nietzsche’s own loss of faith, but his later book The Old Faith and the New (1872) argued that atheism did not imply the loss of morality, for morality as we knew it—in the form of a categorical imperative to respect other human beings—could be derived from evolutionary theory (Strauss 1872, Vol. 2, 44–64). Despite Nietzsche’s early admiration for Strauss, he could barely contain his contempt for this later work. He posed his objection in the form of a taunt. If Strauss really wanted to try lift a moral code off of a descriptive account of the world, he should at least have the courage to embrace the true nature of the evolved world:

With a certain rude contentment he covers himself in the hairy cloak of our ape-genealogists and praises Darwin as one of the greatest benefac- tors of mankind—but it confuses us to see that his ethics are constructed entirely independently of the question: ‘What is our conception of the world?’ Here was an opportunity to exhibit native courage: for here he ought to have turned his back on his ‘we’ and boldly derived a moral code for life out of the bellum omnium contra omnes and the privileges of the strong … Nietzsche 1983, 29–30

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The only form of morality justified by Strauss’s evolutionary view of nature—which was really more Hobbesian than Darwinian—was one of “might is right.” Nietzsche’s criticisms of such attempts to retain Christian morality after the death of God have struck many as tantamount to an endorsement of this kind of “might is right” mentality—that is, the kind of mentality associated with supposed Social Darwinism. Thomas Common, one of Nietzsche’s earli- est admirers, saw Nietzsche as embracing the Darwinian vision of the world as a place of struggle in a way that even Darwin himself refused to do, by calling for the eradication of Victorian morality in favor of a new ethic based on the principle of the acquisition of power (Common 1901). If nature was a kind of battle ground in which the strongest and best adapted won out, then there must be some inherent value in having the strength and severity necessary to win the battle for resources among one’s competitors. This reading—that although Christian morality cannot be got out of evolutionary thinking, a new “might is right” morality can be got out of such thinking—fits well with the popular understanding of Nietzsche as someone who thought that the rules of morality were conventions designed to stifle the strong, which should be overthrown so that the strong could pursue their interests untrammeled by the interests of the weak. But while there is a respect for strength in his works, this is a fundamental misreading of Nietzsche’s position. As we have earlier suggested it is a fundamental misreading of Darwin and Spencer (Clark 1994). His taunt to David Friedrich Strauss over the latter’s failure to embrace an ethic based on the war of all against all was never intended as an endorsement of this kind of ethic. As he would say later in the same essay, “an honest natural scientist believes that the world conforms unconditionally to laws, without however asserting anything as to the ethical or intellectual value of these laws” (Nietzsche 1983, 31). The fact that nature was characterized by a struggle for existence did not mean that such a struggle should be adopted as a new kind of moral code. Even less did it mean that we had to give up on morality altogether: “It goes without saying that I do not deny, presupposing I am no fool, that many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called moral ought to be done and encouraged—but for different reasons than formerly” (Nietzsche 1997, §103). Nietzsche was no amoralist. Even if he sometimes billed himself as an “immoralist,” what he really wanted was not to give up all forms of morality, but to replace our current, Christian form of it with a new form that would be better suited to the times. This was the move that he thought Eliot, Darwin, and Spencer had failed to make. The new kind of moral system that Nietzsche

SecularDownloaded Studies from 1 (2019)Brill.com09/30/2021 161–185 10:53:18AM via free access after darwin 175 wanted was one according to which an action had value not insofar as it was altruistic, but insofar as it contributed to the flourishing of the self. In a sense, then, Nietzsche wanted to replace Christian morality with a more egoistic form of morality. But the kind of egoism he commended was of a higher or “ascend- ing” variety,in contrast to the lower, “descending” variety (Nietzsche 1954, Expe- ditions §33). The lower form of egoism (which Nietzsche would have found in the Adam Smith/ Charles Darwin notion of “self-interest”), was the kind that Hobbes thought he saw in the state of nature, the kind that would result in a violent struggle between self-interested individuals to satisfy their own basic needs and desires. The higher form was one according to which one’s strongest desires would often need to be checked against the pull of an ethically higher calling, which was the calling to “become who you are.” Nietzsche’s supreme valuation of this good—the good of individuality— paralleled the thought of the Englishman John Stuart Mill. Nietzsche knew of Mill, but only as a Utilitarian democrat who claimed that pleasure was the supreme good. Insofar as Nietzsche deeply despised any claim that the good could be found in an easy life of pleasure or contentment, he assumed that Mill was an intellectual opponent, and treated him as such. However, had he read On Liberty (first published in 1859), he would have discovered that Mill was an intellectual ally. For like Nietzsche, Mill held that conformity to the masses was the chief disgrace for the individual, and a serious threat to social progress. In contrast, the formation of individual character was a supreme good, and a genuine spur to progress (Mill 1993). Indeed, both Mill and Nietzsche held that the flourishing of the self—conceived as self-creation, or the creation of one’s individual character—was not only compatible with, but was actually necessary for, one’s genuine responsiveness to the needs and demands of others (Mill 1993, 70). Only once one had become a strong and self-confident individual would one be in a position to do genuine good for others, and only once one helped others insofar as it gave one more strength and joy could one be said to do so for the right reasons. Thus, “many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted,” and “many called moral ought to be done and encouraged—but for different reasons than formerly.”The new reasons according to which an action ought to be done or resisted had to do with the degree to which it led to the flourishing of the self. But the way to attain the flourishing of the self, as the Ancients knew, was not by imposing one’s will on the world in order to satisfy one’s strongest desires at the expense of the needs and desires of others. Very often, the best way to help oneself was to help others. This insight was at the root of Nietzsche’s objection to the values embraced by Christian morality. Such values prescribed the reduction of self-interest in favor of the promotion of the good of others. They taught the value of charity

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 176 o’connell and ruse and compassion, of bringing about good consequences for one’s fellow suffer- ers. But by taking the focus of one’s ethical attention off the good of the self, and placing it instead on the good of others, this kind of value system too often resulted in personal corruption being papered over by superficial displays of charity. And even when Christian morality succeeded in reforming personal character, it did so only in order to make people nicer and more compassionate. But a society of compassionate and meek individuals would never amount to much. In Nietzsche’s estimation, it would be far better for everyone, in the long run, if the compassionate man abandoned such feelings and acts, and focused instead on becoming the best possible version of himself. Those who did so, he thought, would be more inclined to genuine mercy and justice, and would be better equipped to effect real change. What Nietzsche rejected, then, was the general Christian outlook that moral value was to be found in the complete reduction of self-interest, in meekness and humility, in self-sacrifice and a total regard for the good of all. Such values made sense in a Christian world, for they would ultimately be rewarded, either in this life or the next. To live a life dominated by the “ascetic ideal”—the ideal of abolishing one’s own drives and desires—was to live a life closer to God. However, the death of God meant the loss of this promise. In a world without God, the meek would not inherit the earth. Rather, as Thomas Hardy pointed out, they were more likely to be ground down by the blind forces of fate. If one was to thrive in such a world, one would have to look after oneself first. In this new world, it would take a certain amount of vigor, a certain amount of guts, and ultimately a certain amount of self-interest to get ahead. It seems, then, that we have come full circle.While Nietzsche criticized Eliot, Darwin, and Spencer for being too Christian, he ultimately came around to a position very similar to the one embraced by the likes of those Anglophones who, infused by evolutionary thought (or the ideas of progress that led to evolution), pointed to a new ethic, a new kind of morality. One who embodied this new morality would by no means be an amoral brute, but would possess a kind of vim and vigor not seen in New Testament conceptions of virtue. The kinds of characters that people like George Gissing admired were precisely the kinds of characters that Nietzsche would have admired. They were characters who sought their own interest, not merely at the blind expense of others, but because that is what is required to bring about a better world.

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7 Germanic Progress

Indeed, Nietzsche as much as anyone was concerned with the project of bringing about a better world. Like the British evolutionists, he saw that the providential picture of the world just didn’t work anymore, which meant that our old morality, in some ways designed for this kind of world, had to be given up. In its place, we needed a new kind of morality, one better fit for the progressive world in which we lived. Yet it is important to stress that the kind of progress Nietzsche saw in the world was a characteristically German one. If the new morality found and endorsed in the writings of post-Origin novelists and poets took its cue from the British industrial notion of progress, the new morality advocated by Nietzsche took its cue from the German notion of progress. It is here that we see the real difference between these thinkers emerge. Nietzsche’s refusal to seek a new kind of morality in the theory of evolution was a function of his refusal to take seriously the Anglo-Saxon Industrial ideal of progress. As he saw it, the very notion of Darwinian evolution was tainted by this picture of progress, which was ultimately the wrong one. Nowhere was this clearer to him than in Spencer’s organicist depiction of the moral utopia waiting at the end of the process of evolution—and indeed serving as the final cause of that process. Spencer held that human nature was the product of a continuous process of the adaptation of inner, subjective states to the outer, objective social environment. This meant that over time, our individual social and psy- chological needs would come into a kind of harmony with the needs of others, resulting in the complete reconciliation of egoism and altruism. The attainment of this kind of moral utopia would result in the maximization of pleasure for each individual, due to the fact that pleasure was a product of successful adaptation and pain a product of maladaptation (Spencer 1879). Evolution was guiding us inexorably to a social state in which there was no longer any ten- sion between individuals, no longer any pain, no longer any struggle. It was guiding us to a society of perfect harmony, comfort, and peace. Whatever value Spencer attributed to strength, or to the survival of the fittest, was based on the idea that strength was a necessary means to the attainment of this moral ideal. Nietzsche basically assumed that the same held true of the Darwinians generally. What these people really valued, he thought, was not so much the vim and vigor of individuals as the social and moral utopia that such individuals were supposed to help bring about, the utopia that evolution itself was gradually tending towards. This so-called utopia seemed more like a nightmare than an ideal to Nietzsche. He thought it would be a society of maximal conformity, marked by the loss of any kind of drive to individuality or ambition. In

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Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he described this kind of society as a society of “last men,” totally content to wallow in their pleasurable state of harmony, rather than strive to become fully-fledged selves or to achieve anything great:

What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?—thus asks the last man, blinking. Then the earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His kind is ineradicable, like the flea beetle; the last human being lives longest. ‘We have invented happiness’—say the last human beings, blinking. They have abandoned the regions where it was hard to live: for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs up against him: for one needs warmth. … … One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one sees to it that the entertainment is not a strain. One no longer becomes poor and rich: both are too burdensome. Who wants to rule anymore? Who wants to obey anymore? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd and one herd! Each wants the same, each is the same, and whoever feels differently goes voluntarily into the insane asylum … … ‘We have invented happiness’ say the last men, and they blink. Nietzsche 2006, Zarathustra’s Prologue §5

The last men are stuck in a state of intellectual and moral stagnation, defined by widespread conformity and total apathy. This was not progress, but regress. If this was the state to which evolution was tending—and indeed Nietzsche thought it was—then evolution was the path to weakness and degeneration. It might well take guts to lead us forward on the path to this ideal, but at the end of the line there was nothing but feebleness and infirmity. Yet be not deceived that this is the end of the story. For Nietzsche too wanted progress. His obsession with overcoming Christian morality was a function of this desire. The problem with continuing on with Christian values after the death of God was precisely the problem of degeneration. The great hope that a “revaluation” of values offered was the hope of progress, but progress of a distinctively German variety. It was not a matter of industrialization or the spread of equality and comfort; rather, it was a matter of the development and perfection of the spirit, which Nietzsche thought could only occur through unrelenting conflict and struggle. This view of progress is most commonly associated with Hegel, who saw history as “the development of spirit in time,” which occurred through a series of conflicts between historical epochs,

SecularDownloaded Studies from 1 (2019)Brill.com09/30/2021 161–185 10:53:18AM via free access after darwin 179 taking place at the level of ideas and leading ultimately to the absolute self- awareness of the World Spirit. This kind of progress—progress of Spirit— was importantly different from the kind that ruled in the world of Nature, which Hegel saw as in fact not progress at all, but rather “an eternally repeated cycle:”

Thus Spirit, within its own self, stands in opposition to itself. It must overcome itself as its own truly hostile hindrance.The process of development, so quiescent in the world of nature, is for Spirit a hard and endless struggle against itself. Hegel 1998, 58–59

It goes without saying that our implication is that people like von Bernhardi were misinterpreting Hegel as badly as were those who misinterpreted the British thinkers. Hegel was thinking in an idealistic, transcendent way, which was certainly not true of the German military. This struggle of the Spirit was the struggle from an imperfect state to a perfect one:

Thus the imperfect, as its own opposite within itself, is the contradiction which certainly exists, but which is, by the same token, negated (aufge- hoben) and resolved. This is the drive, the internal impulse of spiritual life, the drive to break through its own shell of naturalness, sensuality, and self-estrangement, in order to arrive at the light of consciousness, its own selfhood. 60–61

All these ideas come up, in some way or another, in Nietzsche’s works. Hence, Nietzsche’s idea of progress was importantly distinct from the idea of progress as the evolutionists saw it. For Nietzsche was concerned with progress of “the spirit,” and this depended on overcoming the kind of social constitution that Spencer thought had been ingrained in us by nature (Richardson 2008, 162– 171, 188). While Nietzsche rejected the world-historical, teleological aspect of the Hegelian notion of progress which claimed that historical movement was one of increasing rationalization, he still held, in a distinctively German manner, that the progress of thought and culture was all important, and that this progress required a certain amount of conflict and struggle to move from a less perfect state to a more perfect one. The ultimate goal was the cultivation of the individual mind (or spirit, or self), which demanded strength and the drive to overcome obstacles:

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For this goal one would need a different kind of spirits than are probable in this of all ages: spirits strengthened by wars and victories, for whom conquering, adventure, danger, pain have even become a need; for this one would need acclimatization to sharp high air, to wintry journeys, to ice and mountain ranges in every sense; for this one would need a kind of sublime malice itself, an ultimate most self-assured mischievousness of knowledge, which belongs to great health; one would need, in brief and gravely enough, precisely this great health! Nietzsche 1998, Treatise II §24

And,

[I]f conflict and war affect such a nature as one more stimulus and goad to life—, and if genuine proficiency and finesse in waging war with himself (which is to say: the ability to control and outwit himself) are inherited and cultivated along with his most powerful and irreconcilable drives, then what emerge are those amazing, incomprehensible, and unthink- able ones, those human riddles destined for victory and seduction. Nietzsche 1966, §200

Nietzsche thought that this kind of conflict—which took place at the level of ideas—was fundamentally different from the evolutionary development which ruled in nature. Evolution, as he saw it, was not actually progressive at all; merely to follow its course would lead to a regressive society of last men. Real progress required the struggle of the spirit, and would lead to a society of strong, independent thinkers who sought above all to better themselves in the name of artistic and intellectual greatness. This would be progress in the true, Ger- man sense, not in the weak, British sense of “modern ideas,” which, as he saw it, sought only increasing comfort, happiness, and luxury. But to bring it about required a shift in values, away from the ends of helping others and the reduction of suffering or the increase of pleasure, and towards the heroism of the individual pursuing the difficult task of developing her own thought, and thus contributing to the flourishing of culture. So, like the Darwinians, Nietzsche recognized that the shift in world-view from a Christian perspective to a Darwinian one required a complementary shift in moral values from meekness to strength. This was never a matter of getting rid of morality altogether. It was a matter of recognizing that there is no reward waiting for the meek and humble, that if one wanted a better life one would have to roll up one’s sleeves and work for it. In other words, it was ultimately a matter of progress. But unlike the Darwinians, Nietzsche thought that

SecularDownloaded Studies from 1 (2019)Brill.com09/30/2021 161–185 10:53:18AM via free access after darwin 181 progress required continuous struggle to cultivate the spirit. Spencer’s vision of a moral utopia characterized by complete self-sufficiency and perfect adaptation of inner relations to outer ones was anathema to Nietzsche, for he thought it would only ever result in a “stunted, almost ridiculous type, a herd animal, something well-meaning, sickly, and mediocre … the European of today” (Niet- zsche 1966, §62). To the extent that “English Darwinism” saw the world as tending towards this state, Nietzsche held that it “[exuded] something like the stuffy air of English overpopulation, like the small people’s smell of indigence and overcrowding” (Nietzsche 2001, §349). To reaffirm: For Nietzsche as much as for the Darwinians, it was a world “after Darwin.” That was a shared perspective. What was not shared was the British notion of progress. This had no role to play in Nietzsche’s Germanic- progressivist view of life. See the contrast. For the British, Gissing’s hero Jasper in fiction and Thomas Henry Huxley in real life are exemplars of the good person—vigor and intelligence and through this contributing to the new world of commerce and industry, of science and technology, giving a better life for many people. For Nietzsche, to the contrary, the good person will be someone contributing to the spirit, to ideas, to culture. The poet Goethe is the epitome. “Goethe conceived of a strong, highly cultured human being, skilled in all phys- ical accomplishments, who, keeping himself in check and having reverence for himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and wealth of naturalness, who is strong enough for this freedom, a man of tolerance, not out of weakness, but out of strength, because he knows how to employ to his advantage what would destroy an average nature; a man to whom nothing is forbidden, except weakness, whether that weakness be called vice or virtue …” (1954, Expeditions §49).

8 Conclusion

For both Nietzsche and the evolutionists, the coming of Darwinism signaled the death knell of the Christian world-view. The disappearance of God was one thing, but what really worried people were the implications for morality. The words of Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov represent the worry well: “if god does not exist, everything is permissible.” There were some, of course, who not only embraced this conclusion but who held that the only thing which mattered in the war of all against all was the ability to beat out others for one’s daily bread. But the great majority of those who accepted the loss of the Chris- tian God felt otherwise. Not all was permissible, and might does not make right. Yet it was true, all the same, that something important had changed. No

Secular Studies 1 (2019) 161–185 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 10:53:18AM via free access 182 o’connell and ruse longer were the Christian virtues of meekness, humility, and compassion at the apex of a properly moral life. The value of these values—to use a Nietzschean phrase—had been downgraded in the secular world. What mattered now was indeed strength, but not in the amoral sense of trampling others to get what one wants. Rather, strength mattered because it was required to bring about a better world. Gone was the providential view of the world and in was the progressivist view, which required that individuals take it upon themselves to create what would not be given to them. This general feeling was shared across many different thinkers from many different nations. But not all shared the same view of what constituted strength for the individual or progress for the society. The English tended to think of individual strength in pragmatic terms of worldly success and progress in terms of the flourishing of industry and commerce. The more Germanic view taken up by Nietzsche, in contrast, conceived individual strength in terms of the struggle to rise up out of mass conformity in thought, and progress in terms of the flourishing of culture. In the battle against Chris- tian morality, the evolutionists and Nietzsche were on the same side, but (to continue the military metaphor) in rather different regiments.

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