Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 by Richard HofstadterReview by: M. F. Ashley MontaguIsis, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Jan., 1946), pp. 146-147Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225883 .

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I46 Reviews

how the different specific realizations of the idea of context have developed from each other.

ARON GURWITSCH Harvard University

RICHARD HOFSTADTER: Social Darwinism in Amer- ican Thought, I86o-i915. ix+191 PP. Phila- delphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, I944. $2.50.

Social Darwinists are the people who believe and there are still many of them around - that the forces of natural selection, and particularly the operation of the laws which determine the survival of the fittest, are at least as effective within the universe of social life as they are in that of the life of nature. (Amusingly enough, but a few minutes after I had completed reading this book I came across the following interesting statement, by the president of Armour and Company, in an advertise- ment on the inside of the front cover of the Septem- ber 1944 issue of the Woman's Home Companion: "The process commonly called 'the survival of the fittest' ceaselessly takes place in the business world in a competitive economic society like ours. Through such natural selection the four-flushers and second- guessers of business are soon eliminated. They can- not find the 'angels' permanently to fund their deficits.") The rise of social Darwinism is a phe- nomenon of the greatest interest, with the widest possible implications for an understanding of the Era of Materialism. A study of the rise and development of the concepts of "natural selection," "the struggle for existence," and "the survival of the fittest," and their influence upon Western thought, carried out by a scholar well-trained in the biological and social sciences, still remains to be done. Meanwhile, Dr. RICHARD HOFSTADTER, a young historian, has made something of a beginning with the present excellent volume, which is restricted to a study of social Darwinism in American thought during the period I860-I915. The study is not exhaustive, the author being chiefly interested, as he tells us, "in the less technical aspects of social theory which are most likely to have a direct influence on the popular mind, and in turn reflect most faithfully the trend of in- formed public opinion." Dr. HOFSTADTER has wisely abjured any attempt to deal with the impact of Dar- winism on American fiction, as properly belonging to a separate and perhaps larger enterprise.

In the first chapter an account is given of the appearance of Darwinism on the American scene, and in the second chapter the tremendous vogue of SPENCER in America is discussed. It was SPENCER

who was the leading social Darwinist of his time, and his The Study of Sociology was the first, and for many years the most widely used, text in sociol- ogy in the United States. SPENCER'S sociology was, in reality, little more than the conversion of biological categories and concepts into social ones. For about twenty years, from I870 to I890, almost everyone who amounted to anything intellectually was a Spen- cerian, and in some sense, a social Darwinist. From their publication in the sixties to December 1903, 368,755 of SPENCER'S books, not to mention the pirated editions, were sold in the United States. No- where else was this muscular social Darwinist so widely read and discussed. In a land in which rugged individualism had long been a national tradition, the doctrines of SPENCER were embraced with open arms. When SPENCER visited the United States in 1882, the most prominent business men in the land vied with men of letters and science to do him honor. Among academic men, WILLIAM GRAHAM SUM- NER, to whom Dr. HOFSTADTER devotes a chapter, was the most vigorous and influential disciple of SPENCER and the doctrine of social Darwinism, but like everything which SUMNER touched he made that doctrine his own. Dr. HOFSTADTER's extremely able discussion of SUMNER'S views clearly brings out the fundamental errors of the social Darwinists, with their attempt to deflate the optimism of eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers who believed in progress, by showing that "natural rights" did not exist in nature, that all was inequality, and that humanitarianism, democracy, and equality were not eternal verities. As Dr. HOFSTADTER put it, like some latter-day CALVIN, SUMNER "came to preach the predestination .of the social order and the salva- tion of the economically elect through the survival of the fittest."

LESTER WARD, the first great American sociolo- gist, is next discussed. WARD was an uncompromis- ing critic of social Darwinism, and his statement that if "the fundamental principle of biology is natural selection, that of sociology is artificial selection," and that sociology is a psychological, not a biological science, will always remain the best answer to the social Darwinists.

In the four following chapters, "Evolution, Eth- ics, Society," "The Dissenters," "The Current of Pragmatism," and "Trends in Social Theory, I 890- 1915," Dr. HOFSTADTER traces the gradual dissolu- tion of the doctrine of social Darwinism through the agency of its principal critics, and the emergence of a better understanding of the nature of social de- velopment.

In his ninth chapter, "Racism and Imperialism,"

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Reviews 147

the author discusses the manner in which social Dar- winism has been brought to the support of American Imperialism. This chapter is particularly well worth reading at the present time.

The answer, writes Dr. HOFSTADTER in his Con- clusion, to the question: How shall we account for the ascendancy of the doctrine of social Darwinism? "is that American society saw its own image in the tooth-and-claw version of natural selection, and that its dominant groups were thus able to dramatize this vision of competition as a thing good in itself. Ruth- less business rivalry and unprincipled politics seemed to be justified by the survival philosophy."

As Dr. HOFSTADTER writes in the concluding paragraph to a book of which he and his sponsors, The American Historical Association, may well be proud,

"Whatever the course of social philosophy in the future, however, a few conclusions are now accepted by most humanists: that such biological ideas as 'the survival of the fittest,' whatever their doubtful value in natural science, are utterly useless in attempting to understand society; that the life of man in society, while it is incidentally a biological fact, has characteristics which are not reducible to biology and must be explained in the distinctive terms of a cultural analysis; that the physical well-being of men is a result of their social organization and not vice versa; that social improvement is a product of advances in technology and social organization, and not of breeding or selective elimi- nation; that judgments as to the value of competition be- tween men or enterprises or nations must be based upon social and not allegedly biological consequences; and finally, that there is nothing in nature or a naturalistic philosophy of life which makes impossible the acceptance of moral sanctions which can be employed for the common good."

Dr. HOFSTADTER' s excellent book is unusually well written, admirably balanced, and fair. It is much to be hoped that he will continue his interest in this important subject and perhaps give us, at no distant date, a study of social Darwinism in Europe. There is a good bibliography and an index.

M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU

ERICH KAHLER: Man the Measure. A new ap- proach to history. x+700 pp. New York, Pan- theon Books Inc., 1943. $5.00.

ERICH KAHDER conceives of history as the biog- raphy of man, and in this broad, sweeping, coherent survey of the development of the quality of human- ity in man, the author attempts to show that "his- tory is not an accidental conglomerate of events, not a meaningless come-and-go of forces, not the de- liberate accomplishment of individuals, but a con- nected whole, the unified, consistent development of an organic being that is man." (p. 607). Such

an attempt cannot fail to interest the reader, espe- cially when it is written by a scholar of KAHLER'S

calibre; of its success the reader will, if he can, judge for himself. Man the Measure is a sort of new Outline of History; it is a remarkable piece of condensation and synthesis, and while its interpreta- tions are not always beyond question, the work is, on the whole, sound enough.

KAHLER'S analysis of the present situation of man in the world, and the causes which brought him to it, is brilliant and illuminating.

"The present world catastrophe already bears witness to the devastation which the development of world econ- omy has wrought in the soul of man. What we are under- gonig today is a direct consequence of the decay of the human and spiritual values of our civilization. These values collapsed in all countries and among all peoples touched by our civilization, because people are no longer vitally concerned with them in a world where the relations of men to things outweigh the relations of men to men. In such an environment, spiritual and moral values have taken on a somewhat absurd, indeed ridiculous aspect" (p. 61I6). "The events of the last decade have made it unambiguously clear that human civilization is not identical with the material standard of living. Human civilization is founded on the spiritual and moral values that make a human being, that lend human life its only dignity and all its savor. Human civilization stands and falls with the fostering of these values, and the material standard of liv- ing stands and falls with human civilization" (p. 62 1).

"Reactionaries have never been able to block revolutions, they have only made them more violent" (p. 631). "The idea of man, the counsel of a new humanism, are ceratinly the very last things to move the present world to a funda- mental change. But we may expect this idea to force itself upon men when the course of events brings them to see that without human community and fraternity they are all lost together, that man needs goodness as he needs his daily bread" (p. 640).

These quotations from the last chapter of the book will give the reader some idea of its quality. The book is an answer to SPENGLER'S The Decline of the West. There is an excellent bibliography, and a very full index. The book has been beautifully produced by the publishers who, in a brief time, have established themselves as first in the field of pub- lishers who issue books of distinguished design and context.

M. F. A. M.

WILLIAM FREDERICK NORWOOD: Medical Educa- tion in the United States Before the Civil War. Foreword by HENRY E. SIGERIST. xvi+487 pp. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, '944.

As SIGERIST points out in the Foreword, this work is a contribution "not only to the history of American medicine but, first of all, to the cultural

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