Spencer Heath Archive

Item 968

Penned in a stenographer’s Notebook, tentatively titled by Spencer MacCallum

Fall of 1939?

 

White envelope has items 968-970 and 972.

 

 

/ENVIRONMENT AND THE

  SUCCESSION OF LIFE-FORMS/

 

 

Man is the form of life, the one living creature, who is able to make great and permanent changes favorable to himself in the entire world in which he lives. The whole animal kingdom below man was evolved out of its environ­ing world. All creatures bear in their structure the marks of the environment that brought them forth and each species reflects in its bodily form and functions the specific environment from which it was evolved and produced and in which it is reproduced. Thus each living form springs from an environing world not of its own making but of whose creation it is and to which it is abjectly enslaved. It does all things in the manner that its environment compels. Its every act is prescribed. It has few if any options and does not what it chooses or wills but what it must do or die. Thus the circumstances and conditions of life for the animal world have been narrow and hard. But, more than that, they have constantly and most inconstantly changed. During slowly changing and relatively uniform conditions highly specialized and conforming forms have been brought forth, forms well adapted to conditions nearly constant and changing but slowly or imperceptibly as they change. But when cataclysmic changes occurred in an inconstant world, only the least specialized and most versatile forms could survive. Hence, not conformity alone, but also variation and versatility as well, have been requisite to the persistence of life in an inconstantly changing world. Life could become more versatile only by becoming, in its structures and functions, more complex.

     Now, a given total amount of energy manifesting itself in any given life-form will be proportionate to the numbers of individuals constituting that form. But it is also proportionate to the duration of these individual lives. If the duration is long, then, for a given amount of energy, the numbers must be few; if the duration be short, then, for the same amount of energy, the numbers must be correspondingly large. Thus, under conservation of the given energy flowing in any particular form, whatever adaptations or influences have prolonged the individual lives, these have caused their numbers to become less, and those things that tend to shorten their lives have caused their numbers to increase.

     Variations in hereditary characteristics, including mutations, manifest themselves only in the circumstance of reproduction. Where the reproductive rate has been highest, there has been the wider field and wider probability of mutation and variation. Thus, in a life stream of given quantity, the factors of experience that have been less favorable to length of life have necessitated a concomitant increase in the numbers with the shortening of the lives. What was unfavorable to the individual was favorable to reproductivity and numbers; the higher frequency of reproduction was favorable to variation and mutations; and variation, by means of natural selection and survival, was favorable to that complexity and versatility wherewith alone the life form, thus modified, could withstand those environmental changes which raised the rate of reproductivity as a consequence of the shortened individual lives.

     Thus, under the principle of conservation of energy, it was inherent in nature that unfavorable environmental influences should lead life-forms in the direction of the necessary complexity and versatility for withstanding them. And this has depended primarily on the tendency of living individuals to conserve the energy of their race by increas­ing their numbers in response to those things which shorten their days. This must have been true; for if it had been otherwise, then there would have been no compensation for the shortening of lives by environmental changes and all life would have come to an end or, at least, would have tended to do so. But instead of this, the reverse principle, that of creation, has obtained and, as all the record shows, life has ever flowed into more and more complex and versatile and therefore more enduring forms.

     This movement away from the high and simple specialization of the individual and the species and towards individuals and species of more complex structures and versatile powers has been marked by an increase in the numbers and variety of organs and parts and by an increasing degree of specialization as regards those organs and parts. The complexity and versatility has been achieved not by sacrifice or abandonment of high specialization as such but by the combination and integration of highly specialized organs and parts into the structure of the more complex individual. Thus the complexity and versatility of the individual resides not in any lessened specialization but in the com-plication together of highly specialized organs and parts.

     In man, at the apex of animal life and definitely transcending it, his cooperative complex of highly specialized parts has led to such versatility of adjustment to an infinite variety of external conditions and to swift and even violent changes in them that (with all his shortcomings) he has come to inherit and to occupy practically the whole earth. On the whole surface of the globe there are few physical conditions under which he cannot live. Not only does his bodily economy compensate within itself for great external extremes, but he has found the wit to modify and ameliorate the external conditions themselves. Hence clothing, housing, implements, produced and prepared food. While the lower animals are restricted as to habitat and can meet new changes of environment only by the slow and uncertain process of modifying their organic structures, it is the high and practically exclusive province of man to modify the structure of his environment and thereby improve his world. This is what distinguishes him; herein it is that he is human — distinctively so. It is here that the tables are turned on nature and he emerges (measurably) as a creator in his own right and by his own power of creation and command. Life is no longer abject, enslaved to environment, changing always itself under external compulsion and command. Life now has the beginnings of a will and of a mastery over nature that is potential for the utter transformation of the world. Whence comes this transforming power? What secret seeds of power did man bring forward out of his earlier and humbler state? In what technique does it emerge that he alone has risen as creator, into the mighty prerogative of the divine?

 

     The higher animal forms are such not because of any greater structural complexities in the associated parts themselves, but because of the special modes of association and interaction among the several parts that give them, as a whole, the organic unity by which they are constituted as higher forms. These favorable interrelationships between and among the structurally associated units, such as cells, organs and parts, appear to consist wholly of energy transfers between the organized parts in such reciprocal manner that the diverse parts are nourished and maintained and during growth enhanced. This mutuality of energy exchange in its totality is called metabolism. It wears two aspects, depending on the point of view. The aspect in which the structure of the one part is disintegrated to supply the energy transferred to the other part is called catabolism. The aspect in which the energy received by the other part is seen to reintegrate the structure of that part is called anabolism. The one aspect is that of giving, the other that of receiving, but both refer to the same energy flow. If this flow were in one direction only and not reciprocal, then one part would receive without giving while the other would be giving without receiving. The relationship would be parasitic and unstable and could not be indefinitely carried on, for the continued growth of the one would lead to the extinguishment of the other; there is no net gain and the relationship is dissolved. But the reciprocal transfer of energy between its diverse parts that characterized the successful organisms does lead to the net result that is manifested in growth to maturity and in the specific functioning of the organ or the total organism as and after it matures. Thus the highly generalized function that is called metabolism and which has reference to the smallest parts, together with the less generalized and more specialized functioning of the special organs and parts, leads to and is the sole basis of all the specific functions of the organism as a whole. The general cooperative and reciprocal function of metabolism maintains the structure and provides all the energy for every particular function, such as locomotion, seeking food, pursuit or escape, etc., that the organism performs.

     In addition to differentiation and specialization of its own organs and parts, the higher organisms, both vegetable and animal, exhibit a tendency towards structural and functional differentiation that leads to the establishment of separate sexes. The unlike parts that previously cooperated within the individual to accomplish the reproductive function become capable of sending forth and abroad either the male pollen or sperm only or proliferations of both the male and the female type. In the sub-mammalian world of plant and animal life, including the fishes and amphibians, but excluding many insects and reptiles and all birds, the male sperm and female ova originating either within the same bisexual individual or from individuals of separate sex, commonly unite and develop outside the body of the single or of either parent. In the case of the higher reptiles and of birds the ova must be fertilized by the male before leaving the body of the female parent although the entire embryonic growth takes place after passage from the female body. But in the whole mammalian world not only does the union take place within but the female body is specially formed and adapted to serve as host to the growing embryo until birth and to provide all nourishment before and after birth, including the whole period of lactation and parental care.

     The sending forth of the pollen or sperm from either the bisexual or the unisexual plant or animal opened the possibilities of cross fertilization by separate parents and thus of a great enrichment of genetic and developmental possibilities by the uniting of diverse hereditary strains. The advantages consequent upon these greater possibilities favored the development and survival of separate sexes and their becoming differentiated into wholly separate sex forms. These were evolved by one of the two sex structures in the individual becoming dominant and the contrary sex structure diminishing in function and relapsing into mere vestigial parts. The bodily differentiation of the female up to the very highly specialized mammalian forms was accompanied by modifications in the male in such directions as favored survival of parents and also of progeny and such further modifications as resulted from preferential selection of mates on the part of the females. Thus were founded the herd and family groups fundamentally on a reproductive or sex-biological basis, but in the swarm, flock, herd, clan and tribe, superposing on mere sex and physiological differentiation within the blood relationship bond, there were preserved many further correlations and specializations among the members serving to maintain and advance the life of the group or tribe.

     Thus there arises a form of organization among individuals in social groupings closely corresponding in principle and mode of action with the association of biological cells within the organism that led to their individual and group specializations, the formation of special organs and parts and their integration into the higher, more complex and versatile individual forms. This exhibits a progression from the monad or single cell forms, reproducing themselves without sex differentiation, through the complex cell-associative forms with interrelated special organs leading to sex differentiation within the individual, and finally to sex-differentiated individuals associated in family-group, herd, clan and tribal relationships corresponding in method and principle with those cooperative and reciprocal energy-transfer relationships that were descriptively reviewed as the metabolism and organic functioning of the cells and special cell-groups in the more complex individual organisms. It was there seen that the life of the higher form was dependent on the energy transfers between organs and cells being reciprocal and mutually advantageous. The same necessity is observed to obtain in the group relationships and social integrations that are practiced by these higher biological forms themselves. But this benign cooperation, this symbiosis, appears to be strictly limited in each case to the particular organism or group, whether it be a monad practicing the maximum self-sufficiency within its cytoplastic envelope and having only antagonisms towards and from its external world, or whether it be a complex organism practicing mutual and reciprocal relationships within its own integrated structure of specialized cells and cooperating parts, or, finally whether it be a herd, clan or tribe, a social integration of these complex biological organisms differentiated as to sex and its individuals and groups more or less beneficially specialized in interchange with each other. In each and every case the integrated unit, at whatever level of organization, owes its organic integrity — its existence as an entity — to the same kind of reciprocal relations within itself and among its individual parts. And whenever relationships of this kind are entered into as between well integrated units that have attained a given level of biological or social organization, then, to the extent such relationships are maintained, a new unit at still a higher level of organization is achieved; but before and until such achievement each individual life form or organizational unit remains inimical and usually hostile to the whole content of its environment. The reason for this is that the creature, the group or the race must draw its life from and live at the expense of its environment.

     Unless a creature has some power and technique for improving or maintaining for itself a favorable environment it can continue to live, when it meets with unfavorable changes, only by changing itself. To meet any but very gradual changes it must be versatile, and to be versatile it must become complex.

     Very primitive life forms have, in general, the most abundant supplies of food, for they can subsist on inorganic materials. Other physical factors, and not food supply, are the limiting conditions for their multiplication and life. But the more highly organized forms cannot avail themselves of the inorganic food that is so abundant. They must depend upon the lower forms for their supply of organic material which, of course, is to be had only in relatively limited amount. So, the advantages the more complex creatures gain through their versatility to meet environmental changes of a general character, they tend to lose by reason of their more limited supplies of food. And as their power of meeting other adverse conditions improves, so does their limitation as to food become more acute, for they themselves now introduce an increasingly unfavorable condition into their environment in this respect. As their numbers increase so directly increases their need of the special food they require. But this increase in consumption diminishes the supply. So long as conditions continue otherwise favorable, the multiplying creatures continue to transform into their own structures the food materials that their environment affords. This inverse operation between the increase in the numbers and the needs of the more complex form of life and the concomitant diminution of the usually simpler forms on which it increasingly depends leads towards the Malthusian crisis in which the lives are shortened by starvation and many prematurely die.

     But here again the flow of life in its organic stream persists. The adaptation takes genetic form. As in the case of the earlier and simpler life forms, those best survived that suffered not their numbers to decline with the shortening of their days but met the crisis with a “differential” reproductivity that responded with larger numbers of briefer lives to restore the vital balance.

     Thus again what is lost in the completeness and extent of lives is in part at least regained in the rate and frequency of reproduction and from this frequency of birth rises the higher probability of variant and mutant forms capable of better adjustment to its resources of subsistence and able also to utilize a wider range of food materials. When subsistence relative to numbers again declines there again is conflict and “liquidation” accompanied by a heightened reproductivity out of which a surviving creature of superior form or superior habits is again brought forth. By many repetitions of this process the forms of life continue to improve their adaptive capacity and thus, over all, to increase their populations despite the relatively diminishing amount of food for them. But during this whole process each species in a given habitat and each separated group, herd or tribe within the species presses against the subsistence of the others and rivalry and strife must rule their lives.

     This is most marked in those temperate parts of the earth where physiographic conditions are most varied, irregular and complex and climate and meteorology most variable, exhibiting great fluctuations between extremes of temperature, moisture and barometric pressure. Such variable and complex environmental conditions are, of course, just the ones under which the most versatile, complex and adaptable creatures would be evolved. In these temperate regions the whole organic world is most varied and complex. Here are found the greatest variety of form and structure in both the plant and the animal world, and in them both the greatest resistance and accommodation to environmental change.

     In the equable tropics life at many levels is most profuse and most easily maintained but the relative constancy of its conditions affords little stimulus and need for its evolvement into more complex and versatile forms.

 

 

What is thus true as to the plant and animal world is equally to be observed of tropical men. As individuals they are physically and psychologically more uniform in type and although of high resourcefulness to cope with their uniform and accustomed conditions they lack the versatility and adaptability to withstand the rigors of change and of extremes. And this characteristic follows as well into their social organization and institutions. The individual possesses greater self-sufficiency and has less dependence on the larger group. There is less need and likewise less practice of specialization, division of labor and widespread exchange; their psychology tends towards lethargy and contemplation more than towards dominance and action, and a fatalistic acquiescence becomes manifest and explicit in their religious ideals.

     In polar regions life is hard and therefore less profuse in all its forms. But here too the physical conditions are relatively uniform. Life at all levels, including men and their institutions, is more uniform and less versatile or complex. The need of man for shelter, clothing and food is at its maximum. None of these are ready-prepared, and the materials for them are few in number and only with much difficulty obtained. Great industry and activity along few and narrow lines are requisite to mere existence and there is no surplus either of energy or materials for making any permanent change or improvement in the conditions of their lives. Their population must be sparse and they must practice cooperation and primitive group solidarity within the narrow range of activity to which they are bound. They respect property and keep the plighted oath for they cannot indulge in the wastefulness of either slavery or war.

     In the tropics life is easy to maintain; there is small need and little stimulus toward activity either to create or to destroy. But in the lands of perpetual snow and ice, though the activity must be high, maintenance alone is all that can be achieved.

     Between the two great extremes of physical conditions which are similar in no respect but that of their relative constancy and freedom from change lie the great temperate regions of physiographic diversities and maximum fluctuation and change. These higher latitudes and the higher altitudes of nearer-tropical lands have bred the races of plants, animals and men who have risen to the exigencies of their stimulating and complex environment. These have been stimulated into the resourcefulness necessary to cope with relatively harsh conditions and to counter these conditions when they change.

     Biology, anthropology and history unite in their evidence that the earliest growth of man and his social organization must have taken place in the warm, flat and fertile lands. Just as the originals of all plant and animal life are thought to have emerged from sunny seas to tropic lands, so have the earliest societies arisen out of the richness of the great fluvial plains, for it was here that populations found least need of shelter, clothing and food for bodily maintenance and here that these least needs could be most easily met. Here, therefore, human life arose; here it was earliest and most profuse.

     But this uniformity and regularity of favorable conditions that made life easy and simple also kept men least efficient and least capable of meeting stress and change. It was those of nomadic trend who wandered, chiefly as herdsmen, into the higher, colder and more rugged lands who encountered the greater physical needs, found the greater stimulus towards supplying and producing them from less generous and less fruitful lands and who survived only in proportion as they became versatile in their capacities of accommodation to a more changing and complex as well as a less bountiful world.

     Moreover, whereas in the warm fluvial lands the earth responded to crude agriculture so abundantly that two (or more) might easily be sustained upon the labor of one, the reverse became true for those who wandered towards the higher, colder, rugged and less spontaneously fruitful lands. Here would the labor of one, unaided, not only not suffice for two but in the more rugged regions would be insufficient even for the one alone. Here not only was the parasitism of slavery forbidden to men but the natural conditions themselves, besides compelling men to be more capable and efficient, also coerced them into mutualities of service through relationships of leadership and loyalty, and other simple divisions of labor by cooperation and exchange. Here at the social level and by a necessity inherent in the conditions of nature themselves a new integration of organic units begins to be evolved. Through this the social group, and likewise the individuals within it, become endowed with higher capacities.

     The association enforced by nature upon already superior and more adaptable men, but free as among the men themselves, gave them a capacity as individuals and an organized force that they could employ not only in migrations to distant lands but that became also a powerful instrument of war and conquest as well. The success of these rudely socialized groups in overcoming the adversities of physical nature must have imbued them with confidence in their powers and raised ambitions in their hearts towards the conquest and enslavement of the softer and less powerful men of the slavish states in the fertile valleys and fluvial plains.

     Thus the great migrations and conquests throughout historic time have proceeded almost uniformly from the higher, rougher and colder, lands always towards the “fertile crescent,” the fluvial plains and fruitful shores. With few, if any, notable exceptions, the historic movement has been from north to south, east to west, from the high to the low and from the cold lands to the warm. The con­querors have been men of northern race or breed.

     The ancient great eruptions out of the Asian North brought the teeming masses of the great river countries and the plains east and west under the sway of successive dynasties, each in turn to adopt as its own the despotic mass enslavement of its predecessors in the lands that were lush to support the conquering caste on the forced labor or tribute wrung from degraded subjects, each ruling class in its turn being enervated by luxury and power to invite again new conquests by hardier men. In the long, dim annals of the Nile, the story of conquest and dominance is the same. The Ethiops, the Shepherd Kings, the Macedonians, the Romans of later time and the Western Races and British of today.

     The Hellenes in heroic times came from the mountains of the north as tribes under chieftain kings, enslaving the populations in their path. They bowed not to the Great Kings of the East but to the Macedonian and the Romans of the north and came beneath their heel. Witness the northern tribes who founded Rome and laid their dominion over all the Southern slavish world only to forfeit valor and capacity to luxury and vice and be at last themselves overwhelmed by succeeding hordes of hardier men. The great Aryan movement through the passes of the Hindu-Kush to take dominance of the huge peninsula of India and crush its southern millions in an iron system of cast and servitude only themselves to come under the sway and rule of a distant Aryan isle. From a rugged Arabia descended the fanatic tribes that spread east to the great mountain walls and west to the Pyrenees and Pillars of Hercules, but without permanent conquest, as later did the zealots of the cross sweep south and eastward to the Levant only to be hurled back by stalwart Seljuks bred out of the bleakness of the Asian North.

     The fat lands, the flat lands, the lands and climes where men’s bodily needs are least and where nature is most lavish in her bounties from the simplest toil, the lands where idle masters could luxuriate on the crude toil of slaves, where kings are always rulers and drivers and seldom leaders of men, these have ever been the field of conquest and spoil for the freer and ruder men of harsher lands.

     But what makes them easy to conquer makes the soft lands hard to hold. The new masters accept the slave-relationships that they find. They adopt the ease and luxury of those whom they displace and are softened by indolent living in a languorous clime. Thus do they invite the day when their slavish battalions must give way to ruder and freer men under chosen leaders who shall descend upon them in the open formations taught by the hills.