The idea that human society advanced through “survival of the fittest” was a popular doctrine, referred to by historians as “Social Darwinism.” Many Americans agreed with Harvard sociologist William Graham Sumner, who argued that the poor and weak were a “burden,” a “dead-weight on the society in all its struggles.” Such views prompted a range of responses, ranging from enthusiastic endorsement to uneasy accommodation to impassioned opposition.

Theodore Dreiser

The Financier

Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) was an American literary naturalist. His novel The Financier (1912) traces the rise of Frank Cowperwood, a young man who, during the last years of the nineteenth century, becomes a powerful banker. Dreiser loosely based the character on the life of financier Charles Yerkes. In this excerpt, the narrator describes a transformative moment in Cowperwood’s youth.

[Cowperwood] could not figure out how this thing he had come into — this life — was organized. How did all these people get into the world? What were they doing here? Who started things, anyhow? His mother told him the story of Adam and Eve, but he didn’t believe it. …

One day he saw a squid and a lobster put in [a] tank, and in connection with them was witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared things up considerably intellectually. The lobster, it appeared from the talk of the idle bystanders, was offered no food, as the squid was considered his rightful prey. He lay at the bottom of the clear glass tank … apparently seeing nothing — you could not tell in which way his beady, black buttons of eyes were looking — but apparently they were never off the body of the squid. The latter, pale and waxy in texture, looking very much like pork fat or jade, moved about in torpedo fashion; but his movements were apparently never out of the eyes of his enemy, for by degrees small portions of his body began to disappear, snapped off by the relentless claws of his pursuer. …

[One day] only a portion of the squid remained. … In the corner of the tank sat the lobster, poised apparently for action. The boy stayed as long as he could, the bitter struggle fascinating him. Now, maybe, or in an hour or a day, the squid might die, slain by the lobster, and the lobster would eat him. He looked again at the greenish-copperish engine of destruction in the corner and wondered when this would be. …

He returned that night, and lo! the expected had happened. There was a little crowd around the tank. The lobster was in the corner. Before him was the squid cut in two and partially devoured. …

The incident made a great impression on him. It answered in a rough way that riddle which had been annoying him so much in the past: “How is life organized?” Things lived on each other — that was it. Lobsters lived on squids and other things. What lived on lobsters? Men, of course! … And what lived on men? he asked himself. Was it other men? Wild animals lived on men. And there were Indians and cannibals. And some men were killed by storms and accidents. He wasn’t so sure about men living on men; but men did kill each other. How about wars and street fights and mobs? . . .

Frank thought of this and of the life he was tossed into, for he was already pondering on what he should be in this world, and how he should get along. From seeing his father count money, he was sure that he would like banking; and Third Street, where his father’s office was, seemed to him the cleanest, most fascinating street in the world.

Source: Theodore Dreiser, The Financier (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1912), 10–15.

Lyman Abbott

The Evolution of Christianity

Liberal Congregationalist Lyman Abbott (1835–1922) was a noted advocate of the Social Gospel. In The Evolution of Christianity (1892), Abbott sought to reconcile the theory of evolution with the development of Christianity.

The doctrine of evolution is not a doctrine of harmonious and uninterrupted progress. The most common, if not the most accurate formula of evolution is “struggle for existence, survival of the fittest.” The doctrine of evolution assumes that there are forces in the world seemingly hostile to progress, that life is a perpetual battle and progress a perpetual victory.

The Christian evolutionist will then expect to find Christianity a warfare — in church, in society, in the individual. … He will remember that the divine life is resident in undivine humanity. He will not be surprised to find the waters of the stream disturbed; for he will reflect that the divine purity has come into a turbid stream, and that it can purify only by being itself indistinguishably combined with the impure. When he is told that modern Christianity is only a “civilized paganism,” he will reply, “That is exactly what I supposed it to be; and it will continue to be a civilized paganism until civilization has entirely eliminated paganism.” He will not be surprised to find pagan ceremonies in the ritual, ignorance and superstition in the church, and even errors and partialisms in the Bible. For he will remember that the divine life, which is bringing all life into harmony with itself, is a life resident in man. He will remember that the Bible does not claim to be the absolute Word of God; that, on the contrary … it claims to be the Word of God … as spoken to men, and understood and interpreted by men, which saw it in part as we still see it, and reflected it as from a mirror in enigmas.

He will remember that the Church is not yet the bride of Christ, but the plebeian daughter whom Christ is educating to be his bride. He will remember that Christianity is not the absolutely divine, but the divine in humanity, the divine force resident in man and transforming man into the likeness of the divine. Christianity is the light struggling with the darkness, life battling with death, the spiritual overcoming the animal. We judge Christianity as the scientist judges the embryo, as the gardener the bud, as the teacher the pupil, — not by what it is, but by what it promises to be.

Source: Lyman Abbott, The Evolution of Christianity (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892), 8–10.

Lester Frank Ward

Glimpses of the Cosmos

Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913) helped establish sociology in the United States. Following French philosopher Auguste Comte, he held that the social sciences should develop methods of improving society. In his autobiography Glimpses of the Cosmos (1913–1918), Ward rejected Social Darwinism.

How shall we distinguish this human, or anthropic, method from the method of nature? Simply by reversing all the definitions. Art is the antithesis of nature. If we call one the natural method, we must call the other the artificial method. If nature’s process is rightly named natural selection, man’s process is artificial selection. The survival of the fittest is simply the survival of the strong, which implies, and might as well be called, the destruction of the weak. And if nature progresses through the destruction of the weak, man progresses through the protection of the weak. …

… Man, through his intelligence, has labored successfully to resist the law of nature. His success is conclusively demonstrated by a comparison of his condition with that of other species of animals. No other cause can be assigned for his superiority. How can the naturalistic philosophers shut their eyes to such obvious facts? Yet, what is their attitude? They condemn all attempts to protect the weak, whether by private or public methods. They claim that it deteriorates the race by enabling the unfit to survive and transmit their inferiority. … Nothing is easier than to show that the unrestricted competition of nature does not secure the survival of the fittest possible, but only of the actually fittest, and in every attempt man makes to obtain something fitter than this actual fittest he succeeds, as witness improved breeds of animals and grafts of fruits. Now, the human method of protecting the weak deals in such way with men. It not only increases the number but improves the quality.

Source: Lester Frank Ward, Glimpses of the Cosmos (New York: Harper, 1913), 371, 374.