Francis Parker Yockey on Darwinism

 As a world view, Darwinism cannot of course be refuted, since Faith is, always has been, and always will be, stronger than facts

One of the most fruitful discoveries of the 20th century was the metaphysics of nations. The unveiling of the Riddle of History showed that nations are different manifestations of the soul of the High Cultures. They exist only in Cultures, they have their life span for political purposes, and possess — vis-à-vis the other nations of the Culture — individuality. Each great nation is given an Idea, a life-mission, and the history of the nation is the actualizing of this Idea. This Idea, again, must be felt, and cannot be directly defined. Each Idea, to actualize which a given nation was chosen by the Culture, is also a stage of the development of the Culture. Thus Western History presents during the recent centuries, a Spanish period, a French period, an English period. They correspond to Baroque, Rococo, and early Civilization. These nations owed their spiritual and political supremacy during these years solely to the fact that they were the custodians of the Spirit of the Age. With the passing of the Age, these custodians of its Spirit lost their spiritually dominating position in the Culture. 

The early Civilization was the English period of the West, and all the thought and activity of the whole Civilization was on the English model. All nations embarked upon economic imperialism of the English type. All thinkers became Anglicized intellectually. English thought-systems ruled the West, systems which reflected the English soul, English life-conditions, and English material conditions. Prime among these systems was Darwinism, which became popular, and thus politically effective. 

Darwin himself was a follower of Malthus, and his system implies Malthusianism as a foundation. Malthus taught that population increase tends to outrun increase of food supply, that this represented an economic  danger, and that “checks” on this population increase alone can prevent it from destroying a nation, such as epidemics and wars, unhealthy living conditions and poverty. Malthusianism expressly regards care for the poor, the aged, and orphans, as a mistake. 

A word on this curious philosophy; first it has no correspondence whatever to facts, and therefore is not valid for the 20th century. Statistically it has no basis, spiritually it shows complete incomprehension of the prime fact of Destiny, Man, and History — namely that the soul is primary, and that matter is governed by soulconditions. Every man is the poet of his own History, and every nation of its History. A rising population shows the presence of a life-task, a declining population points to insignificance. This philosophy would legitimate a man’s existence by whether or not he is born into an adequate food-area! His gifts, his life task, his Destiny, his soul, are put at naught. It is one example of the great philosophic tendency of materialism: the animalization of Culture-man. 

Malthusianism taught that the food-population ratio imposed a continuous struggle for existence among men. This “struggle for existence” became a leadingidea for Darwinism. The other leading ideas of Darwinism are found in Schopenhauer, Erasmus Darwin, Henry Bates, and Herbert Spencer. Schopenhauer in 1835 set forth a Nature-picture containing the struggle for self-preservation, human intellect as a weapon in the struggle, and sexual love as unconscious selection according to the interest of the species. In the 18th century, Erasmus Darwin had postulated adaptation, heredity, struggle, and self-protection as principles of evolution. Bates formulated before Darwin the theory of Mimicry, Spencer the theory of descent, and the powerful tautological catchword “survival of the fittest” to describe the results of the “struggle.” 

This is only the foreground, for actually the road from Darwin back to Calvin is quite clear: Calvinism is a religious interpretation of the “survival of the fittest” idea, and it calls the fit the “elected.” Darwinism makes this election-process mechanical-profane instead of theological-religious: selection by Nature instead of election by God. It remains purely English in the process, for the national religion of England was an adaptation of Calvinism.

The basic idea of Darwinism — evolution — is as little novel as the particular theories of the system. Evolution is the great central idea of the philosophy of the 19th century. It dominates every leading thinker and every system: Schopenhauer, Proudhon, Marx, Wagner, Nietzsche, Mill, Ibsen, Shaw. These thinkers differ in their explanation of the purpose and technique of evolution; none of them question the central idea itself. With some of them it is organic, with most purely mechanical. 

Darwin’s system has two aspects, of which only one is treated here, for only one was effective. This was Darwinism as a popular philosophy. As a scientific arrangement it had considerable qualifications, and no one paid any attention to these when converting it to a journalistic world-outlook. As the latter, it had a sweeping vogue, and was effective as a part of the world-picture of the age. 

The system shows its provenance as a product of the Age of Criticism in its teleological assumptions. Evolution has purpose — the purpose of producing man, civilized man, English man — in the last analysis, Darwinians. It is anthropomorphic — the “aim of evolution” is not to produce bacilli, but humanity. It is free trade capitalism, in that this struggle is economic, every man for himself, and competition decides which life-forms are best. It is gradual and parliamentary, for continual “progress” and adaptation, exclude revolutions and catastrophes. It is utilitarian, in that every change in a species is one that has a material use. The human soul itself — known as the “brain” in the 19th century — is only a tool by which a certain type of monkey advanced himself to man ahead of his fellow-monkeys. Teleology again: man became man in order that he might be man. It is orderly; natural selection proceeds according to the rules of artificial breeding in practice on English farms. 

II 

As a world view, Darwinism cannot of course be refuted, since Faith is, always has been, and always will be, stronger than facts. Nor is it important to refute it as a picture of the world, since as such it no longer influences any but day-before-yesterday thinkers. However, as a picture of the facts, it is grotesque, from its first assumptions to its last conclusions. 

In the first place, there is no “Struggle for existence” in nature; this old Malthusian idea merely projected Capitalism on to the animal world. Such struggles for existence as do occur are the exception; the rule in Nature is abundance. There are plenty of plants for the herbivores to eat, and there are plenty of herbivores for the carnivores to eat. Between the latter there can hardly be said to be “struggle,” since only the carnivore is spiritually equipped for war. A lion making a meal of a zebra portrays no “struggle” between two species, unless one is determined so to regard it. Even so, he must concede that it is not physically, mechanically, necessary for the carnivores to kill other animals. They could as well eat plants — it is the demand of their animal souls however to live in this fashion, and thus, even if one were to call their lives struggles, it would not be imposed by “Nature” but by the soul. It becomes thus, not a “struggle for existence,” but a spiritual necessity of being one’s self. 

The capitalistic mentality, engaged in a competition to get rich, quite naturally pictured the animal-world also as engaged in an intensive economic contest. Both Malthusianism and Darwinism are thus capitalistic outlooks, in that they place economics in the center of Life, and regard it as the meaning of Life. 

Natural selection was the name given to the process by which the “unfit” died out to give place to the “fit.” Adaptation was the name given to the process by which a species gradually changed in order to be more fit for the struggle. Heredity was the means by which these adaptations were saved for the species. 

As a factual picture, this is easier to refute than it is to prove, and factual biological thinkers, both Mechanists and Vitalists, like Louis Agassiz, Du BoisReymond, Reinke, and Driesch rejected it from its appearance. The easiest refutation is the palaeontological. Fossil deposits — found in various parts of the earth — must represent the possibilities generally. Yet they disclose only stable specie-forms, and disclose no transitional types, which show a species “evolving” into something else. And then, in a new fossil hoard, a new species appears, in its definitive form, which remains stable. The species that we know today, and for past centuries, are all stable, and no case has ever been observed of a species “adapting” itself to change its anatomy or physiology, which “adaptation” then resulted in more “fitness” for the “struggle for existence,” and was passed on by heredity, with the result of a new species. 

Darwinians cannot get over these facts by bringing in great spaces of time, for paleontology has never discovered any intermediate types, but only distinct species. Nor are the fossil animals which have died out any simpler than present-day forms, although the course of evolution was supposed to be from simple to complex Life-forms. This was crude anthropomorphism — man is complex, other animals are simple, they must be tending toward him, since he is “higher” biologically. 

Calling Culture-man a “higher” animal still treats him as an animal. Culture-man is a different world spiritually from all animals, and is not to be understood by referring him to any artificial materialistic scheme. 

If this picture of the facts were correct, species ought to be fluid at the present time. They should be turning into one another. This is, of course, not so. There should actually be no species, but only a surging mass of individuals, engaged in a race to reach — man. But the “struggle,” again, is quite inconclusive. The “lower” forms, simpler — less fit? — have not died out, have not yielded to the principle of Darwinian evolution. They remain in the same form they have had for — as the Darwinians would say — millions of years. Why do they not “evolve” into something “higher”?

The Darwinian analogy between artificial selection and natural selection is also in opposition to the facts. The products of artificial selection such as barnyard fowls, racing dogs, race horses, ornamental cats, and song-canaries, would certainly be at a disadvantage against natural varieties. Thus artificial selection has only been able to produce less fit lifeforms. 

Nor is Darwinian sexual selection in accordance with facts. The female does not by any means always choose the finest and strongest individual for a mate, in the human species, or in any other. 

The utilitarian aspect of the picture is also quite subjective — i.e., English, capitalistic, parliamentarian — for the utility of an organ is relative to the use sought to be made of it. A species without hands has no need of hands. A hand that slowly evolved would be a positive disadvantage over the “millions of years” necessary to perfect the hand. Furthermore, how did this process start? For an organ to be utile, it must be ready; while it is being prepared, it is inutile. But if it is inutile, it is not Darwinian, for Darwinism says evolution is utilitarian. 

Actually all the technics of Darwinian evolution are simply tautological. Thus, within the species it is individuals which have a predisposition to adapt themselves that do so. Adaptation presupposes adaptation. 

The process of selection affects those specimens with definite aptitudes which make them worthy of selection, in other words, they have already been selected. Selection presupposes selection. 

The problem of descent in the Darwinian picture is treated as finding the interrelations of the species. Having assumed their interrelationship, it then finds they are interrelated, and proves the interrelationship thus. Descent presupposes descent. 

The utility of an organ is a way of saying it works for this species. Utility thus presupposes the existence of the very species which has the organ, but lacking that organ. The facts however, have never shown a species to pick up a certain missing organ, which seemed necessary. A Life-form needs a certain organ because it needs it. The organ is utile because it is utile. 

The naive, tautological, doctrine of utility never asked “Utility for what?” That which serves duration might not serve strength. Utility is not a simple thing, but entirely relative to what already exists. Thus it is the inner demands of a life-form which determine what it would like to have, what would be useful to it. The soul of the lion and his power go together. The hand of man and his brain go together. No one can say that the strength of the lion causes him to live the way he does, nor that the hand of man is responsible for his technical achievements. It is the soul in each case which is primary.

This primacy of the spiritual inverts the Darwinian materialism on the doctrine of utility. A lack can be utile: the lack of one sense develops others; physical weakness develops intelligence. In man and in animals alike, the absence of one organ stimulates others to compensatory activity — this is often observed in endocrinology in particular. 

III 

The whole grotesquerie of Darwinism, and of the materialism of the entire 19th century generally, is a product of one fundamental idea — an idea which happens also to be nonfactual to this century, even though it was a prime fact a century ago. This one idea was that Life is formed by the outer. This generated the sociology of “environment” as determining the human soul. Later it generated the doctrine of “heredity” as doing the same. And yet, in a purely factual sense, what is Life? Life is the actualizing of the possible. The possible turns into the actual in the midst of outer facts, which affect only the precise way in which the possible becomes actual, but cannot touch the inner force which is expressing itself through, and, if necessary, in opposition to, the outer facts. 

Neither “heredity” nor “environment” determine these inner possibilities. They affect only the framework within which something entirely new, an individual, a unique soul, will express itself. 

The word evolution describes to the 20th century the process of the ripening and fulfilling of an organism or of a species. This process is not at all the operation of mechanical-utility “causes” on plastic, formless, protoplasmic material, with purely accidental results. His work with plants led de Vries to develop his Mutation theory of the origin of species, and the facts of paleontology reinforce it to the extent of showing the sudden appearance of new species. The 20th century finds it quite unnecessary to formulate mythologies, either in cosmogony or biology. Origins are forever hidden from us, and a historical viewpoint is interested in the development of the process, not in the mysterious beginning of the process. This beginning, as set forth by scientific mythology, and by religious mythology, has only an historical interest to our age. What we note is that once these world-pictures were actual and living. 

What is the actual History of Life, as this age sees it? Various species of Life exist, ranked, according to increasing spiritual content, from plants and animals, through man, to Culture-man, and High Cultures. Some of the varieties, as shown by fossils, existed in former earth-ages in their present form, while other species appeared and disappeared. 

A species appears suddenly, both in fossil-finds, and in the experimental laboratory. Mutation is a legitimate description of the process, if the idea is free from any mechanical-utility causes, for these latter are only imagined, whereas mutations are a fact. Each species has also a Destiny, and a given Life-energy, so to speak. Some are stable and firm; others have been weak, tending to split off into many different varieties, and lose their unity. They have also a life span, for many have disappeared. This whole process is not at all independent of geological ages, nor of astral phenomena. Some species, however, outlast one earth-age into the next, just as some 19th century thinkers have survived into the 20th century. 

Darwinians offered also an explanation of the metaphysics of their evolution. Roux, for instance, holds that the “fit for the purpose” survive, while the “unfit for the purpose” die. The process is purely mechanical, however, and is thus fitness for purpose without purpose. Nägeli taught that an organism perfects itself because it contains within it the “principle of perfection,” just as Moliere’s doctor explained that the sleeping potion worked because of a dormitive virtue inherent in it. Weismann denied the heredity of acquired characteristics, but instead of using it to destroy Darwinism, as it obviously does — if every individual has to start anew, how can the species “evolve”? — he props up the Darwinian picture with it by saying that the germ-plasm contains latent tendencies toward useful qualities. But this is no longer Darwinism, for the species does not evolve if it is only doing what it tends to do. 

These tautological explanations only convinced people because they believed already. The age was evolutionary, and materialistic. Darwinism combined these two qualities into a biologico-religious doctrine which satisfied the capitalistic imperative of that age. Any experiments, any new facts, only proved Darwinism; they would not have been allowed to do otherwise. 

The 20th century does not see Life as an accident, a playground for external causes. It sees the fact that Life-forms begin suddenly, and that the subsequent development, or evolution, is only the actualizing of that which is already possible. Life is the unfolding of a Soul, an individuality. Whatever explanation one gives of how Life started only reveals the structure of his own soul. A materialistic explanation reveals a materialist. Similarly the imputing of any “purpose” to Life as a whole transcends knowledge and enters the realm of Faith. Life as a whole, each great Life-form, each species, each variety, each individual, has however a Destiny, an inner direction, a wordless imperative. This Destiny is the primary fact of History. History is the record of fulfilled (or thwarted) destinies. 

Any attempt to make man into an animal, and the animals into automata, is merely materialism, and thus a product of a certain type of soul, of a certain age. The 20th century is not such an age, and looks upon the inner reality of the human soul as being the determinant of human history, and the inner reality of the Soul of the High Culture as being the determinant of the history of that Culture. The soul exploits outer circumstances — they do not form it. 

Nor does the 20th century, not being capitalistic, see any struggle for existence going on in the world, either of men or animals. It sees a struggle for power, a struggle that has no connection with cheap economic reasons. It is a struggle for domination of the world that the 20th and 21st centuries see. It is not because there is a shortage of food for the human populations of the world — there is plenty of food. The question is power, and in the decision of that question, food, human lives, material, and everything else that the participants can dispose of, will come into play as weapons, and not as stakes. Nor will it ever be decided, in the sense that a lawsuit can be decided. Readers living in 2050 will smile when told that there was once a rather widespread belief in the Western Civilization that the First World War was the “last war.” The Second World War was also so regarded, all during the preparations for the Third. It was a case of wish-thinking pacifist idealism being stronger than facts. 

Darwinism was the animalization of Cultureman by means of biology; the human soul was interpreted as a mere superior technique of fighting with other animals. We come now to Marxism, the animalization of man through economics, the human soul as a mere reflex of food, clothing and shelter. 

From Imperium