The late and unlamented Denver Individualist gloried in a contributor whose paragraphic exercises were especially distinguished by their incoherence and puerility. His capacity for misreading, misunderstanding, and misrepresenting things was truly phenomenal. T was his signature. Now there is strong circumstantial evidence to support the theory I have formed that Mr. Francis D. Tandy, of Denver, the now famous author of the treatise on Biology and Sociology, which the Twentieth Century has been fortunate enough to give to the grateful world, is no other personage than our old and honored acquaintance T of the Denver Individualist. The unassuming and modest T has in the natural course of things evoluted into the imposing and respectable Francis D. Tandy (such is my working hypothesis); and I am glad to note that there has been corresponding progress in the proportions and composition of the deliverances proceeding from what our old acquaintance would doubtless dignify by calling his mind. Short paragraphs have been superseded by somewhat lengthy effusions, and simple subjects have given place to intricate and complex problems. The results of the application of the aforesaid marvellous capacity for misapprehension and misreading to such problems may be imagined.

Referring to the famous and epoch-making utterance on Biology and Sociology, we find that the author therein attempted to prove three statements. The first is that biology bears an important relationship to sociology. This is indeed a great and pregnant truth, and Mr. Tandy is to be congratulated on his discernment. It matters not that this truth has been fully appreciated and emphasized by every competent writer since Comte: the point is that Mr. Tandy discovered the fact for himself, without the assistance of other great thinkers. Having independently discovered it, Mr. Tandy quite naturally wishes to prove it independently and in his own way. It is of course true that what Mr. Tandy attempts to prove is so well established that no intelligent man doubts it. But it is to be remembered that there are many unintelligent men in the world, and Mr. Tandy’s efforts to prove the existence of a very important relation between biology and sociology to those who, like him, have no familiarity with either science, if rather unprofitable, are at least prompted by humanitarian sentiment.

The second statement is that the theory of use-inheritance, held by Darwin and Spencer, has been overthrown, and has hitherto been practically ignored in sociological discussions. Now let no frivolous individual interpose here the idle quibble that in what Mr. Tandy describes as the second statement are contained two distinct statements, namely, first, that the theory of use-inheritance has been overthrown, and, second, that this theory has been ignored in sociological discussions. The question is as to the truth, not the number, of the statements, Mr. Tandy will sharply remind him. Well, the statement that the theory of use inheritance has been overthrown is an ignorant and absurd one. It has not been overthrown, and is not likely to be easily overthrown, as everybody who is conversant with the nature of the evidence for and against it is satisfied. As to the alleged failure of sociological writers to refer to use-inheritance, it is simply not true that those who believe in it have ignored it. And of course no man of sense would expect that those who doubti t and are endeavoring to disprove it to trouble themselves about its sociological implications. Mr. Tandy reveals his ignorance and incompetence in the most striking manner in the following tissue of reckless falsehoods:

Spencer is a staunch advocate of natural selection, a theory which is materially strengthened by the overthrow of use-inheritance, and it is from this biological law that he has derived his sociological ideas, ignoring the question of use-inheritance altogether in relation to sociology. There is nothing astonishing in the fact that Spencer should arrive at many correct sociological ideas, in spite of an error in biology, which he never applied to the former science. Had he built entirely on the use-inheritance doctrine, ignoring the theory of natural selection, and had arrived at the same conclusions, Mr. Tucker might have had some cause for astonishment.

Those who understand Spencer’s sociology know that he has built largely on the use-inheritance doctrine, and they will dismiss the man who, claiming to have studied Spencer, nevertheless asserts that the question of use-inheritance in relation to sociology is ignored altogether in Spencer’s sociological writings, as a fool. Fortunately there is evidence on the subject of a more direct kind, and the reader will be able to judge Mr. Tandy without undertaking an exhaustive examination of Spencer’s sociology. Here is what Spencer writes in his preface to The Factors of Organic Evolution, a book chiefly devoted to the demonstration of the use-inheritance doctrine:

Though the direct bearings of the arguments contained in this Essay are biological, the argument contained in its first half has indirect bearings upon Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology. My belief in the profound importance of these indirect bearings was originally a chief prompter to set forth the argument; and it now prompts me to re-issue it in permanent form.

Though mental phenomena of many kinds, and especially of the simpler kinds, are explicable only as resulting from the natural selection of favorable variations; yet there are, I believe, still more numerous mental phenomena, including all those of any considerable complexity, which cannot be explained otherwise than as results of the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications. What theory of psychological evolution is espoused, thus depends on acceptance or rejection of the doctrine that not only in the individual, but in the successions of individuals, use and disuse of parts produce respectively increase and decrease of them.

Of ocurse there are involved the conceptions we form of the genesis and nature of our higher emotions; and, by implication, the conceptions we form of our moral intuitions. If functionally-produced modifications are inheritable, then the mental associations habitually produced in individuals by experiences of the relations between actions and their consequences, pleasurable or painful, may, in the successions of individuals, generate innate tendencies to like or dislike such actions. But if not, the genesis of such tendencies is, as we shall see, not satisfactorily explicable.

That our sociological beliefs must also be profoundly affected by the conclusions we draw on this point, is obvious. If a nation is modified en masse by transmission of the effects produced on the natures of its members by those modes of daily activity which its institutions and circumstances involve; then we must infer that such institutions and circumstances mould its members far more rapidly and comprehensively than they can do if the sole cause of adaptation to them is the more frequent survival of individuals who happen to have varied in favorable ways.

The third statement is that the overthrow of the use-inheritance doctrine strengthens the individualist position. Again, those who understand Spencerian sociology know that the reverse of this is true. Spencer’s theory of social evolution and the conclusion that Anarchism is the ideal condition which humanity is destined to reach are closely related to the doctrine of use-inheritance, are in fact largely based on it. The overthrow of the doctrine would materially strengthen State Socialism, as is evidenced by the position of Wallace, who succeeds in reconciling his belief in evolution (considering as he does natural and sexual selection as the only factors) with Bellamyism.

And the author of all these statements has the impudence to sneer at those who discuss the relation between intellectual property and the principle of equal liberty! It is reprehensible to discuss the corollaries of equal liberty because certain vital problems in biology are not yet settled! Only a man with encyclopedic ignorance and no logical faculty can make such a spectacle of himself.

V. Y.