The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [201]
Notions of natural selection had long ago been stamped into Roosevelt. On the Origin of Species had taught him that evolution had some important implications for human societies. Still, the lecture was overblown and felt wrong. While Roosevelt was not a strict evolutionist in human affairs, he nevertheless was in the clutches of the general Spencerian notion “root, hog, or die.” To Roosevelt it was a slogan akin to gospel.32 As he articulated in his 1895 essay “Kidd’s Social Evolution,” published in North American Review (a scholarly analysis of Benjamin Kidd’s just-published reflection on natural selection), Roosevelt believed humans had two sides—one inspired by Darwin (“the rivalry of natural selection”) and the other being moral character (essentially the Ten Commandments). There were laws, he wrote, which governed mankind’s reproduction in every generation “precisely as they govern the reproduction of the lower animals.”33 But Roosevelt also understood that the rivalry of natural selection was just one way—not all-encompassing—in which Homo sapiens judged progress:
Other things being equal, the species where this rivalry is keenest will make most progress; but then “other things” never are equal. In actual life those species make most progress which are farthest removed from the point where the limits of selection are very wide, the selection itself very rigid, and the rivalry very keen. Of course the selection is most rigid where the fecundity of the animal is greatest; but it is precisely the forms which have most fecundity that have made least progress. Some time in the remote past the guinea pig and the dog had a common ancestor. The fecundity of the guinea pig is much greater than that of the dog. Of a given number of guinea pigs born, a much smaller proportion are able to survive in the keen rivalry, so that the limits of selection are wider, and the selection itself more rigid; nevertheless the progress made by the progenitors of the dog since eocene days has been much more marked and rapid than the progress made by the progenitors of the guinea pig in the same time.34
Probably the best way to understand Roosevelt’s thinking on social Darwinism—besides reading “Social Evolution,” which was reprinted as a chapter of his 1897 book American Ideals*—is to study a lecture given by John Burroughs in the 1890s, “The Biological Origin of the Ruling Class.” Fulsomely embracing Darwin as a naturalist, Burroughs believed that the law of the strong overcoming the weak offered a valuable viewing of “the drama of human politics and business.”35 To Burroughs, the fittest usually rose to the top in American life. Undoubtedly evil charlatans sometimes tried to rig the reality. Scum often rose in life’s pond—but on the whole, every generation of Americans produced its heroic natural elite. These winners rode herd on human affairs, directing their course, helping civilizations and societies to survive cataclysms. Whenever truly bad leaders, imposters, reached a pinnacle of power, eventually they would be destroyed by the natural elite. Competition of all kinds, Burroughs went on in his lecture (which was a set piece), should be supported so that the best-and-the-brightest could earn their rightful positions of societal power. As for the poor and disabled, Burroughs believed the natural elite had a moral responsibility to take care of them.36
III
After four days on the train, the Rough Riders arrived in Florida. The unit was assigned to the U.S. transport Yucatan, but the departure date from Tampa Bay kept changing. Roosevelt worried that if the boat didn’t leave soon, his men’s livers weren’t going to withstand all the hiatus booze. The first day was incredibly humid, with a hot, glassy atmosphere and scant wind. Luckily, Edith came down from Oyster Bay for a few days’ reunion at the Hotel Tampa. Anxious for war, Theodore was unperturbed by the omnipresent swarms of chiggers and sand flies. To kill time