A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of EvolutionWilliams, Cora May
Philosophy
A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution
Williams, Cora May
Ethics, Evolutionary
The idea that man and wife together first constitute the complete human
being, and that the real future of this human being lies in the
children--the idea of the family is, certainly, of all ideas,
primordial, though it probably came late to consciousness. From the
family developed the tribe with the eldest at its head. The more
peaceful the tribe, the more others combined against it, and by their
combination compelled it still further to strengthen its resources. The
feeling of power awakened by the growing concord extended further and
further, and finally made its way to the individual with the full force
of the Idea. This development, but more especially the compelling power
of the struggle for existence, soon called the bravest to command in
place of the eldest of the tribe.
It is by the agency of no other being that, in the mutual relation of
physical and mental activity, consciousness is attained; man himself
comes to a feeling of himself. In the being endowed with soul, who on
the one hand attains, through integration, an independence that appears
as the impulse to self-preservation, on the other hand becomes conscious
of this impulse to self-preservation through a centralized nervous
system that raises the part-sensations to feelings of the whole,
sensation divides into two chief functions, which appear as passion and
thought. We are not concerned, in thought and passion, with opposites,
but with an opposition which a single phenomenon develops through
manifold action and reaction with the rest of the world of phenomena.
The distinction is merely a convenience in finer investigations; there
is, in fact, as little thought without emotion as emotion without
thought. And since emotion always manifests itself as will, this highest
opposition is best defined as that of thought and will. In order to
understand the human being, we must analyze these two sides of
consciousness.
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