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
These phenomena of the preparation of the human being for civilization
and morality can be explained only on the supposition of a superior
intelligence which has guided man's development in a definite direction,
just as man guides the development of many animal forms. By a superior
intelligence is not necessarily meant the supreme intelligence. The
modern cultivated mind seems incapable of realizing between it and the
Deity other grades of intelligence, which the law of Continuity would,
however, force us to infer: and rejecting first causes for any and every
especial effect in the universe, except in the sense that the action of
any intelligent being is a first cause, we can still conceive that the
development of the essentially human portions of man's structure may
have been, in this sense, "determined by the directing influence of some
higher intelligent beings acting through natural and universal
laws."[27] "It is probable that the true law of this development lies
too deep for our discovery." Wallace quotes, in support of his theory,
some of Professor Tyndall's much-disputed statements,--to the effect
that the chasm between the phenomena of mind and those of brain is
impassable. "To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or
of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no
clear conception. You cannot have in the whole what does not exist in
any of the parts;[28] and those who argue thus should put forth a
precise definition of matter with clearly enumerated properties, and
show that the necessary result of a certain complex arrangement of the
elements or atoms of that matter will be the production of
self-consciousness. There is no escape from the dilemma,--either all
matter is conscious, or consciousness is[29] something distinct from
matter, and in the latter case its presence in material forms is a proof
of the existence of conscious beings outside of, and independent of,
what we term matter.
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