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
from the moment that the form of his body became stationary, his mind
would become subject to those very influences from which his body had
escaped; every slight variation in his mental and moral nature which
should enable him better to guard against adverse circumstances, and
combine for mutual comfort and protection would be preserved and
accumulated; the better and higher specimens of our race would therefore
increase and spread, the lower and more brutal would give way and
successively die out, and that rapid advancement of mental organization
would occur which has raised the very lowest races of man so far above
the brutes (although differing so little from some of them in physical
structure) and, in conjunction with scarcely perceptible modifications
of form, has developed the wonderful intellect of the European races."
"When the power that had hitherto modified the body had its action
transferred to the mind, then races would advance and become improved,
merely by the harsh discipline of a sterile soil and inclement seasons;
under their influence a hardier, a more provident, and a more social
race would be developed." And especially: "If my conclusions are just,
it must inevitably follow that the higher--the more intellectual and
moral--must displace the lower and more degraded races; and the power of
natural selection, still acting on his mental organization, must ever
lead to a more perfect adaptation of man's higher faculties to the
conditions of surrounding nature and to the exigencies of the social
state. While his external form will probably ever remain unchanged,
except in the development of that perfect beauty which results from a
healthy and well-organized body, refined and ennobled by the highest
intellectual faculties and sympathetic emotions, his mental constitution
may advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single
nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the
noblest specimens of existing humanity.
"Our progress towards such a result is very slow, but it still seems to
be a progress."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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