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
And further, of the genesis of this Human Soul: "With the growth of the
higher centres, the capacities of action become so various and
indeterminate that definite direction is not given to them until after
birth." By the increase of cerebral surface, infancy, which is the
period of plasticity, is prolonged, Man becomes teachable, and though
inherited tendencies and aptitudes still form the foundations of
character, yet the career of the individual is no longer wholly
predetermined by the careers of its ancestors, but individual experience
comes to count as an enormous factor in modifying the career of mankind
from generation to generation.
The psychical development of humanity since its earlier stages has been
largely due to the reaction of individuals upon one another in those
various relations which we characterize as social.
Foreshadowings of social relations occur in the animal world.
Rudimentary moral sentiments are also clearly discernible in the highest
members of various mammalian orders and in all but the lowest members of
our own order. But in respect of definiteness and permanence, the
relations between animals in a state of gregariousness fall far short of
the relations between individuals in the rudest human society. The
primordial unit of human society is the family, the establishment of
which was made necessary and took place through the lengthening of
infancy. When childhood had come to extend over a period of ten or a
dozen years, a period which would have been doubled where several
children were born in succession to the same parents, the relationships
between father and mother, brothers and sisters, must have become firmly
knit; thus the family came into existence, and the way was opened for
the growth of sympathies and ethical feelings. The rudimentary form of
the ethical feelings was that of the transient affection of a female
bird or mammal for its young. First given a definite direction through
the genesis of the primitive human family, the development of altruism
has yet scarcely kept pace with the general development of intelligence;
the advance of civilized man in justice and kindness has been less
marked than his advance in quick intelligence. But the creative energy
which has been thus at work through the bygone eternity is not going to
become quiescent to-morrow; the psychical development of man is
destined to go on in the future as it has in the past. And from the
"Origin of Man," when thoroughly comprehended, we may catch some
glimpses of his destiny.
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