A Vision of the Future, Based on the Application of Ethical PrinciplesClapperton, Jane Hume
Philosophy
A Vision of the Future, Based on the Application of Ethical Principles
Clapperton, Jane Hume
Ethics, Evolutionary; Social evolution
The passion of jealousy has a long and significant history, and a
pedigree more ancient than the allied sentiment, love of property, which
has just been considered. The passion was useful to the welfare of the
tribe at an early period, but it survives as purely a vice in the midst
of consolidated nations, for it is essentially anti-social, not
necessary to general welfare, and impossible to be exercised
sympathetically or for the good of others. If I am jealous it means that
I have a source of personal delight that I would guard from others and
monopolise if I could. The happiness may be self-produced or rest on a
being whom I love. In both cases it causes within me fears of
interference, suspicion of my fellows, and a general tendency to
dislike, nay, even to hate them if they dare to meddle with my secret
joy. The emotion is fundamentally selfish, and when an individual is
sympathetic all round he becomes incapable of it. He has risen above the
egoistic passion of jealousy.
Mr. Darwin tells us that amongst savages addicted to “intemperance,
utter licentiousness and unnatural crimes, no sooner does marriage,
whether polygamous or monogamous, become common than jealousy leads to
the inculcation of female virtue.” This gives the clue to the problem of
jealousy’s evolutional value. It has played a part in the destiny of
woman, and tended to shape her emotional nature. Its history is
inextricably intertwined with hers, in all the varying degrees of
servitude that mark her slow advance from a condition of absolute
chattelism to one of rational equality with man.
By virtue of superior strength man has acted on the theory that he was
made for God, and woman for him! and in the process of establishing his
dominancy jealousy appeared and aided powerfully the gradual development
of a new emotion—constancy, a social grace and virtue as certain to wax
and grow as jealousy is to wane and slowly disappear.
In literature one finds a reflection of the entire history of jealousy
and all its consecutive changes from barbarous times through the ages,
when frequent duels witnessed to the honourable place it held in public
estimation down to the present day, when it is somewhat discredited, and
duelling—in Great Britain at least—has ceased altogether. To track this
history were impossible here; I can only point to one or two significant
pictures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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