Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical InquiryCurtis, George Ticknor
Religion
Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry
Curtis, George Ticknor
Creation; Evolution
Recollecting, then, what conduct is--namely, the adjustment of acts to
ends--and observing how this adjustment becomes more and more complete
as the organism becomes more developed, we have to note the order of
the ends to which the acts are adjusted. The first end, the first
stage of evolving conduct, is the further prolongation of life. The
next is that adjustment of acts to ends which furthers an increased
amount of life. Thus far the ends are complete individual life. Then
come those adjustments which have for their final purpose the life of
the species. Then there is a third kind of conduct, which results from
the fact that the multitudinous creatures which fill the earth can not
live wholly apart from one another, but are more or less in presence
of one another, are interfered with by one another. No one species can
so act as to secure the greatest amount of life to its individuals
and the preservation of the species--can make a successful adjustment
of its acts to these ends--without interfering with the corresponding
adjustments by other creatures of their acts to their ends. That
some may live, others must die. Finally, when we contemplate those
adjustments of acts to ends which miss completeness, because they can
not be made by one creature without other creatures being prevented
from making them, we reach the thought of adjustments such that each
creature may make them without preventing them from being made by other
creatures. Let me now quote Mr. Spencer's concrete illustrations of
these abstract statements:
"Recognizing men as the beings whose conduct is most evolved, let
us ask under what conditions their conduct, in all three aspects of
its evolution, reaches its limit. Clearly while the lives led are
entirely predatory, as those of savages, the adjustments of acts
to ends fall short of this highest form of conduct in every way.
Individual life, ill carried on from hour to hour, is prematurely
cut short; the fostering of offspring often fails, and is incomplete
when it does not fail; and in so far as the ends of self-maintenance
and race-maintenance are met, they are met by destruction of other
beings, of different kind, or of like kind. In social groups formed
by compounding and recompounding primitive hordes, conduct remains
imperfectly evolved in proportion as there continue antagonisms between
the groups and antagonisms between members of the same group--two
traits necessarily associated; since the nature which prompts
international aggression prompts aggression of individuals on one
another. Hence, the limit of evolution can be reached by conduct only
in permanently peaceful societies. That perfect adjustment of acts
to ends in maintaining individual life and rearing new individuals,
which is effected by each without hindering others from effecting like
perfect adjustments, is, in its very definition, shown to constitute a
kind of conduct that can be approached only as war decreases and dies
out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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