Evolution and Ethics, and Other EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Philosophy
Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Capital; Ethics, Evolutionary; Salvation Army
[205] The primitive savage, tutored by Istar, appropriated whatever
took his fancy, and killed whomsoever opposed him, if he could. On the
contrary, the ideal of the ethical man is to limit his freedom of
action to a sphere in which he does not interfere with the freedom of
others; he seeks the common weal as much as his own; and, indeed, as
an essential part of his own welfare. Peace is both end and means with
him; and he founds his life on a more or less complete self-restraint,
which is the negation of the unlimited struggle for existence. He
tries to escape from his place in the animal kingdom, founded on the
free development of the principle of non-moral evolution, and to
establish a kingdom of Man, governed upon the principle of moral
evolution. For society not only has a moral end, but in its
perfection, social life, is embodied morality.
But the effort of ethical man to work towards a moral end by no means
abolished, perhaps has hardly modified, the deep-seated organic
impulses which impel the natural man to follow his non-moral course.
One of the most essential conditions, if not the chief cause, of the
struggle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without limit,
which man shares with all living things. It is notable that "increase
and multiply" is a commandment traditionally much older than the ten;
and that it is, perhaps, the only one which has been spontaneously and
ex animo obeyed by [206] the great majority of the human race. But, in
civilized society, the inevitable result of such obedience is the
re-establishment, in all its intensity, of that struggle for
existence--the war of each against all--the mitigation or abolition of
which was the chief end of social organization.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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