The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
We have thus far proceeded on the supposition that the professor
means by the infancy of the savage state the infancy of the race;
we are not sure, after all, that this is precisely his thought,
or that he means anything more than the infancy of a particular
nation or family of nations is the savage state. He, however,
sums up his doctrine in his table of contents, chapter i., of his
_Intellectual Development_, in the proposition: "Individual
man is an emblem of communities, nations, and universal humanity.
They exhibit epochs of life like his, and like him are under the
control of physical conditions, and therefore of law;" that is,
physical or physiological law, for "human physiology" is only a
special department of universal physiology, as we have already
indicated. It would seem from this that the author makes the
savage state, as we have supposed, correspond, in the race, in
universal humanity, as well as in communities, to the epoch of
infancy in the individual. But does he mean to teach that the
race itself has its epoch of infancy, youth, manhood, old age,
and death? He can, perhaps, in a loose sense, predicate these
several epochs of nations and of political or civil communities;
but how can he predicate them all of the race? "Individuals die,
humanity survives," says Seneca; and are we to understand that
the professor means to assert that the race is born like the
individual, passes through childhood, youth, manhood, to old age,
and then dies? Who knows what he means?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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