And again: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one.”[16] “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having
risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the
organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having
been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher
destiny in the distant future.”[17] “In the future I see open fields
for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on
newly laid down foundations; that of the necessary acquirement of each
mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on
the origin of man and his history.”[18]
Again elsewhere: “The moral sense or conscience, as Mackintosh remarks,
has a rightful supremacy over every other principle of human action.
It is summed up in that short but imperious word _ought_,” and Darwin
proceeds to quote Kant’s apostrophe as follows: “Duty! wondrous
thought, that workest neither by fond insinuation, flattery, nor by
any threat, but merely by holding up thy naked law in the soul, and so
extorting for thyself always reverence, if not always obedience; before
whom all appetites are dumb, however secretly they rebel. Duty! whence
thy original?”[19]
Darwin continues: “This great question, ‘Whence thy origin?’ has been
discussed by many writers of consummate ability; and my sole excuse for
touching on it is ... that, as far as I know, no one has approached it
exclusively from the side of natural history.”[20]
“But as the feelings of love and sympathy and the power of self-command
become strengthened by habit, and as the power of reasoning becomes
clearer, so that man can appreciate the justice of the judgments
of his fellow-men, he will feel himself impelled, independently of
any pleasure or pain felt at the moment, to risk his life for his
fellow-creature, or to sacrifice himself for any great cause. He
may then say, I am the supreme judge of my own conduct, and, in the
words of Kant, I will not in my own person violate the dignity of
humanity.”[21]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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