The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
The emotion variously known as shame, regret, repentance, and
remorse, is not common among the non-human races. It is found
sometimes in dogs and monkeys, and especially in educated
anthropoids. But this emotion is exceedingly rare among savages, and
is not at all universal even among civilised societies of men. Some
animals manifest self-restraint, which is an exceedingly elite
quality of mind, and one not so common as it might be even among the
higher breeds of mankind. By restraint is meant the inhibition of a
desire or instinct in the presence of circumstances tending to
render the desire or instinct active—and this is obedience, and
the beginning of morality. A dog that will not chase a hare in the
presence of his master may do so in his absence. I taught my
guinea-pigs to abstain from certain food in their presence which
they wanted very much, and which they would have eaten if they had
not been educated to let it alone. Sympathy is the most beautiful of
all terrestrial emotions. It is manifested, sometimes to an
exceedingly touching degree, by all the highest races of animals. No
other instances than those already given can be mentioned here. It
is sufficient to say that the difference between the savage—whose
sympathies are so feeble that he has been known to knock his own
child’s brains out for dropping a basket, and who puts his aged
parents to death in order to avoid the burden of maintaining them,
and whose sympathies seldom extend beyond his family or tribe—and
civilised men and women, who feel actual pain when in the presence
of those who suffer, and whose sympathies sometimes include all
sentient creation, is much greater than that between the savage and
many nonhuman animals. The frail, narrow, fantastic character of
human sympathy is the most mournful fact in human nature. ‘Man’s
inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,’ and his
inhumanity to not-men makes the planet a ball of pain and terror.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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