The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
that man’s material organism is the cumulative result of long
evolution proclaim that human mind, the immaterial concomitant of
the material organism, is also the cumulative result of long
evolution.
We might just as well recognise facts first as last, for they will
have to be recognised some time. Truths are not put down by
inhospitality—they are simply put off. The universe has a policy,
a program. We may close our eyes to the facts around us, hoping in
this way to compel them to pass away or be forgotten. But they do
not pass away, nor will they be forgotten. They simply become
invisible. They will live on and present themselves to other minds
or ages or climes more hospitable or honest than our own. The only
proper attitude of mind to assume toward the various doctrines
existing among men is the attitude of perfect willingness to believe
_anything_—anything that appeals to us as being reasonable and
right. The great majority of men, however, are intellectual
solids—unable to move and unwilling to think. They have certain
beliefs _to which they are determined to hold on_, and everything
that does not fit in with these beliefs is rejected as a matter of
course.
II. Evidences of Psychical Evolution.
That mind has evolved, and that there is a psychical kinship, an
actual consanguinity of feelings and ideas, among all the forms of
animal life is proved incontestably by the following facts:
1. The evolution of mind is implied by the fact of the evolution of
structures. ‘I hold,’ says Romanes, in the introduction to his
great work on ‘Mental Evolution,’ ‘that, if the doctrine of
organic evolution is accepted, it carries with it, as a necessary
corollary, the doctrine of mental evolution.’ It makes no
difference what theory we adopt regarding the essential natures of
the physical and the psychical—whether we agree with the
materialist that mind is an attribute of matter, with the idealist
that matter is a creation of mind, with the monist that mind and
body are only different aspects of the same central entity, or with
the dualist that body and soul are two distinct but temporarily
dependent existences—we must in any case recognise the fact, which
is perceived by all, that there is an ever-faithful parallel between
the neural and psychical phenomena of every organism. And if the
elements which enter into and make up the physical structure of man
have been derived from, and determined by, preceding forms of life,
the elements which enter into and make up the psychical counterpart
of the physical have also, without any doubt, been inherited from,
and determined by, ancestral life forms.
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