The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
Men and other animals _vary_ in their natures and mental faculties
quite as much as they do in colour, size, and shape. It is commonly
supposed that the mental and temperamental variety existing among
individual men does not exist among individual birds, quadrupeds,
insects, etc. But a little observation or reflection ought to be
enough to convince anyone that such a supposition belongs to that
batch of pre-Darwinian mistakes presented to us by an over-generous
past. We are _not acquainted_ with the inhabitants of our fields and
barn-yards. We are almost as ignorant of the mental life and
personality of these door-yard neighbours and friends of ours as we
would be if they were the inhabitants of another continent. That is
why our obtuse minds lump them together so indiscriminately—we do
not know anything about them. We never take the trouble, or think it
worth while, to get acquainted with them, much less to study and
know them. We have grown up in the falsehood that they are
altogether different from what we are, and that it is really not
worth while to bother our gigantic heads about them, except to use
them when it comes handy, or kick them to one side, or execute them,
when they get in the way. Everybody else looks at the matter in
about the same way, so we just let it go at that.
There is a sameness about foreigners and other classes of _human_
beings with whom we are but slightly, or not at all, acquainted,
until we come to know them and can discriminate one from another. I
remember once asking my sister, if her baby, which looked to me like
all other babies I had ever seen, were mixed up with a lot of other
babies of about the same age, whether she could pick hers out from
all the rest, and she gave me an unmistakable affirmative by
answering, ‘What a foolish question!’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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