The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Religion
The Whence and the Whither of Man: A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment; Being the Morse Lectures of 1895
Tyler, John M. (John Mason)
Evolution
From what has just been said man's pre-eminence cannot consist in
any anatomical characteristic, even of the brain--much less of
thumb, forefinger, hand, or foot. But man's mental and moral
characteristics (even though germs of these may be present in the
animal), whether differing in degree or kind from theirs, raise his
life to a totally different plane. He lives in an environment of
which the lower animal is as unconscious and ignorant as we of a
fourth dimension of space. He has the knowledge of abstract truth
and goodness, of certain standards outside of mere appetite and
desire, and feels and acknowledges, however dimly, the requirement
and the ability to conform his life to these standards. He alone can
say "I ought," and answer "I can and will." And hence man alone
actually lives in an environment of the laws of reason,
responsibility, and personality. Whatever germs of these higher
powers the animal possesses are means to material ends, to the
physical life of the animal. In man the long and slow evolution has
ended in revolution, the material and physical have been dethroned,
and truth and goodness reign supreme as ends in themselves.
But, you may object, this definition of man may be true ideally,
certainly it is not true actually. Where are the high ideals of
truth and goodness in the savage? and are these the supreme ends of
even the average American of to-day? But allowing all weight to this
objection, does it not remain true that a being who never says "I
ought," who acknowledges and manifests no responsibility, to whom
goodness does not appeal, and in whom these feelings cannot be
awakened, is either not yet or no longer man? But far more than
this, if the character of the individual is to be judged by his
tendency more than his present condition, by the way in which he is
going more than his momentary position, is not the race to be judged
and defined by a tendency, gradually though very slowly becoming
realized, and a goal, toward which it looks and which it is surely
attaining, rather than by its present realization? As we rise
higher in the animal kingdom the characteristics of the successive
higher groups are more and more slow of attainment and difficult of
realization, just because of their grander possibilities. And this
is true and important above all in the case of man. His
possibilities are beyond our powers of conception, for, if you will,
man is yet only larval man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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