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
Now it is led to undertake, so to speak, the work of a sense-organ
of a higher grade. It begins to directly see invisible relations
just as truly as through the eye it has perceived light. First
perhaps it perceives that certain perceptions and experiences,
agreeable or disagreeable, occur in a certain sequence. It begins to
associate these. It learns thus to recognize the premonitory
symptoms of nature's favor or disfavor, and thus gains food or
avoids dangers. The bee learns to associate accessible nectar with a
certain spot on the flower marked by bright dots or lines,
"honey-guides," and the chimpanzee that when a hen cackles there is
an egg in the nest. But association is only the first lesson;
inference and understanding follow.
The child at kindergarten receives a few blocks. It admires and
plays with them. Then it is taught to notice their form. After a
time it arranges them in groups and learns the first elements of
number. But when it has advanced to higher mathematics, the blocks,
or figures on the blackboard, become only symbols or means of
illustrating the great theorems and propositions of that science.
Thus the animal has begun in the kindergarten way to dimly perceive
that there are real, though intangible and invisible, relations
between objects. But what is all human science but the clearer
vision, and farther search into, and tracing of these same
relations? And what is all advance of knowledge but a perception of
ever subtler relations? What is even the knowledge of right but the
perception of the subtlest and deepest and widest relations of man
to his environment? The animal seems to be steadily advancing along
the path toward the perception of abstract truth, though man alone
really attains it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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