The Ethical Import of DarwinismC. Scribner's Sons, 1903 - 264 pages |
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accumulation action ancestors Aristotle Aryan assumption biology brothers cause conception conduct consanguine family conscience consciousness constitution Darwin Darwinian deductive derivative descendants descriptive ethics doctrine domestic ence endogamous ethical science European cuckoo evolution evolutionary ethics evolutionary science evolutionism evolutionists exogamy explain fact faculty female fittest forms guine family habit hedonism human hypothesis imply impulse individual intelligence Kant kinship logic lower animals Malayan system man's mankind marriage mathematics McLennan mechanical philosophy mechanism mental metaphysics mind modifications moral law moral phenomena moral sense natural selection non-moral object observation organic origin of species philosophy physical ethics pleasure polyandry polygyny practice present preserved primitive principles produce question reason recognized regard relations remorse savage selective breeding simian social instincts Spencer struggle for existence supposed survival system of consanguinity teleology theory tion tive tribes Turanian system ultimate universal utilitarianism utility variations virtue wife-stealing wives
Popular passages
Page 207 - Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise of all things common else. By thee adulterous lust was driven from men Among the bestial herds to range, by thee Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother first were known.
Page 86 - On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest...
Page 89 - I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good : Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Page 65 - Thus, whatever system of organs be studied, the comparison of their modifications in the ape series leads to one and the same result — that the structural differences which separate Man from the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee are not so great as those which separate the Gorilla from the lower apes.
Page 117 - ... any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.
Page 10 - I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action as might place morality amongst the sciences capable of demonstration: wherein I doubt not but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences as incontestable as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out to anyone that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences.
Page 216 - Therefore, looking far enough back in the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men.
Page 64 - Therefore, on the principle of natural selection with divergence of character, it does not seem incredible that, from some such low and intermediate form, both animals and plants may have been developed; and, if we admit this, we must likewise admit that all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth may be descended from some one primordial form.
Page 55 - ... that which enables the agriculturist not only to modify the character of his flock, but to change it altogether. It is the magician's wand, by means of which he may summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases.
Page 60 - Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence — either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life.