Darwinism, and Other Essays |
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Page 170 - To do good to others ; to sacrifice for their benefit your own wishes ; to love your neighbour as yourself; to forgive your enemies; to restrain your passions; to honour your parents; to respect those who are set over you : these, and a few others, are the sole essentials of morals; but they have been known for thousands of years, and not one jot or tittle has been added to them by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books which moralists and theologians have been able to produce.
Page 152 - Whatever the moral and intellectual progress of men may be, it resolves itself not into a progress of natural capacity, but into a progress, if I may so say, of opportunity; that is, an improvement in the circumstances under which that capacity after birth comes into play. Here, then, lies the gist of the whole matter. The progress is one, not of internal power, but of external advantage.
Page 227 - ... by perpetual incursions of Tataric tribes preventing the growth of anything like nationality. Under some circumstances the pressure exerted by a totally alien enemy might serve as a stimulus to national consolidation. But here the various races were too recently brought together, and the pressure of barbaric attack was so great as to keep society disorganized. The races of the Danube are accordingly still so heterogeneous that it is worth while to point out their various affinities and give some...
Page 158 - ... but how many instances there are of such qualities not being hereditary. Until something of this sort is attempted, we can know nothing about the matter inductively ; while until physiology and chemistry are much more advanced, we can know nothing about it deductively. These considerations ought to prevent us from receiving statements (Taylor's Medical Jurisprudence, pp.
Page 166 - But the emotions are as much a part of us as the understanding ; they are as truthful ; they are as likely to be right. Though their view is different, it is not capricious. They obey fixed laws ; they follow an orderly and uniform course ; they run in sequences; they have their logic and method of inference.
Page 252 - It also finds excuse in its alleged power of communicating the wisdom of past ages. The grand depositories of human knowledge are not the ancient but the modern tongues. Few are the facts worth knowing that are to be exclusively obtained by a knowledge of Latin and Greek...
Page 280 - Seeley has graphically described the results of the system at Cambridge. The object of the tripos examinations being to distinguish accurately the merit of the students, it follows that those subjects in which attainments can be tested with precision take precedence of subjects in which they cannot. These latter subjects, " however important they may be, gradually cease to be valued, or taught, or learned, while the former come into repute, and acquire an artificial value. This cannot take place...
Page 134 - Among the direct successors of Hume, the writer who has best stated and defended Comte's fundamental doctrine is Dr. Thomas Brown. The doctrine and spirit of Brown's Philosophy are entirely Positivist, and no better introduction to Positivism than the early part of his Lectures has yet been produced.
Page 5 - An atheistic metaphysics may imagine such a "pull," and may interpret it as the action of something that is not Deity, but such a conclusion can find no support in the scientific theorem, which is simply a generalized description of phenomena. The general considerations upon which the belief in the existence and direct action of Deity is otherwise founded are in no wise disturbed by the establishment of any such scientific theorem. We are still perfectly free to maintain that it is the direct action...