Darwinism and Politics: With Two Additional Essays on Human Evolution |
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Darwinism and Politics: With Two Additional Essays on Human Evolution David George Ritchie No preview available - 2018 |
Darwinism and Politics: With Two Additional Essays on Human Evolution ... David George Ritchie No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
admits advance advantage ancient applied argument beneficent better biological brain capable cause Charles Darwin civilisation competition complex consciousness constitution creed customs Darwin Darwinian Descent doctrine of heredity economic struggle eminence English equality essay ethics evolution theory evolutionist explain fact favour fittest formulæ Francis Galton Galton German Grant Allen habits Herbert Spencer Hereditary Genius higher human society ideas imitation individual influence inherited institutions intellectual J. S. Mill labour laissez faire Lamarckian language laws less Lord Brougham lower animals means ment merely metaphysical moral nation natural selection objection opinion Origin of Species peerage phrase physical political present primitive principle Professor Huxley race recognised Reich religion Roman Roman law savage says scientific seems sense sexual selection social evolution Sparta species spontaneous variation State-action Strauss struggle for existence success suggested survival tendency theory of natural tion transmitted tribe Wallace women
Popular passages
Page 7 - Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection...
Page 6 - Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his rapid multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise he would sink into indolence, and the more gifted men would not be more successful in the battle of life than the less gifted.
Page 20 - ... families, and especially among the less conspicuous officers of the army. Modern leading men in all paths of eminence, as may easily be seen in a collection of photographs, are of a coarser and more robust breed ; less excitable and dashing, but endowed with far more ruggedness and real vigor.
Page 51 - I believe, and shall do my best to show, that, if the "eminent" men of any period had been changelings when babies, a very fair proportion of those who survived and retained their health up to fifty years of age, would, notwithstanding their altered circumstances have equally risen to eminence.
Page 24 - ... shaped by the ethical man - the member of society or citizen necessarily runs counter to that which the non-ethical man - the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of the animal kingdom - tends to adopt. The latter fights out the struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal; the former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the struggle...
Page 5 - I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.