Creeds of the Day, or Collated Opinions of Reputable Thinkers (Volume 2); In Three Series of Letters (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER XII. Is man's Mental and Moral nature a product of natural selection ? In the concluding series of these Letters, matter will be introduced which fundamentally touches the question now beforo us. Hitherto, throughout the whole discussion upon Teleology, we have ignored every point of view save the realistic, and have accepted this provisionally as our own. Consistently with the same method, we may continue to adopt (since Darwin does so) the realistic doctrine that the inner relations, which constitute intelligence, are products of the outer relations, which include both the organism and its environment. In other words, we adopt (but only to enable us to discuss the subject at all) the vulgar notion of dualism, which elsewhere we shall have to condemn. The form and the strength of the evolutionist's argument is this: The mind of man is as his brain; his brain has been gradually developed from lower structures; therefore his mind is evolved like, or from, lower minds. Darwin's first aim is to show that " there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties." His well-chosen instances would (from his point of view) almost suffice to confirm this proposition. No observer of the higher animals could entertain a contrary opinion, unless his judgment were strongly biassed by conflicting notions. Great as the gap is between man and ape, it is not so great as that between ape and fish. Nothing, therefore, is to be gained by pointing atbroken continuity, unless the breach be demonstrably between different kinds. Taking the intellectual faculties of man, the disputed ones are: his sense of beauty and enjoyment of artistic arrangements of form and colour; his self-consciousness, or sense of individuality; his powers of abstract...