CHAPTER X 



ETHICS AND ALTRUISM 



Continued 



THE GREAT MOVEMENT. The universe is in- 

 finite. The human intellect is incapable of 

 penetrating to the infinity of it, or to see be- 

 hind it. The laws of it, as far as man has yet 

 learned them, teach him that they never change, and that 

 the flow of duration cannot be altered by any power, 

 but that a rhythmic evolution is the power producing 

 those manifestations which the limited intellect of man 

 can see. 



Evolution applies its great method of development, 

 natural selection or the survival of the fittest, to every 

 change in organic life, from that of an amoeba to man, 

 including the change of man's condition from a soli- 

 tary roamer of the forest to his social status, as the 

 citizen of a great civilized community. It applies equally 

 to the changes, now going on in man's brain. 



All social evolution depends, of course, as already 

 stated, on the combining of men in social communities; 

 that is, men acting upon each other in a social capacity. 

 The intellectual, and moral character of a community, 

 is the aggregate of that of the individuals composing 

 it. Whatever is done thus, is done, of course, by the 

 action of the individual members. The savagery, bar- 

 barism, or civilization characterizing it, is said, by some 

 writers, to be created by the reason of the aggregate 

 men composing it. But if this reason is the result of 

 biological evolution in the individual, and is limited to 

 organic adaptation to the inorganic, by the neural and 

 anatomical structure of the members of the community, 



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