EDUCATION AND MEDICAL ADVANCEMENT AS 

 PRECLUDING ANY FURTHER MENTAL AND 

 PHYSICAL EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN 

 RACE 



By Joseph Hershey Bair 



An efficient treatment of almost any aspect of modern thought or 

 method is necessarily opened by a statement of the salient points in its 

 development. This is especially true when the discussion implies some 

 phase of life or mind. The evolutionary spirit is at large, and we cannot 

 escape the air we breathe. It is the modern Zeitgeist that everything 

 must be understood in the light of the setting in which it was produced 

 historically. Explanation implies tracing a thing back through a series 

 of causes, as far as possible, toward an ultimate source. From the 

 standpoint of the theory of evolution, thinking, both in content and 

 method, from the view of the empirical data and of the logical processes 

 involved is essentially different from that of any preceding age. This 

 statement seems a truism, and for verification, therefore needs no further 

 argument. Civilization of mankind, like everything in the organic 

 world, has developed in time and under set conditions, and each stage 

 in this development determines the next. Thought is but the conscious 

 concomitant of civilization, and in view of the subject of this theme it 

 cannot be out of place to sketch in a few brief statements the character- 

 istic changes it has undergone during the last two centuries. Such a 

 sketch will itself, without an argument, betray the nature of the evolution 

 process in thought, and thought is but one aspect of the world process. 



Heir to all that had passed, the nineteenth century began with high 

 philosophical aspirations, but under the inspiration of such men as the 

 Bacons, Newton, and Rousseau whose watchword was, "Return to 

 Nature; get from her first-hand knowledge!" there was a decided turn 

 toward natural science. There came a notorious revolt against the 

 purely subjective methods of the 16th century. The empirical interest 

 passed to the extreme. This objective enthusiasm, however, was less 



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