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Humanity to animals -- |
TadFromPoland
(53/M/Poznań, Poland)
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5/24/01 5:38 am |
some secrets of its hard development
The
message "Fw: Odp: Re: Odp: Domeny.com - Nie b±dĽcie
obojętni na BESTIALSTWO! SOS!", which Andromeda e-mailed
yesterday to my daughter incited me to quote the following
fragment of the well-known great book.
[...] As man
advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into
larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each
individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and
sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though
personally unknown to him. This point being once reached,
there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his
sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.
If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great
differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately
shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our
fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is,
humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the
latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by
savages, except towards their pets. How little the old
Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent
gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as
I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of
the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with
which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from
our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely
diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings.
As soon as this virtue is honoured and practiced by
some few men, it spreads through instruction and
example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated
in public opinion. [...]
Finally the social
instincts, which no doubt were acquired by man as by the
lower animals for the good of the community, will from
the first have given to him some wish to aid his
fellows, some feeling of sympathy, and have compelled him
to regard their approbation and disapprobation. Such
impulses will have served him at a very early period as a
rude rule of right and wrong. But as man gradually
advanced in intellectual power, and was enabled to trace
the more remote consequences of his actions; as he
acquired sufficient knowledge to reject baneful customs
and superstitions; as he regarded more and more, not
only the welfare, but the happiness of his fellow-men;
as from habit, following on beneficial experience,
instruction and example, his sympathies became more tender
and widely diffused, extending to men of all races,
to the imbecile, maimed, and other useless members
of society, and finally to the lower animals,- so
would the standard of his morality rise higher and
higher. And it is admitted by moralists of the derivative
school and by some intuitionists, that the standard of
morality has risen since an early period in the history of
man. [...]
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin --
http://www.literature.org./Works/Charles-Darwin/descent/chapter-04.html
By the way, I hope that the above text will convince
some people that Charles Darwin's "natural selection"
correctly applied to the explanation of how animals behave
has nothing to do with Herbert Spencer's "survival of
the fittest" falsely applied to the explanation of
how the type Homo sapiens sapiens behaves.
Tad
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