Parallel Paths: A Study in Biology, Ethics, and Art

The third chapter of Tolstoy’s book, What is Art? contains a summary of the opinions of some sixty modern writers (taken chiefly from Schasler’s Kritische Geschichte der Aesthet...

The problem set at the close of our first chapter was to find a fit explanation of the guiding power apparent in natural phenomena. We have not been able to interpret this guidi...

There is, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, a question lying at the root of all ethics, a question which must be “definitely raised and answered before entering on any ethical d...

Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me. * * * * * “Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me, My embryo has...

Ethical philosophy centres on two main points—the ethical criterion and the ethical sanction. We have to ask ourselves, What kind of life ought I to live, and secondly, Why ough...

“Quelle est donc cette nature sujette à être effacée? La coutume est une seconde nature qui detruit la première. Pourquoi la coutume n’est elle pas naturelle? J’ai bien peur que...

“In the end,” writes M. Edmond Perrier, “every imaginable theory of evolution must lead up to one or other of two absolute doctrines, essentially antagonistic to each other. Eit...

The view of the meaning and purpose of cosmic development set forth in the preceding chapters must clearly have a bearing on the principles of human conduct. Men above a certain...

Paley’s Natural Theology though not by any means an epoch-making may perhaps be called an epoch-marking book. It was the crown of the endeavour of eighteenth-century religious p...

It has long been known that no definite line of demarcation can be drawn between the animal and the vegetable worlds. There are lowly organisms which cannot be decisively referr...

“When we look backwards, every phase in the process of development seems to us to have proceeded in a strictly causal manner from physico-chemical processes. But when we turn to...