Social Environment and Moral Progress

Before entering on the question of the relation of morality to our existing social environment, it will be advisable to inquire what we mean by moral progress, and what evidence...

Though much of what we term morality has no absolute sanction in human nature, yet it is to some extent, and perhaps very largely, based upon it. It will be well, therefore, to...

I will now call attention to a few of the facts which lead to the conclusion as to the stationary condition of general character from the earliest periods of human history, and...

Accompanying this fine literature and moral teaching in Ancient India was a civilisation equal to that of early classical races, in grand temples, forts and palaces, weapons and...

There is yet another proof that the faculties of mankind at a very early epoch were fully equal to those of our own time. There is perhaps nothing more difficult in its nature,...

If the facts and arguments set forth in the preceding chapters are correct we should not expect to find any living examples of the unspiritualised man, since the assumption is t...

The general result of the facts and arguments now set forth in the merest outline leads us to conclude that there has been no definite advance of morality from age to age, and t...

During the eighteenth century our material civilisation, which had long been almost stationary, began to advance with the growth of the physical sciences, but at first with extr...

The enormous difference between town and country dwellers as regards duration of life and the prevalence of zymotic diseases has been known statistically since the era of regist...

After the terrible national crime of deadly employments it is almost an anti-climax to enumerate the vast mass of dishonesty and falsehood that pervades our commercial system in...

When we read about the Turkish or other Eastern law courts, in which direct bribery of every official up to the judge himself is a regular feature, we are horrified, and are apt...

There are in the Reports of the Registrar-General a few statistics of special importance because they clearly point to certain kinds of moral degradation which have been increas...

While writing the present volume I was led to refer to it during some of the numerous interviews on the occasion of my recent birthday. This led to some misrepresentation of my...

The theory of natural selection as expounded by Darwin was so completely successful in explaining the origin of the almost infinitely varied forms of the organic world, step by...

In dealing with the great problems of organic development there is probably no department in which so much error and misconception prevails as on the nature and limitations of H...

Many readers, and some writers of books on organic evolution, seem quite unaware that Darwin established two modes of selection, both alike "natural" but acting in different way...

In Chapters VIII to XII of this volume I have given in briefest outline a summary of the growth during the nineteenth century of the actual social environment in the midst of wh...