The Destiny of Man: Viewed in the Light of His OriginHoughton, Mifflin, 1884 - 121 pages |
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ages aimless series animal world apes Atheism become began brain brute career catarrhine centres cere cerebral physiology cerebral surface cerebrum and cerebellum chief Comparative Mythology completed after birth consciousness Copernican astronomy COSMIC PHILOSOPHY countless creases creation creative energy Crown 8vo Darwinian theory Darwinism DESTINY difference in kind Divine doctrine of evolution doubtless earth elimination of strife enlarged Essays fact forms furrows gilt top goes gone gradually half-human higher creature highest history of creation human increase individual industrial civiliza industrial civilization intelligence JOHN FISKE lowest mammals man's mankind Marsupials mastodon ment method Miocene modern molecular moral movements natural selection ness optic lobes origin original sin pathies period of infancy philosophy physical variations planet political aggregates primeval process of evolution progress question race reflex action rudimentary scientific sense social soul species spiritual teachableness things tion truths universe vertebrate Victor Hugo warfare whole wonderful
Popular passages
Page 119 - The future is lighted for us with the radiant colors of hope. Strife and sorrow shall disappear. Peace and love shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge...
Page 110 - The materialistic assumption that the life of the soul ends with the life of the body is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless assumption that is known to the history of philosophy.
Page 42 - The Platonic view of the soul, as a spiritual substance, an effluence from Godhood, which under certain conditions becomes incarnated in perishable forms of matter, is doubtless the view most consonant with the present state of our knowledge.
Page 118 - Only on some such view can the reasonableness of the universe, which still remains far above our finite power of comprehension, maintain its ground. There are some minds inaccessible to the class of considerations here alleged, and perhaps there always will be. But on such grounds, if on no other, the faith in immortality is likely to be shared by all who look upon the genesis of the highest spiritual qualities in man as the goal of nature's creative work. This view has survived the Copernican revolution...
Page 60 - Vision and manipulation, — these, in their countless indirect and transfigured forms, are the two cooperating factors in all intellectual progress." — John Fiske. Relative length Scatter sticks of different lengths on a table. Use one as a standard. Pupils select longer and shorter, and state what they have selected. After pupil selects a stick and expresses his opinion, let him compare the sticks by placing them together. This will aid...
Page 23 - Reckless of good and evil, it brings forth at once the mother's tender love for her infant and the horrible teeth of the ravening shark, and to its creative indifference the one is as good as the other.
Page 115 - The more thoroughly we comprehend that process of evolution by which things have come to be what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in man is to rob the whole process of meaning.
Page 38 - ... nearly or quite unattended by consciousness. The psychical life of the lowest animals consists of a few simple acts directed toward the securing of food and the avoidance of danger, and these acts we are in the habit of classing as instinctive. They are so simple, so few, and so often repeated, that the tendency to perform them is completely organized in the nervous system before birth. The animal takes care of himself as soon as he begins to live. He has nothing to learn, and his career is a...