Homo

“ We know that homo sapiens—because of his free choice, so to speak—uses, on an average, not more than a tenth of his mental ability. All right. These people have created, to all intents and purposes, a man. ”

“ The author endeavoured to co-ordinate a large amount of miscellaneous matter, and to frame a general theory regarding the origin and prevalence of homosexual passions. ”

“ Thus, if the definition of a human being be this, "a being, corporeal, animated, rational, shaped so and so," the definition of humanity will be corporeity and animal life, combined with rationality, and with such and such a shape.
When, on the other hand, the abstract name does not express a complication of attributes, but a single attribute, we must remember that every attribute is grounded on some fact or phenomenon, from which, and which alone, it derives its meaning. ”

“ I should rejoin—But they had, pre-eminently above all ancient races which we know, the scientific instinct; the teachableness and modesty; the clear eye and quick ear; the hearty reverence for fact and nature, and for the human body, and mind, and spirit; for human nature in a word, in its completeness, as the highest fact upon this earth. ”

“ Page ix INTRODUCTION Human traits and civilization. Throughout the long enterprise of civilization in which mankind have more or less consciously changed the world they found into one more in conformity with their desires, two factors have remained constant: (1) the physical order of the universe, which we commonly call Nature, and (2) the native biological equipment of man, commonly known as human nature. Both of these, we are almost unanimously assured by modern science, have remained essentially the same from the dawn of history to the present. ”

“ If we regard the human subject, in the ordinary psychological way, as a being whose conscious life runs parallel with the highest physical processes of his organism, we get a view of the relation between the intellect and the will which is far more just, at once to the natural history of the mind, and to the deeper meaning of the inner life of our consciousness. View man as a natural being, and you find him adjusting himself to his environment, acting, as they say, in response to stimuli. ”

“ How can he ever form any fitting conception of the glory of life—of the means by which animal and vegetable organisms first grew and flourished? How can he frame to himself any reasonable picture of civilised society, or of the origin and development of human faculty and human organisation? ”

“ Your fine-spun hypotheses, concerning the origin of the human soul, [3] its nature and the mode of its existence subsequent to. physical dissolution, are too meager and unsound,—aye! void as is a vacuum of substance and solidity; nor with all your loudly trumpeted knowledge of the state and status of the soul after its departure from the barbarisms of earthly life, to the true social state in realms where civilization is first truly known, have ye much else than the faintest glimmering of the great reality. Philosophers! ”

“ Thus this ground-scheme of human consciousness, which formed the first result of the psychological investigation of our own selves, meets us here also on a grander scale as a part of the world’s history, and in the large dimensions of successive ages and centuries, as the first striking result in the history of man’s civilization during the twenty-five centuries which, as lying nearest to our own times, we are best acquainted with. ”

“ These were facts of Nature, of Man as a part of it, of man's nature, habits, history, thoughts, conduct, and social relations,—in fact, all that pertains to the phenomena of Nature and Human Life and Relations. ”

“ When I employ this term, which is established by custom, it is with the understanding that I strictly confine myself within the limits imposed upon anyone who intends to be exclusively faithful to science, experiment and observation. I consider the human principle as the Unknown Cause of exclusively human phenomena. ”

“ I said, "physical and spiritual; the one sustained by the other, the spiritual emanating from the Source of Life, pervading all living forms, affording to each the degree of individuality and of intelligence needful to it, but in none forming an individual entity apart from the race, save in Man himself; and in Man forming the individual being, whereof the flesh is but the clothing and the instrument." ”

“ Now, the men of your guild secrete materials which do for society at large what the thyroid gland does for the individual. The Humanities are the hormones. Our [pg 27] friend Mr. P. S. Allen read before this Association a most suggestive paper on the historical evolution of the word "Humanism." I like to think of the pleasant-flavoured word as embracing all the knowledge of the ancient classical world—what man knew of nature as well as what he knew of himself. Let us see what this university means by the Literæ Humaniores. The "Greats" papers for the past decade make interesting study. ”

“ The general truth disclosed by the study of evolving conduct, sub-human and human, that for the better preservation of life the primitive, simple, presentative feelings must be controlled by the later-evolved, compound, and representative feelings, has thus come, in the course of civilization, to be recognized by men ”

“ For these simple definitions and especially that of Humanity will profoundly transform the whole conception of human life in every field of interest and activity; and, what is more important than all, the definition of Man will give us a starting point for discovering the natural laws of human nature—of the human class of life. ”

“ The scope of this closing volume includes a sketch of an idealistic Theory of Human Knowledge, an outline of a Philosophy of Nature, a doctrine about the Self, a discussion of the origin and destiny of the Human Individual, a summary consideration of the world as a Moral Order, a study of the Problem of Evil, and, finally, an estimate of all these views in the light of what seem to me to be the interests of Natural Religion. ”

“ It seems, then, that Nature has pointed out a mixt kind of Life as most suitable to human Race, and secretly admonish'd them to allow none of these Byasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other Occupations and Entertainments. ”

“ If the understanding is a part of the human soul and this soul an evident and positive part of the universal life, then, clearly, everything partaking of this life, such as pieces of wood and stones scattered around, is related to this soul. Individual human souls, national souls, animal souls, pieces of wood, lumps of stone, world bodies, are all children of the same common universal nature. ”

“ Let us, then, good humouredly consult reason, avail ourselves of experience, interrogate nature; we shall, perhaps, find what is requisite to be done, in order to labour efficaciously to the happiness of the human race. ”

“ It now remains for me to examine the effect of those other physical agents to which I have given the collective name of Aspects of Nature, and which will be found suggestive of some very wide and comprehensive inquiries into the influence exercised by the external world in predisposing men to certain habits of thought, and thus giving a particular tone to religion, arts, literature, and, in a word, to all the principal manifestations of the human mind. ”

“ But just as an individual is a higher being, a fuller, more truly human creature, when he has got so far removed from the merely animal existence as to realise that there are such problems and mysteries, so also the humanisation of the race, the development of its noblest peoples and its noblest literatures, have been conditioned by the successive visions of these mysteries in more and more complex organisation by the great philosophers and poets and preachers. ”

“ All the objects, the social, intellectual, and moral forces which compose man's environment, are the provisions of infinite love and wisdom for the development of human beings. They are the instrumental means which the Lord employs to effect the purposes of His love. ”

“ All along, in the course of this discussion, I have from time to time shown that there are certain limitations to the application of the doctrines and methods of biology to sociology, and that in every case such limitation is the result of the introduction of some new principle characteristic of humanity as distinguished from animality, of reason as distinguished from instinct, of spirit as distinguished from matter. ”

“ There is a general course of nature in human actions, as well as in the operations of the sun and the climate. There are also characters peculiar to different nations and particular persons, as well as common to mankind. The knowledge of these characters is founded on the observation of an uniformity in the actions, that flow from them; and this uniformity forms the very essence of necessity. ”

“ Let us name the higher and the purer one, the spirit of the soul; and call the other, the spirit of the flesh; for both are distinct from mere intellect, which each uses as an agent, as each gains the ascendancy, or appeals to as a judge when the struggle is nearly equal. It is upon this struggle between these two principles that turns the greater part of each man's moral history. ”

“ But even amid the mass of unwarranted assumptions and erroneous explanations contained in the later books, the topics discussed—such as the relation of the mind to the body, the mode by which sensible impressions are conveyed to the mind, the processes by which our globe assumed its present form, the origin of life, the evolution of humanity from its lowest to its higher stages of development, the origin of spiritual beliefs, of the humaner sentiments, of language, etc.—possess the interest of being kindred to those on which speculative activity is most employed in the present day. ”

“ The second series I intend first to devote to the application of our fundamental conceptions to the more special problems of the nature of the human Ego, the meaning of the finite realm called the Physical World, and the interpretation of Evolution. ”

“ Thus have we endeavoured to pre-figure the whole Earthly Life of Man by a comprehension of its purpose;—to perceive why our Race had to begin its Existence here, and by this means to describe the whole present Life of humankind:—this is what we wished to do,—it was our first task. ”

“ Man is studied under every conceivable aspect—physical, mental, moral, political, social, religious—by writers upon anthropology; and the term, in fact, is one of those collective names, of which zoology, biology, physiography, are other examples, comprehending a multitude of minor sciences. ”

“ Modern science has made great strides in revealing and describing all sorts of reasons for such emotional experience and behavior. The theory of the evolution of man, the anthropological implementation of this in the history of the rise of mankind, the psychology of the mental development of the individual, the comparison of this with animal behavior, and the inspired interpretation of these motives in literature, especially biography, autobiography, and poetry, are sources to be drawn upon. ”

“ The purely psychological branch of the subject takes up half of the space allotted to Geist in the Encyklopädie. It falls under the three heads of anthropology, phenomenology and psychology proper. Anthropology treats of the mind in union with the body—of the natural soul—and discusses the relations of the soul with the planets, the races of mankind, the differences of age, dreams, animal magnetism, insanity and phrenology. ”

“ The same is true of the Organic and the Inorganic worlds, of the Human and the Non-human worlds, of the Physical and the Moral worlds, of the Cosmical and the Social worlds, of the law of Progress and the law of Order. On all sides we are confronted with a series of Antinomies, Dualisms, and irreducible ultimate conceptions. ”

“ That Treatise of Human Nature, which was formerly printed, hath been wholly spent in the consideration of the natural power, and the natural estate of man, namely, of his cognition and passions in the first eleven chapters, and how from thence proceed his actions; in the twelfth, how men know one another’s minds: in the last, in what estate men’s passions set them. ”

“ Philology, Anthropology, and Geology testify to mental progress, even in the human species; and if such a progress is a fact, it cannot have been without influence upon the moral nature of man, even supposing the latter to be God-given. ”

“ Conceive the human race born into the world in its present advanced condition, weighing, analysing, examining everything, except a few phenomena which happen not to chime in with the general ideas of science. ”

“ In short, this postulate is among the inspired revelations of the Common Sense that are contained in our share of Divine Reason. We may speak of understanding as 'human,' with its often discordant generalisations; but there can be no merely 'human' Reason. ”

“ Source Material for Study.—The source material of social life lies all about us. For its past history we must explore the primitive conduct of human beings as we learn it from anthropology and archæology, or as we infer it from the lowest human races or from animal groups that bear the nearest physical and mental resemblance to mankind. ”

“ With regard to the origin of the human mind or the soul of man, we, in the first place, perceive that in every human individual it develops from the beginning, step by step and gradually, just like the body. ”

“ Its chief Use is only to discover the constant and universal Principles of human Nature, by shewing Men in all Varieties of Circumstances and Situations, and furnishing us with Materials, from which we may form our Observations, and become acquainted with the regular Springs of human Action and Behaviour. ”

“ And indeed, this is the only Kind of Comparison, that is worth our Attention, or decides any Thing in the present Question. Were the selfish and vicious Principles of Human Nature so much predominant above the Social and Virtuous, as is asserted by some Philosophers, we ought undoubtedly to entertain a contemptible Notion of Human Nature. ”