Origin

“ We shall thus be brought to the consideration of the great problem of our day, viz. the origin of mankind, or rather the origin of the human arts; for the question of man’s origin, whether he was himself created or developed from some prior form, whether since the period of his first appearance he has by variation separated into distinct races, or whether the several races of mankind were separately created, are questions which, however closely allied, do not of necessity form part of our present subject. ”

“ But one may wonder indeed what conception of the origin of man can be more wonderful or more inspiring than the belief that he has been slowly evolved through the ages, and that all creatures have had a part in his development ”

“ If they are distinct from the rest of nature, and therefore require a distinct origin, it makes little difference whether we looked upon that origin as a single originating point or as thousands of independent creations. ”

“ We cannot speak of any thing, either of a useful or ornamental character, but we invariably cast our eyes over the ages of the world and trace up, or rather back, to its earliest period, their very origin. ”

“ There appears, throughout the whole race, to be the vestiges of a tradition of the creation and the deluge, two great and striking points in the history of man, which, however he wandered, he would be most likely to remember. They uniformly attribute their origin to a superior and divine power. ”

“ In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the "Origin of Species" introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics and religion. ”

“ History, chronicle, and philology, of which we have seen the origin, are series of mental forms, which, although distinct from one another, must all of them be looked upon as physiological—that is to say, true and rational. ”

“ It gives the origin of every language, the history of the world’s religious and political developments, origin and growth of secret societies, manners and customs of all nations, treats broadly of architecture, mechanism, arts and science, taking you into a thousand channels heretofore unheard of. ”

“ Of late years, however, the whole of this question has been subjected to a rigorous investigation, and it has been successfully shewn that the human race might have had one origin, for anything that can be inferred from external peculiarities. ”

“ The origin of language is next explained, then that of civil society, of religion, and of the arts,—the general conclusion being that all progress is the result of natural experience, not of divine guidance. ”

“ These facts of themselves afford an irresistible presumption that the origin of the human race must be sought much further back, and it remains to consider what positive evidence has been adduced in support of this presumption. ”

“ Having observed the deep interest you have taken in all that has befallen your ancestors, when I have related their adventures to you, I am induced to write down their history for your use, to the end that the pious examples of those from whom we derive our origin may not be lost to you, or those who succeed you. ”

“ My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin,' was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" ”

“ If, as we have every reason to believe upon either hypothesis of man's origin, he is a completed animal, standing by original creation or by the effect of the evolution process at the head of the whole animal [Pg 160] kingdom in the apparent purpose of his existence, his agency and his power in promoting the sum of happiness on earth, for himself and all the other animals, are the same upon either hypothesis of his origin. ”

“ These results alone will in time yield convincing proofs of the unity of origin of mankind. The mental history of the human race, which is revealed in institutions, inventions and discoveries, is presumptively the history of a single species, perpetuated through individuals, and developed through experience. Among the original germs of thought, which have exercised the most powerful influence upon the human mind, and upon human destiny, are these which relate to government, to the family, to language, to religion, and to property. ”

“ Culture is then properly described not as having its origin in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. ”

“ The myth of the origin and the creation of the world [4] are common in all cultures of the world. Each culture has its own concept of earth creation and of human beings, which is indisputably a philosophical approach. ”

“ Now let me show you an origin of man, with his intellect and consciousness, which will entirely overthrow the idea that he was a special creation in the sense to which you seem to be drifting, namely, that of miraculous interposition by a being called God. You must be aware, as you have read so much, that modern science has made great discoveries, and that there are certain conclusions on this subject which are drawn from very numerous and important data. ”

“ As my own knowledge of and interest in Anthropology is confined to the great outlines rather than to the special details of the science, I propose to give a very brief and general sketch of the modern doctrine as to the Antiquity and Origin of Man, and to suggest certain points of difficulty which have not, I think, yet received sufficient attention. ”

“ As may be supposed, theories of the origin of life apart from doctrines of special creation or of a primitive and slow spontaneous generation are mere fantastic speculations. The most striking of these suggests an extra-terrestrial origin. ”

“ We have reason to suspect, indeed, that pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from the same principle in human nature, and that one is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness. ”

“ I am aware that it is asking a good deal to desire the reader to divest himself of all that nature and education and history and poetry and religion have contributed to produce in our feelings respecting our rank in the scale of being. When I come to treat of that which, for want of a more suitable term, must be called the substance of the human mind, and to suggest how it bears upon this question of the origin of man, I shall, as I trust, give the true, and no more than the true, scope to those considerations which lead to the comparative dignity of the race. ”

“ For a while the old influence of theological rule held even these venturous explorers to the ancient landmarks of human origin. By and by, the same impulse which had before led men to examine the proofs of physical creation induced them to consider the evidence of their own advent upon earth. ”

“ I invite your attention to a brief statement of what our doctrines teach upon the origin and nature of life, and to some illustrations which may help us to see their reasonableness and ground in the nature of things. By the origin of life I mean life as it appears in the creation, in plants, animals, and men, and not in its primary source. ”

“ They pass from place to place or from people to people by a process of acculturation, so that peoples of unlike origin practise like arts, while those of like origin, are found practising unlike arts. ”

“ He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of fiction. One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the other treated of man as a clod, ignoring his heaven-sent dreams and divine possibilities. ”

“ The second prose production begins with the statement that all men have one origin, both as it regards their bodies, being sprung from one ancestor; and as it regards their souls, which have all come from the original breath of God ”

“ It must be confessed, indeed, that the impression is readily taken from a prima facie view of the Biblical record of the course of human history, that the human race is of comparatively recent origin. ”

“ Running through prehistoric ages—coming down from them into the daybreak of our records, founding theology, suffusing literature, and so brought onward— (a sort of verteber and marrow to all the antique races and lands, Egypt, India, Greece, Rome, the Chinese, the Jews, &c., and giving cast and complexion to their art, poems, and their politics as well as ecclesiasticism, all of which we more or less inherit,) appear those venerable claims to origin from God himself, or from gods and goddesses—ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power than ours. ”

“ But the origin of races is obscure, and the genius of every ancient people was formed and developed in remote ages under conditions not known to us. We can do little more than note the characteristics visible in historical times. ”

“ Knowledge of the origin and development of particular existing customs throws immense light upon their real nature and importance; and, conversely, it is often only from a profound acquaintance with the present or comparatively modern manifestations of culture that we are able to interpret the slight indications afforded us by the scanty remains of primitive civilization. ”

“ The attempt to trace the origin of all supernatural belief to the impressions made by dreams, the explanation given of the first manifestation of the humaner sentiments, of the beginning of language, and of the whole condition of 'primitive man,' are in conformity with the teaching of the most popular exponent of the doctrine of evolution in the present day. ”

“ To the first class belong the genesis stories, dealing with the creation of the world, the nature of the heavenly bodies and elemental forces, the origin of life and death, the spirit world and the invisible beings, the ancient monsters, and the hero-gods. ”

“ The first and second volumes which I am now publishing contain essays on the early thoughts of mankind, whether religious or mythological, and on early traditions and customs. There is to my mind no subject more absorbing than the tracing the origin and first growth of human thought;—not theoretically, or in accordance with the Hegelian laws of thought, or the Comtian epochs ”

“ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them:" In these words the Lord has revealed in the most clear, positive, and explicit manner the fact that man has his origin in Him, and is evolved from Him. ”

“ The reply which I had to give to the first question was altogether negative, and the chief result of my last lecture was, that, neither historically nor experimentally, do we at present know anything whatsoever about the origin of living forms. ”

“ The work treats of the unity, origin, antiquity, and original localization of the human species, peopling of the globe, acclimatization, primitive man, formation of the human races, fossil human races, present human races, and the physical and psychological characters of mankind. ”

“ Origin and importance.—Why does this thought enter and re-enter my mind, and flash upon me in ever- varying brilliancy?—that, in lines of yore, explorers, in their search after the origin of things, ever expected to find a something which might be of invaluable import- ance to every action and judgment, nay, that they always presumed the welfare of mankind to depend on the insight into the origin of things—whereas now, the farther we trace the origin the less we feel concerned about our interests ”

“ Then there are factious names, of a religious or sacred character, each of which directly relates to the accepted affinity existing between a living person and an ancestral spirit of semi-human origin. ”

“ 'Why does everything exist that exists, and why do I exist?' 'Because it exists.'
Inquiring for one region of human knowledge, I received an innumerable quantity of exact replies concerning matters about which I had not asked: about the chemical constituents of the stars, about the movement of the sun towards the constellation Hercules, about the origin of species and of man, about the forms of infinitely minute imponderable particles of ether; ”

“ Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; ”

“ Now every tradition grows continually more venerable, the farther off lies its origin, the more this is lost sight of; the generation paid it accumulates from generation to generation, the tradition at last becomes holy and excites awe ; ”

“ The result, in the end, is what, for want of a better word, we call culture; a word meaning originally the tilling and cultivating of the ground, and afterwards coming to be applied to the tilling and cultivating of the mind. ”

“ The mental and social development of mankind, the history of ideas and of institutions, received fresh and unexpected illumination. It began to be possible to sketch a very different outline of human origins and early history from that which had hitherto remained almost unquestioned. ”

“ To the discoverer himself, the supreme interest of his finds always lay in the thought that they were the direct prototypes, if not the actual originals, of the civilization described in the Homeric poems ”

“ According to the now almost universally accepted theory, all the races of mankind had a common origin. ”

“ Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs. ”