Page:Evolution of Life (Henry Cadwalader Chapman, 1873).djvu/246

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EVOLUTION OF LIFE.

that the effect of the social state is the restraining of men's evil passions, nevertheless crimes and outrages are committed even among the most civilized,—simply, in the words of Mr. Spencer, because man "partially retains the characteristics that adapted him for an antecedent state. The respects in which he is not fitted to society are the respects in which he is fitted for his original predatory life. His primitive circumstances required that he should sacrifice the welfare of other beings to his own; his present circumstances require that he should not do so; and in as far as his old attribute still clings to him, in so far is he unfit for the social state. All sins of men against each other, from the cannibalism of the Carib to the crimes and venalities that we see around us, have their causes comprehended under this generalization." The same author then argues that as the gratification of passions increases, whereas the restraining of passions lessens, desire, and that the faculties develop through use, but diminish through disuse, man must improve, as his organization is becoming continually better fitted to his surroundings, "all evil resulting from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions." We see, therefore, that progressive morality is a necessary consequence of the Evolution of Life.

RESUME.

We conclude, from the general theory of the Evolution of Life, from the facts brought forward in this chapter and in the two preceding ones, that man has descended from an animal; that the remote progenitor of man was an ape, resembling the Gorilla and Chimpanzee; that the birthplace of man was situated somewhere between Southern Asia and Eastern Africa, in Lemuria, if such a continent existed; that myriads of years have rolled by since man appeared on the earth; that the primitive men exhibited a grade of