Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- THE ASCENT OF MAN
- INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER I THE ASCENT OF THE BODY
- CHAPTER II THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY
- CHAPTER III THE ARREST OF THE BODY
- CHAPTER IV THE DAWN OF MIND
- CHAPTER V THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE
- CHAPTER VI THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
- CHAPTER VII THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS
- CHAPTER VIII THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER
- CHAPTER IX THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER
- CHAPTER X INVOLUTION
CHAPTER VII - THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- THE ASCENT OF MAN
- INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER I THE ASCENT OF THE BODY
- CHAPTER II THE SCAFFOLDING LEFT IN THE BODY
- CHAPTER III THE ARREST OF THE BODY
- CHAPTER IV THE DAWN OF MIND
- CHAPTER V THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE
- CHAPTER VI THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
- CHAPTER VII THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS
- CHAPTER VIII THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER
- CHAPTER IX THE EVOLUTION OF A FATHER
- CHAPTER X INVOLUTION
Summary
We now open a wholly new, and by far the most important, chapter in the Evolution of Man. Up to this time we have found for him a Body, and the rudiments of Mind. But Man is not a Body, nor a Mind. The temple still awaits its final tenant—the higher human Soul.
With a Body alone, Man is an animal: the highest animal, yet a pure animal; struggling for its own narrow life, living for its small and sordid ends. Add a Mind to that and the advance is infinite. The Struggle for Life assumes the august form of a struggle for light: he who was once a savage, pursuing the arts of the chase, realizes Aristotle's ideal man, “a hunter after Truth.” Yet this is not the end. Experience tells us that Man's true life is neither lived in the material tracts of the body, nor in the higher altitudes of the intellect, but in the warm world of the affections. Till he is equipped with these, Man is not human. He reaches his full height only when Love becomes to him the breath of life, the energy of will, the summit of desire. There at last lies all happiness, and goodness, and truth, and divinity:
“For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless God.”
That Love did not come down to us through the Struggle for Life, the only great factor in Evolution which up to this time has been dwelt upon, is self-evident.
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- The Ascent of Man , pp. 275 - 341Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1894