Justice - 1892 Author:Herbert Spencer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. THE SENTIMENT OF JUSTICE. § 16. Acceptance of the doctrine of organic evolution determines certain ethical conceptions. The doctrine implies th... more »at the numerous organs in each of the innumerable species of animals, have been either directly or indirectly moulded into fitness for the requirements of life by constant converse with those requirements. Simultaneously, through nervous modifications, there have been developments of the sensations, instincts, emotions, and intellectual aptitudes, needed for the appropriate uses of these organs; as we see in caged rodents which exercise their jaw-muscles and incisors by purposeless gnawing, in gregarious creatures which are miserable if they cannot join their fellows, in beavers which, kept in confinement, show their passion for dam-building by heaping up whatever sticks and stones they can find. Has this process of mental adaptation ended with primitive man ? Are human beings incapable of having their feelings and ideas progressively adjusted to the modes of life imposed on them by the social state into which they have grown ? Shall we suppose that the nature which fitted them to the exigencies of savage life has remained unchanged, and will remain unchanged, by the exigencies of civilized life ? Or shall we suppose that this aboriginal nature, by repression of some traits and fostering of others,is made to approach more and more to a nature which finds developed society its appropriate environment, and the required activities its normal ones ? There are many believers in the doctrine of evolution who seem to have no faith in the continued adaptability of mankind. While glancing but carelessly at the evidence furnished by comparisons of different human races with one another, and of the same races in different ages, th...« less