Early social self-government.

  • Simon, Sir John, 1816-1904.
Date:
[1894]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Early social self-government. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    mS-NlNETEENTH CEUmTKZ: April . So^Slfi^ ^^^jtoeryvrj -V^ Ajv|vvv5v'x fi) 6kfl/tvt^ ^ ti<.tMrvv^ •* cx^ l^cHACi.«Crr>J- *'i**v^*>-y ^ «-^<-<^ tA^c^-V-st )S^ 2- ^ <.P’V\^ l&C^S j O-x^ ^vAAkji>(^ \><. AAjVveXi*_n^tt^ > A|vaXL ^ A . ^ vLjsnr/Airs^F While the Human Kace in successive remote ages had been learning its early lessons of ^elf-^reservation against the j^hysical influences which it could recognise as destructive and morbific in common surrounding Nature, that class of influences had not been the only one in relation to which Human Life had had to struggle. Not less real than the relations of the race to surrounding things had been, within the race itself, relations which may be distinguished as Ethical; the relations in which each man had stood to his own self-government, and to the fortunes of other men; and in these relations, not less truly than in respect of physical surroundings, struggle against hostile influences had been a famihar experience of human life as long as human experience had been commemorated. Definite thoughts regarding this portion of the human struggle for existence become possible to us only in proportion as the times to which our thoughts refer are times more or less historical; times, that is to say, from which the observations and recollections of man as to contemporary matters of fact have in some form or other been transmitted to us; and where no such historical basis for thought is given, compensation for its absence cannot be supplied by abstract theories of the constitution and movements of the human mind. The Hue of thought, indeed, is peculiarly one in which mere speculation cannot make way. We have no independent means of setting before ourselves an embryological view of early human ethics; we cannot, except from experience, bring into view a primeval ether of man’s self-consciousness developing its faint first hnes of vibration and ripple where reason will afterwards come to regulate conduct; cannot exhibit by what subtle nucleolating process conceptions of justice and prudence and duty, and standards of personal and social merit, first tended to take definite form in the mind of our race, and to become the lights and the fates of man’s advancing career. The psychologist of to-day, who from his own particular basis would peer into the darkness of pre-traditionary times, hoping to see there some image of the mind which was in his earliest ancestors, soon discovers that the would-be telescope of his endeavour is in effect but an opaque mirror, and that the only image it can bring before his view is prac- Aft Appwidia tg Olmpt'aiX of mj MiffHnh fjanitm’ff