Life in mind and conduct : studies of organic in human nature / by Henry Maudsley, M.D.

  • Maudsley, Henry, 1835-1918.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life in mind and conduct : studies of organic in human nature / by Henry Maudsley, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    natural as the progressive steps of development, of which indeed they are the necessary antitheses, the two processes, like height and depth, involving one another. For in man's social nature, as throughout the universe, opposing forces work in reciprocal action and counteraction: a labouring impulsion towards a higher complexity of being on the one hand, which is called progress, and a counterworking tendency towards disintegration, which is called regress. That he does not clearly perceive and own this truth, but is apt in present process of living evolution to overlook the inevitable dissolution of human things, is doubtless owing mainly to the fact that his imagination is tied to measurable and comparatively short periods of time in the immeasur- able flux of things and cannot well take a large enough flight. A legitimate doubt then may well arise whether human self-worship will at last raise mankind to the height of a universal brotherhood pervaded and maintained by mutual love, which shall be the crown of organic creation. The history of the race on earth thus far hardly warrants the expectation of such a perfect consummation and bliss; nor is it easy to understand how a complex human economy could hold together in just poise and movement if pervaded by one force of attraction only, antagonistic forces being annulled, any more than a solar system could keep up its just poise and movement if subject to one force of attraction only. However, the optimistic believer in human perfecti- bility and perpetuity may reply, firstly, that the fraction of the human orbit yet known is so small as to afford no adequate data to predict what the complete whole will be; and, secondly, that there is distinctly evident through human history a slow stream of tendency making for righteousness, which presages a moral purpose to be fulfilled in time to come.