Man's supreme inheritance : conscious guidance and control in relation to human evolution in civilization / by F. Matthias Alexander ; with an introductory word by Professor John Dewey.

  • Alexander, F. Matthias (Frederick Matthias), 1869-1955.
Date:
[1918], ©1918
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Man's supreme inheritance : conscious guidance and control in relation to human evolution in civilization / by F. Matthias Alexander ; with an introductory word by Professor John Dewey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/288 (page 6)
    the many that have preceded it, in that it has not been con- fined to any single nation or empire. In the past history of the world an intellectual civilization such as that of Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, or of Rome, perished from internal causes, of which the chief was a certain moral and physical deterioration which rendered the nation unequal to a struggle with younger, more vigorous, and—this is im- portant—wilder, more natural peoples. Thus we have good cause for believing that the danger we have indicated, though as yet incipient only, was a determining cause in the downfall of past civilizations. But we must not over- look the fact that destructive wars and devastating plagues held sway in the earlier history of mankind, and whilst the latter acted as an instrument of evolution in destroying the unfit, the former, by decreasing the population, threw a burden of initiative and energy on the remnant, necessi- tating the use of active physical qualities in the business of all kinds of production. | Now the conditions have altered. Greater scientific attainments in every direction than have ever been known have combated, and will probably in the future overcome, the devastating diseases which have decimated the populations of cities, whilst a higher ethical ideal constantly tends to oppose the horrible and repugnant barbarism of war which, with the spread of civilization even to the peoples of the Orient, becomes to our senses more and more fratricidal, a fight of brother against brother. A hundred years ago Malthus, a prophet if not a seer, recognized our danger, and within the past quarter of a century a dozen theorists have proposed remedies less stringent than those advocated by Malthus, but almost equally futile. Among the theorists are those perhaps un- conscious reactionaries who advocate the simple life, by a return to natural food and conditions, in endlessly varying ways. To them in their search for natural foods and con- ditions we would point out that countless generations separate us from primitive man, a lapse of time during which our functions have become gradually adapted to new habits and environment, and that if it were possible by