Social EvolutionMacmillan and Company, 1894 - 348 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
altruistic feelings amongst ancient appear attained become beginning belief birth-rate character characteristic Charles Booth coloured conception conflict continue doctrine economic effect England equality European evidence evolutionary science evolutionist fact feature forces forms France French Revolution future gradually Grant Allen Greek Herbert Spencer highest human evolution human society immense increase individual influence instinct intellectual development interests J. P. Mahaffy kind labour large number laws living marriage masses ment mental military mind modern moral movement nations natural selection nineteenth century observe opinion organisation party past perceived period political population position possession power-holding classes prevailing principles produced progress rational sanction realise reason recognised regard religion religious remarkable result rivalry Roman Roman Empire Royal Statistical Society significance slavery slowly social democracy social development social efficiency social evolution social organism social phenomena socialist stage tend tendency throughout tion ultra-rational undergoing Vide Western civilisation whole writers
Popular passages
Page 201 - organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour, at last, reach a point when they become incompatible with their capitalist
Page 201 - Marx's words :—" Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grow the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the revolt of the
Page 3 - me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion that if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the human family
Page 124 - A hideous, sordid, and emaciated maniac without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato.
Page 75 - between communism with all its chances and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices ... all the difficulties great or small of communism would be but as dust in the balance.
Page 91 - ambition of his fellow-men. He makes a point of killing and otherwise persecuting all those who first try to get him to move on; and when he has moved a step farther, foolishly confers post-mortem deification on his victims. He exactly repeats the process with all who want to move a step yet farther.
Page 90 - thing a man does practically believe; the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe and his duty and destiny therein.
Page 32 - I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population ; and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that, under these circumstances, favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the
Page 101 - sanction for that large class of conduct in the individual where his interests and the interests of the social organism are antagonistic, and by which the former are rendered subordinate to the latter in the general interests of the evolution
Page 4 - to educate men who must be condemned to poverty is but to make them restive ; to base on a state of most glaring social inequality political institutions under which men are theoretically equal is to stand a pyramid on its apex."*