evolutionandethics（天演論）huxley

1、1Evolution and Ethics by Thomas Henry. HuxleyScanned and edited by T. Dave Gowan for Project GutenbergFrom eBooks@Adelaide, the University of Adelaide University Library, Australia Http://isis.library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi

2、-bin/pg-html/pg/etext01/thx2010.txtContentsIPage Evolution and Ethics. Prolegomena [1894] . . . . . . 1IIEvolution and Ethics [1893]. . . . . . . . . . . . .46IIIScience and Morals [1886]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 117IVCa

3、pital—the Mother of Labour [1890] . . . . . . . 147VSocial Diseases and Worse Remedies [1891]. . . . . 188Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 The Struggle for Existence in Human Society. 195 Letters to the T

4、imes . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Legal Opinions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 The Articles of War of the Salvation Army. . 3213that, in the coming and going of the generations of men, had such witnessed them, the co

5、ntemporary, conditions would have seemed to be unchanging and unchangeable.* See “On a piece of Chalk” in the preceding volume of these Essays (vol. viii. p. 1).But it is also certain that, before the deposition of the c

6、halk, a vastly longer period had elapsed; throughout which it is easy to follow the traces of the same process of ceaseless modification and of the internecine struggle for existence of living things; and that even when

7、 we can get no further [4] back, it is not because there is any reason to think we have reached the beginning, but because the trail of the most ancient life remains hidden, or has become obliterated.Thus that state of

8、nature of the world of plants which we began by considering, is far from possessing the attribute of permanence. Rather its very essence is impermanence. It may have lasted twenty or thirty thousand years, it may last f

9、or twenty or thirty thousand years more, without obvious change; but, as surely as it has followed upon a very different state, so it will be followed by an equally different condition. That which endures is not one or a

10、nother association of living forms, but the process of which the cosmos is the product, and of which these are among the transitory expressions. And in the living world, one of the most characteristic features of this c

11、osmic process is the struggle for existence, the competition of each with all, the result of which is the selection, that is to say, the survival of those forms which, on the whole, are best adapted, to the conditions wh

12、ich at any period obtain; and which are, therefore, in that respect, and only in that respect, the fittest.* The acme reached by the cosmic [5] process in the vegetation of the downs is seen in the turf, with its weeds

13、 and gorse. Under the conditions, they have come out of the struggle victorious; and, by surviving, have proved that they are the fittest to survive.* That every theory of evolution must be consistent not merely with pro

14、gressive development, but with indefinite persistence in the same condition and with retrogressive modification, is a point which I have insisted upon repeatedly from the year 1862 till now. See Collected Essays, vol. i

15、i. pp. 461–89; vol. iii. p. 33; vol. viii. p. 304. In the address on “Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types” (1862), the paleontological proofs of this proposition were, I believe, first set forth.That the st

16、ate of nature, at any time, is a temporary phase of a process of incessant change, which has been going on for innumerable ages, appears to me to be a proposition as well established as any in modern history.Paleontology

17、 assures us, in addition, that the ancient philosophers who, with less reason, held the same doctrine, erred in supposing that the phases formed a cycle, exactly repeating the past, exactly foreshadowing the future, in t

18、heir rotations. On the contrary, it furnishes us with conclusive reasons for thinking that, if every link in the ancestry of these humble indigenous plants had been preserved and were accessible to us, the whole would p