Word: altruism
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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Professor Shaler delivered an intensely interesting lecture last evening to a full audience. So distinct, he said, are the fields of work of the theologian and the naturalist, that he had with difficulty found a topic of common interest-the Evolution of Altruism. Sympathy, the basis of altruism, seems a very natural thing, yet it is hard to explain. The lecturer asked his hearers to assume that man is descended from the lower animals in his body, and in some at least of his mental faculties. He then traced the gradations of altruistic qualities (those which are not based...
...hard to account for this development of sympathy, or altruism. The doctrine of selection may apply in the parental instinct, as those having this instinct strongest would take best care of their offspring; but the wildest advocate of selection could not claim to account for the higher forms or altruism, extending to the whole world and beyond it. This higher development rests on an influence not visible in natural laws...
Having reached this step the study of altruism is outside the field of the naturalist. The lecture believed that the spirit of Christianity rests on these old altruistic motives; and that it also fosters them, towards fellow beings, and towards the Supreme Being...
...religion, raising him above self-consciousness. The method Christianity officers to accomplish this, is the cultivation of altruistic motives. "Love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and with all thy might and thy soul and with all thy might and thy neighbor as thyself." As altruism, or unselfishness increases, death loses its fears. It will be said in future centuries, that in this age men begin to think less about death...
...education must be in the line of altruism, teaching men to go outside and stay outside themselves. It is not safe to start the intellectual life in the study of physical science; education should begin with the humanities...