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Evolution and Ethics
The name of Sir Arthur Keith deserves to be associated with those of Charles
Darwin and Thomas Huxley in the study of the evolution of man. During the
last half century, Keith has been the foremost British student of human
phylogeny and of fossil man, and, in the opinion of many, has exhibited the
greatest mastery of this subject shown by any anthropologist. In his early
career Sir Arthur acquired a sound knowledge of anatomy of the great apes
which he subsequently utilized in interpreting the fragmentary remains of fossil
man and demonstrating their relationships to each other and to subhuman
primates. Sir Arthur has always displayed an insight into the physiological,
functional aspects of primate evolution almost unique among morphologists.
His boldly original theories have sometimes been condemned as fantastic by
more pedestrian students of human origins, but subsequent discoveries have
vindicated Keith far oftener than they have confuted him. For example, he was
for many years the solitary champion of the theory that anatomically modern
man, Homo sapiens, existed early in the Pleistocene period, before apelike
Neanderthal man lived in the caves of western Europe. This theory has been
substantiated by the recent find of the Swanscombe man.
I became, in some sense, a disciple of Arthur Keith when I was a
student of anthropology at Oxford nearly thirty-five years ago and was making
my first essay at studying the bones of ancient man. I was working upon a
collection housed in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, of which
Professor Arthur Keith was then Conservator. Although Dr. Keith had no
formal teaching duties, he was always ready to instruct and to guide aspiring
young students. He had the faculty of building up
the self-confidence of the ignorant neophyte by insinuating his own ideas and
apposite excerpts from his own vast knowledge into the problem of his pupil,
in such a way that the latter imagined that the solution was his own and not
Keith's. Among the several great teachers I have had, none was his superior.
Few eminent anthropologists have engaged in scientific controversy as
often as Sir Arthur Keith, and I know no other who has shown such consistent
tolerance, fairness, and courtesy in the face of acrimonious criticism. In the
present book, Sir Arthur Keith steps out of his usual role as the interpreter of
man's anatomical evolution to present his conclusions upon the relation of
evolution to ethics and the function of war in evolution. The findings of Sir
Arthur will afford little comfort to facile political idealists who refuse to
recognize the brutal and predatory course of man's rise from apedom. For
those who believe that it is better to be optimistic and wrong than realistic and
right, Sir Arthur's cogent essays, presented at the age of eighty years, will be
unpalatable and even subversive. For myself, I have so often begun upon a
theory of Keith with the opinion that he was wrong and have had to admit in
the end that he was right that I may as well come forward at once to the
mourners' bench without waiting for a reconviction of personal sin.
Darwin and Thomas Huxley in the study of the evolution of man. During the
last half century, Keith has been the foremost British student of human
phylogeny and of fossil man, and, in the opinion of many, has exhibited the
greatest mastery of this subject shown by any anthropologist. In his early
career Sir Arthur acquired a sound knowledge of anatomy of the great apes
which he subsequently utilized in interpreting the fragmentary remains of fossil
man and demonstrating their relationships to each other and to subhuman
primates. Sir Arthur has always displayed an insight into the physiological,
functional aspects of primate evolution almost unique among morphologists.
His boldly original theories have sometimes been condemned as fantastic by
more pedestrian students of human origins, but subsequent discoveries have
vindicated Keith far oftener than they have confuted him. For example, he was
for many years the solitary champion of the theory that anatomically modern
man, Homo sapiens, existed early in the Pleistocene period, before apelike
Neanderthal man lived in the caves of western Europe. This theory has been
substantiated by the recent find of the Swanscombe man.
I became, in some sense, a disciple of Arthur Keith when I was a
student of anthropology at Oxford nearly thirty-five years ago and was making
my first essay at studying the bones of ancient man. I was working upon a
collection housed in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, of which
Professor Arthur Keith was then Conservator. Although Dr. Keith had no
formal teaching duties, he was always ready to instruct and to guide aspiring
young students. He had the faculty of building up
the self-confidence of the ignorant neophyte by insinuating his own ideas and
apposite excerpts from his own vast knowledge into the problem of his pupil,
in such a way that the latter imagined that the solution was his own and not
Keith's. Among the several great teachers I have had, none was his superior.
Few eminent anthropologists have engaged in scientific controversy as
often as Sir Arthur Keith, and I know no other who has shown such consistent
tolerance, fairness, and courtesy in the face of acrimonious criticism. In the
present book, Sir Arthur Keith steps out of his usual role as the interpreter of
man's anatomical evolution to present his conclusions upon the relation of
evolution to ethics and the function of war in evolution. The findings of Sir
Arthur will afford little comfort to facile political idealists who refuse to
recognize the brutal and predatory course of man's rise from apedom. For
those who believe that it is better to be optimistic and wrong than realistic and
right, Sir Arthur's cogent essays, presented at the age of eighty years, will be
unpalatable and even subversive. For myself, I have so often begun upon a
theory of Keith with the opinion that he was wrong and have had to admit in
the end that he was right that I may as well come forward at once to the
mourners' bench without waiting for a reconviction of personal sin.
- GenresScience
236 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 19, 2011
19 people want to read
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February 27, 2026
A classic. A sweeping work of scholarship set in the middle of history's greatest war.
Evolution, Liberalism, Universalism and Christianity
This is an essay of my own, a short encapsulation of the major themes of this wonderful book, written the year after I was born.
The Liberals the Enlightenment believed that the purpose of life was the fulfillment of every person's potential, their inner yearnings. Enlightenment era documents talk about happiness. The Preamble to our Constitution enshrines "the pursuit of happiness." Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism sought "The greatest happiness for the greatest number." " The ultimate purpose of creation," wrote Herbert Spencer, "is to provide the greatest amount of happiness."
Enlightenment philosophers took it as a given that men harbored great aspirations which they had been unable to realize due to their ignorance, poverty, and servitude. The goal of the liberal project was to provide them the individual liberty - political and economic - necessary to realize their happiness. Twentieth Century political liberalism dedicated itself to satisfying these conditions: provide every individual with their "fair share," that they might realize their potential.
Some went beyond happiness, or attempted to define it as self-fulfillment. Aristotle wrote " Now with us reason and intelligence are the end of Nature." Kant wrote that our purpose was broader than happiness: " the evolution of all the germs God has implanted in man's nature." However, even substituting fulfillment for happiness, it comes down to the individual. The greatest good is framed in terms of what individual citizens deem to be good. The health of society is seen as no more than the collective happiness of its individual members.
Liberalism bleeds into universalism, today titled the "New World Order" or NWO. Simply stated, the premises are these. (1) Conflict, especially war, is antithetical to the the pursuit of individual happiness. (2) A prime, and generally successful function of government is to prevent conflicts within the realm. (3 From this follows that (3) the world needs a global government, to maintain a universal peace under which individuals will be free to realize themselves fully.
Christianity takes a different view of the purpose of life. Christ preached that the goal of life was salvation, and that would be achieved by submission to God's will, through kindness, service and even subservience to others. St. Augustine preached that our life on earth is only a prelude, and if the purpose of life is fulfilled only if one loves God above all, working to establish a "City of God" here on earth. Its emphasis is on the individual, but on the soul rather than the flesh. St. Paul wrote of the "mortification of the flesh," passive and even active denial of the interests of the human body and its natural desires as the path to salvation.
Christianity resembles liberalism in that its focus is on the individual. People go to heaven individually, not corporately. The role of family and society is to support the individual aspirant in his search for individual salvation. The Christian sacraments of marriage, baptism and confirmation are designed to create succeeding generations of believers. When Thomas Malthus wrote derisively that the purpose of Islam was "procreation of worshippers" he might as well have been speaking for his coreligionists, especially Catholics. Christianity also resembles liberalism in the matter of governance. The church has striven constantly, albeit unsuccessfully, since its infancy to centralize its power and unify its dogma. The idea is that world peace will be realized when all believers believe the same thing, and believe it truly and wholeheartedly.
Evolution comes without creeds, dogmas and ethics. It simply is. Our challenge is to understand how it worked to bring about the world as we experience it, how it continues to work among human populations, and the ways in which we would be prudent to modify our behaviors, to nullify the more pernicious effects of evolution, or our beliefs, to take into account the realities of evolution.
Both liberalism and Christianity seek to deny evolution. Sir Charles Sherrington summed it up in an epigram: Nature represents in the case of man a revulsion of the product against the process." Sir Arthur Keith explains that "Here product stands for modern or evolved man; the process for the means used by Nature in his creation." In my words, men now see themselves as more refined than the process of evolution which put us here. When we are confronted with evidence to the effect that evolution leads to differences among peoples which are not in accord with our liberal beliefs, we deny evolution. Like Wily E. Coyote churning his legs over the abyss after he has run off a cliff, we find ourselves denying a vast number of facts that seem obvious to me. Topping the list, certain people just don't have the God-given wit to manage technical jobs, mortgages, or even supporting themselves, and the systematic distribution of these people indicates that it is undeniably the product of evolution.
We now have more leisure than at any former time in world history. Yet, the arts, invention literature everything seems rather stagnant and puerile. People are simply not using the newfound free time productively. Instead, they waste it with electronic entertainments and chemically-induced distractions from reality. The liberal premise that, given the chance, people will aspire to improve themselves simply has not been borne out. They led more meaningful lives as laborers, farmers, tradesmen, perhaps even as serfs and slaves.
There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy man. It may be that in prior ages, when people had many demands on them, among them raising families, they cherished their free time and make good use of it by being creative. There is also a question of the quality of people. We have been in a dysgenic mode of evolution for the past century or more. The underskilled, underintelligent underclass, supported by government, has outreproduced the more productive members of society. Although people refuse to accept the measurements of this phenomenon, they are certainly present. Look at the NAEP(National Assessment of Educational Progress) as an example, or SAT scores in the United States over time.
Therefore, looking for the purpose of life, the liberal ideals, brought from Aristotle, doesn't seem to have led to anything vastly productive.
One thing that has come of rampant liberalism and rampant individualism over the past half century, is such a focus on the self that families are no longer being created. In a world threatened with overpopulation, this is not altogether bad thing. It is as if the society is committing suicide, or shrinking its numbers. Western society is behaving just like John B. Calhoun's rats in his wryly named "Universe 25" utopia. Overfed, overprotected and quickly overpopulated in their utopia, they turned to homosexuality, meterosexuality (then not yet named), meaningless violence and abandonment of litters. His rat colonies hit a population peak, then shrank - not back to a sustainable number, but to zero! In every case they had simply forgotten how to be rats, and they died out.
I compute from the CIA World Factbook and IQ and the Wealth of Nations (which I review) that every country with an average IQ above 96 (Argentina) is having children at a rate below reproduction. Moreover, fertility rates are even dropping in most of the rest of the world. Liberalism has done its work! It has blunted the effects of evolution, our native drive to increase our numbers. The question for me, now, is how to raise the child of my old age to defy the logic of liberalism and of his times, and reproduce. My book Edward addresses the issue.
Evolution, Liberalism, Universalism and Christianity
This is an essay of my own, a short encapsulation of the major themes of this wonderful book, written the year after I was born.
The Liberals the Enlightenment believed that the purpose of life was the fulfillment of every person's potential, their inner yearnings. Enlightenment era documents talk about happiness. The Preamble to our Constitution enshrines "the pursuit of happiness." Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism sought "The greatest happiness for the greatest number." " The ultimate purpose of creation," wrote Herbert Spencer, "is to provide the greatest amount of happiness."
Enlightenment philosophers took it as a given that men harbored great aspirations which they had been unable to realize due to their ignorance, poverty, and servitude. The goal of the liberal project was to provide them the individual liberty - political and economic - necessary to realize their happiness. Twentieth Century political liberalism dedicated itself to satisfying these conditions: provide every individual with their "fair share," that they might realize their potential.
Some went beyond happiness, or attempted to define it as self-fulfillment. Aristotle wrote " Now with us reason and intelligence are the end of Nature." Kant wrote that our purpose was broader than happiness: " the evolution of all the germs God has implanted in man's nature." However, even substituting fulfillment for happiness, it comes down to the individual. The greatest good is framed in terms of what individual citizens deem to be good. The health of society is seen as no more than the collective happiness of its individual members.
Liberalism bleeds into universalism, today titled the "New World Order" or NWO. Simply stated, the premises are these. (1) Conflict, especially war, is antithetical to the the pursuit of individual happiness. (2) A prime, and generally successful function of government is to prevent conflicts within the realm. (3 From this follows that (3) the world needs a global government, to maintain a universal peace under which individuals will be free to realize themselves fully.
Christianity takes a different view of the purpose of life. Christ preached that the goal of life was salvation, and that would be achieved by submission to God's will, through kindness, service and even subservience to others. St. Augustine preached that our life on earth is only a prelude, and if the purpose of life is fulfilled only if one loves God above all, working to establish a "City of God" here on earth. Its emphasis is on the individual, but on the soul rather than the flesh. St. Paul wrote of the "mortification of the flesh," passive and even active denial of the interests of the human body and its natural desires as the path to salvation.
Christianity resembles liberalism in that its focus is on the individual. People go to heaven individually, not corporately. The role of family and society is to support the individual aspirant in his search for individual salvation. The Christian sacraments of marriage, baptism and confirmation are designed to create succeeding generations of believers. When Thomas Malthus wrote derisively that the purpose of Islam was "procreation of worshippers" he might as well have been speaking for his coreligionists, especially Catholics. Christianity also resembles liberalism in the matter of governance. The church has striven constantly, albeit unsuccessfully, since its infancy to centralize its power and unify its dogma. The idea is that world peace will be realized when all believers believe the same thing, and believe it truly and wholeheartedly.
Evolution comes without creeds, dogmas and ethics. It simply is. Our challenge is to understand how it worked to bring about the world as we experience it, how it continues to work among human populations, and the ways in which we would be prudent to modify our behaviors, to nullify the more pernicious effects of evolution, or our beliefs, to take into account the realities of evolution.
Both liberalism and Christianity seek to deny evolution. Sir Charles Sherrington summed it up in an epigram: Nature represents in the case of man a revulsion of the product against the process." Sir Arthur Keith explains that "Here product stands for modern or evolved man; the process for the means used by Nature in his creation." In my words, men now see themselves as more refined than the process of evolution which put us here. When we are confronted with evidence to the effect that evolution leads to differences among peoples which are not in accord with our liberal beliefs, we deny evolution. Like Wily E. Coyote churning his legs over the abyss after he has run off a cliff, we find ourselves denying a vast number of facts that seem obvious to me. Topping the list, certain people just don't have the God-given wit to manage technical jobs, mortgages, or even supporting themselves, and the systematic distribution of these people indicates that it is undeniably the product of evolution.
We now have more leisure than at any former time in world history. Yet, the arts, invention literature everything seems rather stagnant and puerile. People are simply not using the newfound free time productively. Instead, they waste it with electronic entertainments and chemically-induced distractions from reality. The liberal premise that, given the chance, people will aspire to improve themselves simply has not been borne out. They led more meaningful lives as laborers, farmers, tradesmen, perhaps even as serfs and slaves.
There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy man. It may be that in prior ages, when people had many demands on them, among them raising families, they cherished their free time and make good use of it by being creative. There is also a question of the quality of people. We have been in a dysgenic mode of evolution for the past century or more. The underskilled, underintelligent underclass, supported by government, has outreproduced the more productive members of society. Although people refuse to accept the measurements of this phenomenon, they are certainly present. Look at the NAEP(National Assessment of Educational Progress) as an example, or SAT scores in the United States over time.
Therefore, looking for the purpose of life, the liberal ideals, brought from Aristotle, doesn't seem to have led to anything vastly productive.
One thing that has come of rampant liberalism and rampant individualism over the past half century, is such a focus on the self that families are no longer being created. In a world threatened with overpopulation, this is not altogether bad thing. It is as if the society is committing suicide, or shrinking its numbers. Western society is behaving just like John B. Calhoun's rats in his wryly named "Universe 25" utopia. Overfed, overprotected and quickly overpopulated in their utopia, they turned to homosexuality, meterosexuality (then not yet named), meaningless violence and abandonment of litters. His rat colonies hit a population peak, then shrank - not back to a sustainable number, but to zero! In every case they had simply forgotten how to be rats, and they died out.
I compute from the CIA World Factbook and IQ and the Wealth of Nations (which I review) that every country with an average IQ above 96 (Argentina) is having children at a rate below reproduction. Moreover, fertility rates are even dropping in most of the rest of the world. Liberalism has done its work! It has blunted the effects of evolution, our native drive to increase our numbers. The question for me, now, is how to raise the child of my old age to defy the logic of liberalism and of his times, and reproduce. My book Edward addresses the issue.
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