Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 08 Jul 2023


Taken: 08 Jul 2023

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THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO
Alfred Russell Wallace
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Thus wrote Wallace

Thus wrote Wallace

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
We most of us believe that we, the higher races, have progressed and are progressing. If so, there must be some state of perfection, some ultimate goal, which we may never reach, but to which all true progress must bring us nearer. What is this ideally perfect social state towards which mankind ever has been, and still is tending? Our best thinkers maintain that it is a state of individual freedom and self-government, rendered possible for the equal development and just balance of the intellectual, moral and physical part of our nature – a state in which we shall each be so perfectly fitted for a social existence, by knowing what is right, and at the same time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what we know to be right that all laws and all punishments shall be unnecessary. In such a state every man would hae a sufficiently well balanced intellectual organization to understand the moral law in all its details, and would require no other motive but the free impulses of his own nature to obey that law.

INow it is very remarkable that among people in a very low stage of civilization we find some approach to such perfect social state. I have lived with communities of savages in South America and in the East who have no laws or law courts but the public opinion of the village freely expressed. Each man scrupulously respects the rights of his, and any infraction of those rights rarely or never takes place. . . . .

We should now clearly recognize the fact, that the wealth and knowledge and culture of the few do not constitute civilization, and do not of themselves advance us toward the “perfect social state.” our vast manufacturing system, our gigantic commerce, our crowded towns and cities, support and continually renew a mass of human misery and crime absolutely greater than has ever existed before. They crate and maintain in life-long labour an ever-increasing army, whose lot is the more hard to bear by contrast with the pleasure, the omforts, and the luxury which they see everywhere around them, but which they can neve rhope to enjoy; and who, in this respect, are worse off than the savage in the midst of his tribe. ~ Page 455
14 months ago. Edited 14 months ago.
 Dinesh
Dinesh club
THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO
14 months ago.

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