Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.
125/180 page 113
![XV] Heredity and Environment virtues and a more natural life of pro¬ ductive labour. These again, or some por¬ tions of them, rose to luxury and civilisa¬ tion, to lives of gross sensuality and the most cruel despotism, till outraged humanity raised up new conquerors to go over again the old terrible routine. The periods of culmination of these old civilisations, founded always on con¬ quest, massacre, and slavery, are marked out for us by the ruins of great cities, temples, and palaces, often of wonderful grandeur, and with indications of arts, science, and literature which still excite our admiration in Egypt and India, Greece and Rome ; and thence through the Middle Ages down to our own time. But the inhumanities and horrors of these periods are inconceivable. A gloomy pic¬ ture of them is given in that powerful book, The Martyrdom of Man, by Win- wood Reade ; and they are summarised in Burns' fine lines : Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn. Think of the horrors of war in the perpetual wars of those days before the Red Cross service did anything to I 113](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0126.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
