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.
127/180 page 115
![XV] Heredity and Environment Ought we not to be thankful that such education and custom, the varied influences of such an environment, were not hereditary ? And is not the fact that the whole world has not become utterly degraded, and that anything good remains in our cruelly oppressed human nature, an overwhelming proof that such influences are not here¬ ditary ? When we remember that many of these degrading laws and customs, oppressions, and punishments have extended down to our own times ; that the terrible slave- trade and the equally terrible slavery have only been abolished within the memory of many of us ; and that the system of wage- slavery, the distinction of classes, the gross inequality of the law, the overwork of our labouring millions, the immoral luxury and idleness of our upper-class thousands, while far more thousands die annually of want of the bare necessaries of life ; that millions have their lives shortened by easily pre¬ ventable causes, while other millions pass their whole lives in continuous and almost inhuman labour in order to provide means for the enjoyments and pernicious luxuries of the rich—we must be amazed at the fact that there is nevertheless so much real 115](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0128.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
