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.
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![XV] Heredity and Environment so often and for so long prevailed over the higher ? This is, of course, one of the many forms of the old problem of the origin of evil, which is no doubt insoluble by us. But as it is a fairly well-defined and limited portion of that problem it may be possible to obtain some idea of a possible solution, and as such an one has occurred to myself during the composition of the present volume, I will give it as briefly as possible in the hope that it may interest some of my readers. In my recent works, Man's Place in the Universe and The World of Life, the con¬ clusion was forced upon me, that the scheme of the development of the universe of stars and nebulae with which we are acquainted, and especially of our sun and solar system, was such as to furnish the exact conditions on our earth, and there only, which should allow of the origin and evolution of the organic world culminating in man. Yet further, that the conditions should be such as to produce the maximum of diversity both of inorganic and organic products use¬ ful to man, and such as would aid in the development of the greatest possible diver¬ sity of character and especially of his higher mental and moral nature. What I have П9](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0132.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
