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.
135/180 page 123
![XV] Heredity and Environment freedom, and of the importance of educa¬ tion ; and though the rapid increase of wealth through the utiHsation of natural forces led to all the evils due to the un¬ checked growth of individual riches and power, yet these very evils in all their intensity and horror were perhaps neces¬ sary to excite in a sufficient number of minds the determination to get rid of them. Time was also required for the workers to learn their own power, and, very gradually, to learn how to use it. The rick-burning and machine-breaking of the early part of the century have been succeeded by com¬ bination and strikes ; step by step political power has been gained by the masses ; but only now, in the twentieth century, are they beginning to learn how to use their strength in an efíective manner. There are, however, indications that the whole march of progress has been dangerously rapid, and it might have been safer if the great increases of knowledge and the vast accumu¬ lations of wealth had been spread over two centuries instead of one. In that case our higher nature might have been able to keep pace with the growing evüs of superfluous wealth and increasing luxury, and it might have been possible to put a check upon 123](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022121_0136.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
