Progress is not natural. We are geared to go round and round. The reformer should not expect too much. We are only as far along as we are. It is the … - J. Howard Moore

No being will do his most luminous and exalted thinking with his stomach a morgue.

The evolution of consciousness, in its ethical import, means the extension in both space and time of the consciousness of similarity. Starting from individual egoism, consciousness has extended, vividly or vaguely, from individual self to family, and from family to clan, and from clan to tribe, and from tribe to nation, and from nation to race, and from race to species, and from species to kingdom. This amplification has gone on and is still going on in both space and time. Universal consciousness of similarity contemplates all the beings in space and all those to be in time.

Everywhere we turn we find evidence that the "civilization," so-called, of higher peoples is a made-over something, and that the antecedent thing from which it has been derived is the "civilization" of the savage. In this derived "civilization" we find everywhere features of the old, antecedent, and disappearing order of things customs, laws, beliefs, languages, ideals, and institutions which are now no longer functional, but which survive in a more or less dwindling condition in obedience to the same laws as those which perpetuate the vermiform appendix and the hairy covering of our bodies and the hunting and fighting instincts of our natures. It is of vast advantage to us to be able to recognize these vestigial features, in order that we may more skilfully disentangle ourselves from them and at the same time definitely turn our backs on them in our efforts to advance toward a Better World.