The animate environment has been the most formidable factor in the evolution of mundane life. The inanimate has been indifferent. The animate has not… - J. Howard Moore

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The animate environment has been the most formidable factor in the evolution of mundane life. The inanimate has been indifferent. The animate has not been so. It has been relentless. While the ages were yet tender, life began to riot upon life, and it has continued to do so to this moment. Where the inanimate has slain and selected one, the animate has slain multitudes. It is estimated that the life process is now about twenty millions of years old. Its existence has been one unbroken bacchanal of blood. Aggregate has preyed upon aggregate and species has decimated species. Tides of irresponsibles have swept over the continents and thru the deeps, collided, grappled, and exterminated each other. What is hidden in the horrible chasm between monera and man, no fancy will ever illume. It is the mighty charnal of creation. The skeletons of two millions of exterminated species of living beings are there with all their unimaginable accompaniments—wars, blacknesses, frightful manglings, eclipses, horrible concussions, inextinguishable malignities, hell.

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About J. Howard Moore

John Howard Moore (December 4, 1862 – June 17, 1916) was an American zoologist, philosopher, educator and social reformer. He advocated for the ethical consideration and treatment of animals and authored several articles, books, essays and pamphlets on topics including education, ethics, evolutionary biology, humanitarianism, utilitarianism and vegetarianism. He is best known for his work The Universal Kinship (1906), which advocated for a secular sentiocentric philosophy he called the doctrine of "Universal Kinship", based on the shared evolutionary kinship between all sentient beings.

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Alternative Names: John Howard Moore J. H. Moore Howard Moore J. H. M.
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Additional quotes by J. Howard Moore

Ethical culture should do for human character what physical culture should do for the body. It should produce a race of kind, honest, courageous, public-spirited, and justice-loving men and women. It is all so perfectly plain. Men are moral invalids. They come into the world bearing the curse of their animal origin. They are unfit for a life of love and co-operation. The defects of human character are as well known and as well understood as the defects of the human body. They are the cause of more unhappiness to mankind than any other one thing. They can be corrected by the application of the same remedies that have proved so efficacious in the case of mental and physical defects. The school should be the mental, physical, and moral infirmary of society.

The doctrine of organic evolution, which forever established the common genesis of all animals, sealed the doom of anthropocentricism. Whatever the inhabitants of this world were or were thought to be before the publication of 'The Origin of Species,' they never could be anything since then but a family. The doctrine of evolution is probably the most important revelation that has come to the world since the illuminations of Galileo and Copernicus. The authors of the Copernican theory enlarged and corrected human understanding by disclosing to man the comparative littleness of his world—by discovering that the earth, which had up to that time been supposed to be the centre and capital of cosmos, is in reality a satellite of the sun. This heliocentric discovery was hard on human conceit, for it was the first broad hint man had thus far received of his true dimensions. The doctrine of evolution has had, and is having, and is destined to continue to have, a similarly correcting effect on the naturally narrow conceptions of men.

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Men are like May-flies. The most of them see things only during the brief breath of a day. The ages of history and biology are unknown and unconsidered. No wonder the universe is misunderstood. The human mind is without longitude. Even a cannonball, photographed with an exposure of one-five-thousandth of a second, seems suspended in mid-air.

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