Herbert Spencer Quotes
Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.
Spencer, Herbert. Social Statics: or, The Conditions Essential to Human Happiness Specified, and the First of Them Developed. John Chapman, 1851, p. 65.
Fisk realized the effect on man of his environment and social conditions, but made the mistake of believing that the normal evolutionary effects as a result of natural selection had stopped. As these changes are slow over many generations, they are hard to personally observe within a human lifetime. Also our effect on our environment changes the environment and that in turn often alters the rules under which natural selection operates. Evolution only stops when a species is extinct.
This particular quotation is particularly distressful to some religious fundamentalists who not only will not accept that man evolved, but find it worse to accept that man is continuously evolving.
Darwin believed at the time that large populations were critical to national success and development. The next 100 years would prove that large population was a handicap to progress and real growth of standard of living.
The magnificent result of modern civilization has been to extend the average lifespan of humans by decades. What Galton called “weakly lives” are those that were eradicated by smallpox, bubonic plague, polio and hundreds of other diseases and risks where we have strengthened mankind and not simply succumbed to all the many natural dangers. At the same time however, civilization has added risks and dangers to human life. Automobile crashes, industrial accidents and the like. The balance has been well in favor of “civilization.”
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism whereby superior physical force shapes history. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism.
