volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", pages 100-101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=113&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)
Context: As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. Sympathy beyond the confines of man, that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to be one of the latest moral acquisitions. It is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards their pets. How little the old Romans knew of it is shewn by their abhorrent gladiatorial exhibitions. The very idea of humanity, as far as I could observe, was new to most of the Gauchos of the Pampas. This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually through public opinion.
“There is within us a moral instinct which forbids us to rejoice at the death of even an enemy.”
12 November
Without Dogma (1891)
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Henryk Sienkiewicz 38
Polish journalist, Nobel Prize-winning novelist, and philan… 1846–1916Related quotes
“There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.”
Book III, Ch. 2
Attributed
“To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.”
Source: Montaigne: Essays
“Duty is with us ever; and evermore forbids us to be idle.”
Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Knight of the Royal Axe, or Prince of Libanus, p. 343; This has also been published in some editions as "To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities…"
Context: Duty is with us ever; and evermore forbids us to be idle. To work with the hands or brain, according to our acquirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title.
Letter to the editor of The New York Times Saturday Book Review (August 1901), as quoted in Joseph Conrad: A Life (2007) by Zdzisław Najder, translated by Halina Najder, p. 315
Speech to Financial Analysts of Philadelphia, February 15, 2001 ( http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20010215.html)