The Law of Biogenesis (1914)

AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard

PUBLICATION: The Law of Biogenesis: Being Two Lessons on the Origin of Human Nature. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1914.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnnmtq&view=1up&seq=9

KEYWORDS: animals, ethics, evolution, food

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In these two lectures, Moore explains evolutionary theory with respect to both the human body and the human mind. He is particularly keen to show that our “instincts and impulses … are heritages from our prehistoric ancestors” (12), as Mary E. Marcy puts it in her introduction to the volume. Moore traces the common origin of all (kinds of) animals, human and nonhuman, and thus are like each other, despite appearances to the contrary. The second of the two lectures includes a short section on “Flesh Eating,” in which Moore insists that by instinct and inclination, humans are actually vegan, as “the human child” testifies to with its instinctual preference “for the bloodless diet” (92). Moore believes that it was only

after the invention of fire, or, at least, after the beginning of the use of fire, that man acquired the practice of using the flesh of other animals as food. Man originally lived on fruits, nuts, roots, leaves and birds' eggs. This is shown by the architecture of his mouth and digestive organs, and by the child's natural preference for fruits and nuts. It is indicated also by the fact that man has been derived from animals that live in this way, and by the further fact that man's body is naturally unprovided with means for catching other animals for food (91).

Violence toward other humans and nonhumans is another characteristic that Moore traces to our evolutionary origins:

The club was the first weapon of the savage. And for thousands of years the club must have been man's only weapon. Before the invention of the club, man was unarmed, like other animals. The club gave the human species a very great advantage over other species in the struggle for life. And in this tiny youngster of a few months hammering the cat with a broom-handle we see dimly that half-erect, hardly hairless ancestor of ours beating the life out of the feebler of his enemies with the limb of a tree (84).

Similarly, Moore holds that “[t]he tendency to throw stones, especially at strangers, cats, and other animals foreign to him, the snow-balling of peddlers, and the strong love in every boy's heart for the bow and arrow, are probably recurrences in the individual of tendencies which once actuated the race” (102). Generally, for Moore,

[t]he child is a savage just as the higher races of men were savages in their infancy. The child has the emotions of the savage, the conceptions of the world common among savages, and the desires, pastimes, and ambitions of the savage. It hates work, and delights in hunting, fishing and fighting, like other savages. The hero of the child is the bully, just as the demigod of primitive man is a blood-letting Caesar or Achilles. Savages cry easily, are amused at simple things, love toys and pets, and are notoriously unreliable – in all of these particulars being much like the young of the more mature races of men (70).

Hence the importance of ethics that allows humans to control “wayward impulses,” which are “mere survivals from our savage ancestors,” and to “change our character by weeding out the undesirable parts of our nature and giving the better parts a chance to grow” (122).

 

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