18. John Fiske’s 1874 recognition that nurturing created our moral sense

There are many truths, like integrative meaning, that all humans are aware of but have had to practice denying, so it is not a case of someone like Schrödinger or Smuts or Koestler ‘discovering’ integrative meaning, rather it is a case of them being, as Berdyaev said, ‘fearless’ enough to admit it.

The truth that our species once lived in an innocent, cooperative, harmonious state is another truth that we all actually know but have had to deny because to accept it without being able to explain our present corrupt, extremely upset angry, egocentric and alienated state would be psychologically unbearable. For example, our commonly used words ‘innocence’ and ‘naive’ are in effect our acknowledgment that we have become corrupted. Since the regularly occurring themes in our mythologies can only be coming from our species’ collective awareness, the fact that all mythologies recognise an idyllic past for our species is powerful evidence that there must have been such a time.

As with integrative meaning and an idyllic past, so the all-important role nurturing plays in our own upbringing is another truth that all humans are actually aware of but have, in the main, had to deny because of its criticising and condemning implications. As has been pointed out, since humans unavoidably became upset no parent has been able to adequately nurture their offspring and no child has been able to receive the amount of nurturing its instincts expect. The ‘nature versus nurture’ debate is really about the need to have some way of denying the truth of the immense importance of nurturing in our upbringing—we could say, ‘no, our character is not nurture-dependent, we are all simply a product of our genes’. As has been mentioned, almost every ailment humans have is similarly evasively blamed on genes. Even the phrase ‘nature versus nurture’ has become a description that is too close to the truth and so the word ‘nurture’ is increasingly being replaced by the much more dishonest but far less confronting word ‘environment’—people now talk of the influence of nature, or our genes, versus the influence of environment in the formation of character.

Since nurturing is so important in our own lives then clearly it must have an historical significance otherwise why would it have become so important for all humans now. When casting around for what was the main influence in the emergence of the human species it doesn’t take long to see that nurturing must have played a big part—that is as long as you are not afraid of the implications of such an idea. As with coming up with the idea of integrative meaning, or the idea that we have a cooperative heritage, hitting upon the idea of nurturing as being the key influence in making us human is not some special, brilliant ‘discovery’, rather it is simply a case of not having denied an important truth that we all actually know.

While we have had to deny any acknowledgment of the differences in alienation between humans because it would have led to unjust condemnation of those who are no longer innocent, the truth is there are very great differences in degrees of upset and thus Page 89 of
PDF Version alienation between humans, and it is the lack of alienation, the lack of the need to deny truth, that is what is important in being able to find knowledge. There has been so much emphasis on a person’s level of intelligence quotient or IQ in terms of measuring their ability to think effectively because obviously intelligence is nowhere near as confronting an issue as our degree of soundness. The truth however is the average IQ of humans today is quite adequate for thinking effectively. The really important measure for effective thinking is a person’s level of alienation but again such a truth has been unbearable while we couldn’t explain our upset, corrupted condition. Richard Buckminster Fuller, the architect and inventor of the geodesic dome, spoke the unbearable truth when he said, ‘There is no such thing as genius, some children are just less damaged than others’. R.D. Laing was no less forthright when he said, ‘Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.’s if possible’ (The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967, p.49 of 156).

Also upset humans are, as we can now explain, extremely egocentric and competitive, desperately in need of self-affirmation. Being so insecure, upset humans are constantly searching for reinforcement, constantly searching for anything that will make them feel good about themselves and thus free of the guilt of their corrupted condition. In science this insecurity means that scientists are forever wanting to have their theories accepted, their papers published and to win as many accolades as they possibly can. Given this mindset, who came up with a ‘discovery’ and who didn’t is all-important. This egocentric and competitive attitude has been a valuable motivational driving force for humans while they lacked the ability to understand why they were good and not bad, but the truth is it has been a very great sickness. Thankfully, with understanding of the human condition found, this immense insecurity will disappear from our species’ make-up as the understanding is digested over a generation or two. In the meantime we can understand, as has just been explained, that the whole competitive mindset is meaningless because we are all essentially defined by the extent of our alienation; to a very large degree the extent of our alienation sets a limit on what we can effectively achieve and contribute to society and humanity as a whole. Claims that ‘anyone can achieve anything they desire’ was a very necessary motivational positive spin we had to put on our human-condition-afflicted state while we couldn’t understand, confront and ameliorate that condition, however it was essentially a lie, as all the many, many denials we have had to practice have been. In the new human-condition-understood new world this truth that our alienation defines us will be the most hotly contested and resisted truth of all, with all manner of ‘evidence’ put forward to try to refute it—‘what about so and so, he was an absolute neurotic and look at the wonderful contribution he made’—but eventually everyone will realise and accept that it is essentially true. For example we will recognise that even what we were able to contribute in the seemingly entirely physical domain, such as in sport, was essentially limited by our degree of psychological alienation, so that for example the success of one team compared to the success of another was defined by their players’ and coaches’, and even supporters’, relative degrees of alienation. This truth that we are essentially defined by our level of alienation is in fact the core truth behind the long-held anticipation that ‘the meek…inherit the earth’ (Matt. 5:5); ‘many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first’ (Matt. 19:30, 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30). In the old human-condition-denying world the most upset—namely the most angry, egocentric and alienated—so often tended to dominate because they were the most determined to prove their worth artificially through ‘success’, power, dominance, fame, fortune and glory, leaving the more innocent in their wake through brutally repressing, oppressing and ignoring them and/or through the more innocent finding themselves unable to participate in such an ugly environment. However Page 90 of
PDF Version in the new human-condition-understood world that order is suddenly reversed with the more innocent coming to the fore everywhere in terms of at last being safely able to, and therefore needing to, recognise what is sound and what is unsound thinking and behaviour. When the truth of the human condition arrives everything suddenly changes, all the dishonesty is exposed and therefore rendered obsolete. It is the problem of this sudden exposure that understanding of the human condition inevitably and necessarily brings, and how we are to cope with it, that is the subject of the latter sections of this book. Importantly, what will be explained and revealed is that alienation is itself now utterly irrelevant with every human being able to fully participate in humanity’s great exodus from the horror and darkness of the human condition. Everyone will be able to participate in such a meaningful and satisfying way now in humanity’s journey that they will be filled with so much excitement that they will hardly be able to endure that amount of enjoyment in their lives.

What this all means in terms of having put forward the nurturing explanation for human origins, and many other explanations in this book, is that I am not better or more special, or more brilliant than any other human, only sufficiently free of alienation to acknowledge and think effectively about truths that all humans actually know but usually have to live in denial of—the many quotes that have been included are there to supply some evidence that, despite our denials, the concepts that are being brought forward are universal truths. In fact having necessarily been relatively less upset in my childhood and being therefore less alienated I am less special than humans who haven’t been as sheltered from humanity’s upsetting battle and as a result are more upset and alienated because clearly I have not participated in that heroic battle as much as they have. Upset is not an evil state but an immensely heroic one and therefore those who are more upset are more heroic, more special in having contributed more of themselves to the battle. Understanding the human condition brings complete humility to the lives of all humans—it allows each one of us to understand how wonderful every human is. It allows us to love ourselves and each other fully, equally and without reservation.

If the role of nurturing in human origins is really a self-evident truth and not some extraordinary and special ‘discovery’, as is being asserted, then it could be expected that at some stage others would have at least tried to put the idea forward, and in fact that is the case. As briefly mentioned earlier, only 15 years after Darwin presented his idea of natural selection in his 1859 book The Origin of Species, an American named John Fiske put forward the nurturing explanation for our moral sense. As will be documented below, while others did try to take up and support Fiske’s idea, eventually it was left to die and virtually disappear from scientific literature and discourse. Like so many of the ideas put forward in this book that are extremely confronting of our species’ now upset state, it is only now that the greater dignifying understanding of our human condition is found that it becomes safe to acknowledge the role nurturing has played in both our own lives and in human origins.

Before presenting Fiske’s account it should be mentioned that from time to time, as would be expected, people have alluded to the nurturing process, such as: ‘the basis of all primate social groups is the bond between mother and infant. That bond constitutes the social unit out of which all higher orders of society are constructed’ (Origins, Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, 1977, p.61 of 264); ‘Man is born of love and exists by reason of a love more continuous than in any other form of life’ (anthropologist Loren Eiseley from his essay An Evolutionist Looks at Modern Man, c 1959); and ‘But, far more deeply, [the human brain] depends on the long preparation of human childhood…The real vision of the human being is the child wonder [the nurtured and thus sound adult], the Virgin [the relatively innocent and thus neurosis-free mother] and Child, the Holy [the word ‘holy’ literally means whole Page 91 of
PDF Version or entire, i.e. alienation-free, as it has the same origins as the Saxon word ‘whole’] Family’ (The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski, 1973, p.425 of 448).

Working backwards from the present, references to Fiske’s work include a summary prepared by linguist Robin Allott on some current biological explanations for the origins of human love. (Allott’s paper, ‘Evolutionary Aspects of Love and Empathy’, published in 1992 in the Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems [Vol.15, No.4 353-370], can be viewed at <http://cogprints.org/3393/1/lovempat.htm>.) Allott first acknowledges mechanistic science’s deep psychological denial of the subject of love, saying ‘Love has been described as a taboo subject, not serious, not appropriate for scientific study’. He then tries to define love but finds it virtually impossible to find a definition for it. He then asks ‘how did human love evolve?’ He answers perceptively that it must have evolved out of the ‘mother/infant bond’. In explaining this bond Allott presents an explanation that will also be put forward by journalist Betty McCollister in the coming Section 23, ‘Nurturing now becomes a priority’, which argues that with the size of our brain increasing and our skull size with it, our human ancestors had to give birth to their offspring increasingly prematurely so that the skull was sufficiently under-developed to fit through the pelvis, leaving the remainder of the skull’s growth to be finished after birth. The result of this development, it is claimed, was that these increasingly ‘unfinished’ and helpless infants required increasingly intensive and extensive care. Allott and McCollister argue that having been thus developed this nurturing care is now an instinctive expectation of infants and if not received leaves infants seriously psychologically distressed. As will be emphasised when the McCollister version of this explanation for the importance of nurturing is reviewed, the real significance of nurturing of training our infants in unconditional love is not being recognised in this account. In Allott’s paper, apart from saying ‘Love then would become essential…insofar as the success of the group…depended on effective coherence of the group’, altruism, morality or training in cooperative, integrative selflessness aren’t mentioned—that is except for this one reference: ‘Amongst psychologists, Stanley Hall (see Ross, Dorothy, 1972, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet) in the United States attracted a good deal of opprobrium [abuse] by making love a central topic…“altruistic love”, he suggested, developed in the course of evolution from the necessities of maternity.’

Following the trail of this nurturing-of-love idea that has been referred to, the American Granville Stanley Hall (1844—1924) has been described as ‘the founder of organized psychology as a science and profession, the father of child psychology, and as a national leader of educational reform in America’ (PSI Cafe—psychology resource site, and Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology). The reference to ‘altruistic love’ developing ‘from the necessities of maternity’ in Dorothy Ross’ book about Hall appears on page 262 (of 482). Ross writes that Hall was concerned with ‘constructing a synthetic view of psychology along evolutionary lines’—an undertaking Hall completed and enunciated in 1896. Relevantly, Ross reveals ‘an important catalyst’ in Hall’s endeavour ‘was a more popular biological treatise, Henry Drummond’s Ascent of Man, published in 1894 from his Lowell Lectures of the previous year’. Ross writes: ‘Drummond presented evolution as “the final revelation of the unity of the world” which could…“explain everything by one great end.” To Darwin’s principle of natural selection by means of the struggle for survival, he added another principle that he considered far more important“the Struggle for the Life of Others,” or “altruistic Love,” which developed in the course of evolution from the necessities of maternity. The human mother he regarded as virtually the highest product of evolution.’ Interestingly, in terms of the theme of existence of love having been acknowledged by other early scientists, there is a footnote on page 262 of Ross’ book saying ‘Hall also knew Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson’s, The Evolution of Sex (London: Walter Scott, 1889), which likewise described love as the universal dynamic in nature and altruistic love as the real law of evolution.’

Page 92 of
PDF Version Henry Drummond (1851—1897) was a Scottish scientist, evangelist and author. In Drummond’s 1894 book Ascent of Man, his account of how ‘altruistic love’ developed ‘from the necessities of maternity’ is given in the chapter titled ‘The Evolution of a Mother’. The following is a condensation of this chapter: ‘The…pinnacle of the temple of Nature…is…The Mammalia, THE MOTHERS…[it is] That care for others, from which the Mammalia take their name…All elementary animals are orphans…But as we draw nearer the apex of the animal kingdom, the spectacle of a protective Maternity looms into view…[the] love of offspring…Now, before Maternal Love can be evolved out of this first care…Nature must…cause fewer young to be produced at a birth…have these young…hidden…in the body…[so that they are] produced in such outward form that their Mothers will recognize them, …make them helpless so that for a time they must dwell with her…and…she…dwell with them…In the Mammal child…infancy reaches its last perfection. Housed, protected, sumptuously fed, the luxurious children keep to their Mother’s side for months and years, and only quit the parental roof when their filial education is complete…[these] drawings together of parent and child are the inevitable preliminaries of the domestication of the Human Race…On the physiological side, the name of this impelling power is lactation; on the ethical side, it is Love. And there is no escape henceforth from communion between Mother and child…Mother teaches a Child, but in a far deeper sense it is the Child who teaches the Mother…Maternity existed in humble forms [in other animals], but not yet Motherhood. To create Motherhood and all that enshrines…Tenderness, gentleness, unselfishness, love, care, self-sacrifice…required a human child …The only thing that remains now is…that they [human mother and child] shall both be kept in that school as long as it is possible…[to] give affection time to grow…No animal except Man was permitted to have his education thus prolonged…Why…The question has been answered for us by Mr. John Fiske, and the world here owes to him one of the most beautiful contributions ever made to the Evolution of Man. We know what this delay means ethically—it was necessary for moral training that the human child should have the longest possible time by its Mother’s side—but what determines it on the physical side?…a human brain…[where relatively speaking] no storage of habit has been handed down from the past…the higher brain is comparatively a new thing in the world…[and] are in perfect order only after a considerable interval of adjustment and elaboration. Now Infancy…means the fitting up of this extra machinery within the brain…Childhood in its early stage is a series of installations…In the savage state, where the after-life is simple, the adjustments [for life] are made with comparative ease and speed; but as we rise in the scale of civilization the necessary period of Infancy lengthens step by step until in the case of the most highly educated man, where adjustments must be made to a wide intellectual environment, the age of tutelage extends for almost a quarter of a century. The use of all this to morals, the reactions especially upon the Mother, are too obvious…A sheep knows its lamb only while it is a lamb. The affection in these cases, fierce enough while it lasts, is soon forgotten, and the traces it left in the brain are obliterated before they have furrowed into habit…To the human mother alone was given a curriculum prolonged enough to let her graduate in the school of the affections…Patience, Carefulness, Tenderness, Sympathy, and Self-Sacrifice…It may or may not be that the child will acquire its Mother’s virtue. But unselfishness has scored; its child has proved itself fitter to survive than the child of Selfishness…However short the earliest infancies, however feeble the sparks they fanned, however long heredity took to gather fuel enough for a steady flame, it is certain that once this fire began to warm the cold hearth of Nature and give humanity a heart, the most stupendous task of the past was accomplished. A softened pressure of an uncouth hand, a human gleam in an almost animal eye, an endearment in an inarticulate voice—feeble things enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope of the human race. “From of old we have heard the monition, ‘Except ye be as babes ye cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven’; the latest science now shows us—though in a very different sense of the words—that unless we had been as babes, the ethical phenomena which give all its significance to the phrase ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ would have Page 93 of
PDF Version been non-existent for us. Without the circumstances of Infancy we might have become formidable among animals through sheer force of sharp-wittedness. But except for these circumstances we should never have comprehended the meaning of such phrases as ‘self-sacrifice’ or ‘devotion.’ The phenomena of social life would have been omitted from the history of the world, and with them the phenomena of ethics and religion.”’

Drummond acknowledges Fiske as the originator of the idea of the long infancy creating a sense of morality in humans, sourcing the remarkable quote that concludes the above extract to Fiske’s 1874 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy: based on the Doctrine of Evolution (Vol.IV, Part II, ch.XXII ‘Genesis of Man, Morally’, p.162).

To introduce him more fully, John Fiske (1842—1901) was an American philosopher, historian and author. In the preface to one of his books he wrote that ‘The detection of the part played by the lengthening of infancy in the genesis of the human race is my own especial contribution to the Doctrine of Evolution’ (Through Nature to God, 1899). The following is a condensation of the ‘Genesis of Man, Morally’ chapter from Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy: ‘There are two things, said [Immanuel] Kant, which fill me with awe…the starry heavens above us, and the moral law within us…in the study of the moral sense we contemplate the last and noblest product of evolution…it is well to state, at the outset, that the existence of a moral sense and moral intuitions in civilized man is fully granted…emotions, leading him to seek the right and avoid the wrong… actions deemed right are those which conduce to the fulness of life of the Community…We approve of certain actions and disapprove of certain actions quite instinctively. We shrink from stealing or lying as we shrink from burning our fingers…In short, there is in our psychical structure a moral sense which is as quickly and directly hurt by wrong-doing or the idea of wrong-doing…It is now time to propose an answer to the question…How did social evolution originate?…In the permanent family we have the germ of society…while the nervous connections accompanying a simple intelligence are already organized at birth, the nervous connections accompanying a complex intelligence are chiefly organized after birth. Thus there arise the phenomena of infancy…the period during which the nerve connections…are becoming permanently established. Now this period, which only begins to exist when the intelligence is considerably complex, becomes longer and longer as the intelligence increases in complexity. In the human race it is much longer than in any other race of mammals, and it is much longer in the civilized man than in the savage. Indeed among the educated classes…it may be…more than a quarter of a century…Throughout the animal kingdom the period of infancy is correlated with feelings of parental affection…The prolongation [of infancy] must… have been gradual, and the same increase of intelligence to which it was due must also have prolonged the correlative parental feelings, by associating them more and more with anticipations and memories. The concluding phases of this long change may be witnessed in the course of civilization. Our parental affections now endure through life…I believe we have now reached a… satisfactory explanation of…Sociality…The prolongation of infancy accompanying the development of intelligence, and the correlative extension of parental feelings…The prolonged helplessness of the offspring must keep the parents together for longer and longer periods in successive epochs… primeval…family groups…differ widely…from modern families…The sociality is but nascent: infants are drowned, wives are beaten to death…in modern families evanescent barbarism shows itself in internal quarrels…Savages are not unfrequently capable of extreme devotion and self-sacrifice when the interests of the tribe are at stake…But…savage virtues are, in general, confined to the clan. The…savage…is also capable of the most fiendish cruelty…toward the members of another clan…Fijis, are exceptionally ferocious…though the savage has the germ of a moral sense, which prompts him…to postpone his personal welfare to that of his clan, he can by no means be accredited with a fully developed moral sense…In asserting that we possess an instinctive and inherited moral sense, it is not meant that we possess, anterior to education and experience, an organic preference for certain particular good actions, and an organic repugnance to certain particular bad actions. We do not inherit a horror of stealing, any Page 94 of
PDF Version more than the Hindu inherits the horror of killing cattle. We simply inherit a feeling which leads us, when we are told that stealing is wrong, to shun it, without needing to be taught that it is detrimental to society…the civilized man surpasses the lowest savage by a far greater interval than that by which the lowest savage surpasses the highest ape; just as the gulf between the cerebral capacity of the Englishman and that of the non-Aryan dweller in Hindustan is six times greater than the gulf which similarly divides the non-Aryan Hindu from the gorilla…In this new suggestion as to the causes and the effects of the prolonged infancy of man, I believe we have a suggestion as fruitful as the one which we owe to Mr. Wallace.’ The chapter then concludes with the quote Drummond used to end his dissertation.

Fiske was right in recognising the immense significance of the long infancy and resulting exceptionally maternal mothers as providing the basis for the development of a sense of morality in humans. He has recognised the basic elements of the love-indoctrination process. In 1874, which as emphasised was only 15 years after Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published, we see that Fiske described it as being ‘the latest science’. Ross accurately recognised the full significance of Fiske’s explanation when she recorded Drummond’s 1894 assessment of it, saying, ‘To Darwin’s principle of natural selection by means of the struggle for survival, he [Drummond] added another principle that he considered far more important—“the Struggle for the Life of Others,” or “altruistic Love,” which developed in the course of evolution from the necessities of maternity’. Drummond recognised firstly that unconditional selflessness or ‘altruistic Love’ is the very theme of existence with natural selection being of less significance as merely a means for its development, and secondly that the all-important unconditionally selfless ‘altruistic Love’ was able to be ‘developed in the course of evolution from the necessities of maternity’.

Not long after Drummond’s 1894 re-emphasis of Fiske’s nurturing-of-love idea Hall again brought it to public attention in 1896. Following Hall’s efforts, this ‘latest science’, ‘one of the most beautiful contributions ever made to the Evolution of Man’ of the mechanism for developing the unconditionally selfless, ‘altruistic Love’ that was a ‘far more important’ ‘principle’ than Darwin’s selfish, ‘natural selection by means of the struggle for survival’, was ignored and let die—in fact, by Hall’s time it had already ‘attracted a good deal of opprobrium [abuse]’—to now be independently re-admitted and resurrected over 100 years after Fiske’s admission of the concept in 1874. As emphasised, that ideas do keep emerging is what you would expect of a universal truth; further, the fact that such an obvious universal truth hasn’t been frequently put forward is evidence of the extent of our denial of such a truth, which is in turn evidence of the magnitude of the problem of our human condition, our species’ insecurity about its loveless state—as Allott said, love has become a subject that is ‘not appropriate for scientific study’.

There are deficiencies in Fiske’s explanation of the origin of our morality, which is not surprising given the newness and scarcity of scientific knowledge in his time. ‘Prolonged infancy’ didn’t ‘accompany the development of intelligence’; rather, as will be explained in the coming Section 25, ‘Why and how did Consciousness emerge in humans?’, prolonged infancy, and the nurturing of selflessness, liberated consciousness, which only strongly developed after the love-indoctrination process was completed. The large brain didn’t develop until after the extended infancy and intense nurturing took place, as evidenced by the bonobos, who don’t have a very large brain, but are intensely nurturing and already neotenous.

How the trained love became instinctive is particularly unclear. While Drummond is specific about how the instinct for strong nurturing affections of tenderness, self-sacrifice, etc, became instinctive in mothers, he doesn’t say whether the selfless qualities become Page 95 of
PDF Version instinctive in the offspring. In fact he says, ‘It may or may not be that the child will acquire its Mother’s virtue’. On this matter, Fiske begins by saying, ‘We [humans] approve of certain actions and disapprove of certain actions quite instinctively. We shrink from stealing or lying as we shrink from burning our fingers’ and ‘there is in our psychical structure a moral sense’. However he later says: ‘In asserting that we possess an instinctive and inherited moral sense, it is not meant that we possess, anterior to education and experience, an organic preference for certain particular good actions, and an organic repugnance to certain particular bad actions. We do not inherit a horror of stealing, any more than the Hindu inherits the horror of killing cattle. We simply inherit a feeling which leads us, when we are told that stealing is wrong, to shun it, without needing to be taught that it is detrimental to society.’ This last quote seems to imply that Fiske believes the extent of our instinctive conscience doesn’t go beyond a kind of predisposition to acquiring a conscience, this despite having said, ‘We approve of certain actions and disapprove of certain actions quite instinctively’.

It is clear that both Fiske and Drummond have difficulty reconciling humans’ current morality-defying, upset, corrupted state—the fact that people can be extremely brutal and aggressive—with the view that we have moral instincts. They attempt to resolve the problem by saying these instincts for love have only emerged in relatively recent times within ‘civilized’ people who have a fading, ‘evanescent barbarism’, despite the fact this theory does not allow anything like sufficient time for altruistic training to become instinctive. Drummond says: ‘In the savage state, where the after-life is simple, the adjustments [for life] are made with comparative ease and speed; but as we rise in the scale of civilization the necessary period of Infancy lengthens step by step until in the case of the most highly educated man, where adjustments must be made to a wide intellectual environment, the age of tutelage extends for almost a quarter of a century.’ Fiske similarly notes that infancy ‘is much longer in the civilized man than in the savage. Indeed among the educated classes…it may be…more than a quarter of a century’. He proceeds to say: ‘primeval…family groups…differ widely…from modern families …The sociality is but nascent: infants are drowned, wives are beaten to death…in modern families evanescent barbarism shows itself in internal quarrels…Savages are not unfrequently capable of extreme devotion and self-sacrifice when the interests of the tribe are at stake…But…savage virtues are, in general, confined to the clan. The…savage…is also capable of the most fiendish cruelty… toward the members of another clan…Fijis, are exceptionally ferocious…though the savage has the germ of a moral sense, which prompts him…to postpone his personal welfare to that of his clan, he can by no means be accredited with a fully developed moral sense.’

Overall, what Fiske and Drummond are unaware of is what happened since we acquired an instinctive orientation to cooperative integration, namely the intervention of the immensely upsetting battle of the human condition; innocent, completely integrated man was the australopithecines who lived from 5 to 2 million years ago.

Fiske’s claimed moral superiority of ‘civilized’ people, and ‘cerebral capacity’ comparisons between the ‘Aryan’ ‘Englishman’ and the ‘Hindustan’ are false and morally abhorrent. As will be explained later, civility is the mask humans have used to conceal the full extent of our upset, human-condition-afflicted state. Indeed, to some degree, the more upset we have become, the greater need we have had for civility. As has been pointed out, there are very substantial differences in alienation between individual humans and indeed between races of humans arising from their different encounters with the necessary and heroic, but upsetting, battle of the human condition, but no human, or race of humans, is ‘better’ than or ‘superior’ to another. Understanding of the necessary but upsetting battle of the human condition entirely eliminates the concept of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ from all conceptualisation of ourselves.