I do not see that any good can
come from killing our relations in battle.
— Bhagavad Gita, 1:31,
in the translation of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.
I'd lay down my life for two
brothers or eight cousins.
— J. B. S. Haldane (1892 - 1964),
showing a mathematical geneticist's view of altruism.
As man advances in civilization
and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell
each individual that he ought to extend his social instinct and sympathies to all
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.
— Charles Darwin, The Descent
of Man (1871), as quoted by Ashley Montagu, On Being Human, pp 23-24.
After much consideration, it
is my mature conclusion, contrary to Herbert Spencer, that the co-operative forces
are biologically the more important and vital. The balance between the co-operative
and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively
close. Under many conditions the co-operative forces lose. In the long run, however,
the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger. If co-operation
had not been the stronger force, the more complicated animals, whether arthropods
or vertebrates, could not have evolved from simpler ones, and there would have been
no men to worry each other with their distressing and biologically foolish wars.
While I know of no laboratory experiments that make a direct test of this problem,
I have come to this conclusion by studying the implications of many experiments
which bear on both sides of the problem and from considering the trends of organic
evolution in nature.
— Warder C. Allee, 'Where Angels
Fear to Tread', Science, 97, 1943: 521, quoted by Ashley Montagu, On Being
Human, pp 41-42.
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