Commonplace Book

'...if we are not to devise means to better nature, if we are not to use our intelligence for purposes more benign than those of the pre-human and sub-human creation, I can form no notion of the proper use of mind at all. You may tell me that the inexorable law of nature has provided for progress by the simple means of preserving the fittest to survive, and that in human society we merely follow the same methods. But I say that the laws of nature can offer the soul no criterion for conduct. I only exist to temper the occurrences of nature, to deflect them to my own needs, and to alter my own human nature continually for the better. I do not know what the soul is, but I know that it exists; and I know that its admonitions form a more beautiful sanction for conduct than the primitive code of evolution taken alone...'

from The Courtesy of Nature, a piece in The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman