Quote#Self
If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems ...…
Quote byHerbert Spencer · 1820–1903
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Part I: The Data of Ethics, Ethics (New York:1915), § 68, p. 187.
English (original)
If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems ... self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.
— Herbert Spencer
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Evil perpetually tends to disappear.
Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation.
The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is …
The current opinion that science and poetry are opposed is a delusion.
Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity.