Evolution and Humanitarianism (1913)

AUTHOR: Moore, J. Howard

PUBLICATION: “Evolution and Humanitarianism.” The National Humane Review  Vol. I no. 1 (January 1913): 4.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112087604010&view=1up&seq=8

The short article is an abbreviated and condensed version of a paper that Moore read at the “36th Annual Meeting of the American Humane Association.” Moore begins by reminding his readers that evolution is an ongoing process and that, in fact, humanity is still “in its larval stage.” The “Golden Ages” are not of the past but of the future. He concedes that morality and ethics, too, have evolved, so that humanity has reached a stage that Moore calls “the Anthropocentric stage of evolution,” a state of colorblindness in which the “highest men and women recognize no 'foreigners' – no black men nor white men, no orange nor brown – only brothers.”

Except for a few individual exceptions, however, “the ethical relations are by men not extended seriously beyond the bounds of their own species.” Nonhuman animals “may be attacked, beaten, starved, killed, eaten, deceived, skinned alive, shot down for pastime, cut to pieces out of curiosity, or compelled to undergo any other victimization any one can think of or is disposed to rain upon them.” Accordingly, the goal of any humanitarianism must be to achieve what Moore calls “Zoocentricism,” the inclusion of nonhuman animals in “Universal Brotherhood.”

The way to achieve this goal is by means of educating the young, the “teaching of morals and humanity in the schools.” Moore is convinced that, consistent with the rules of evolution, the “20th and 21st centuries are going to see sweeping improvements in the realm of morals.” All thought and action will eventually conform to the “Golden Rule,” which, Moore is adamant, “will certainly spread its pitying wings over that larger fraternity which is destined finally to form on this earth – the Brotherhood of All.”