Science Quote by Arthur Keith

Keith is trying to naturalize morality by smuggling it into biology. The phrase "Universalist feeling" sounds lofty and humane, but he treats it like a measurable organ: most people have it, therefore it must be innate, therefore evolution must have installed it for a reason. That chain of logic is less a discovery than a persuasive maneuver. By framing ethical concern as an inherited trait, he gives it the prestige of science and the inevitability of "Nature's scheme", a phrase that quietly turns evolution into a kind of author with intentions.

The context matters. Keith wrote in an era when evolutionary explanations were being drafted for nearly everything: altruism, religion, patriotism, even prejudice. As a scientist moving in early 20th-century debates about heredity, social cohesion, and human difference, he’s also making a political bet. If universal sympathy is "inborn", it can be positioned as a corrective to crude Social Darwinist readings that glorified competition; cooperation becomes not sentimental but adaptive. Yet the subtext cuts both ways. Calling it a "feeling" rather than a principle implies something partial and fragile, present in degrees, absent in some. That opens the door to ranking populations or individuals by their supposed natural capacity for empathy, a move that sits uncomfortably close to the period’s eugenic temptations.

What makes the quote work is its calm, confident slide from observation to destiny. "Prevalence suggests" is hedged, but "must be" is a verdict. He’s not just describing human nature; he’s recruiting evolution as a moral endorsement.