A good many religions preach for obedience to the commandment “increase and multiply,” which on the other hand is a cause of violence and war they preach against. So these words of Thomas Henry Huxley need to be understood:
One of the most essential conditions, if not the chief cause, of the struggle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without limit, which man shares with all living things. It is notable that “increase and multiply” is a commandment traditionally much older than the ten; and that it is, perhaps, the only one which has been spontaneously and ex animo obeyed by the great majority of the human race. But, in civilised society, the inevitable result of such obedience is the reestablishment, in all its intensity, of that struggle for existence - the war of each against all - the mitigation or abolition of which was the chief end of social organisation. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 305.)
For a brief biography of Thomas Henry Huxley, click here.
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