How we cite our quotes: (Part.Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I just ran loose, sort of in training to be the village idiot [...] the way people lived didn't make no sense to me. Out here I can grow like I want." (2.12.36-38)
For all of his prying ideas out of people's minds, Lone is something of an anti-philosopher. He grows or evolves like he wants, and that's all there is to it. Maybe that's why he's described as "feeble-minded." This is where More Than Human starts off, philosophically speaking.
Quote #2
"We'll defend ourselves [...] We'll just do whatever comes naturally." (2.14.22)
Philosophers and scientists have argued for millennia over what counts as natural behavior, but Gerry doesn't hesitate. When Stern asks him what comes next for the gestalt, Gerry gives this answer, linking natural behavior to self-preservation. Darwin would be proud.
Quote #3
What the hell is morality, anyway? (2.14.66)
Yeah, seriously, what is it, dude? You're on your way to lie to the cops about killing the woman who was effectively your mother. Self-doubt is definitely not Gerry's forte.
Quote #4
"I was going to discover something and bring it to humanity, not for humanity's sake, but so that they would [...] ask me to play the piano at the officers' club and slap me on the back and . . . look at me when I came in. That's all I wanted." (3.14.95)
Is Hip trying to win American Idol or what? On a more serious note (ha, ha), his drive for popularity stopped him from finding a higher purpose or ethos.
Quote #5
Define: Morals: Society's code for individual survival [...] Ethics: An individual's code for society's survival. (3.16.45-47)
This is Hip writing his own dictionary as he tries to figure out how to cure Gerry's childish vengefulness. In other words, morals are what groups instruct individuals to follow. Ethics are what individuals instruct groups to follow. Both, according to Hip, are for the sake of survival.
Quote #6
He has no society; yet he has. He has no species; he is his own species. Could he—should he chose a code that would serve all of humanity? (3.16.51-52)
Hip's brain is nearly blowing fuses at this point. As a gestalt life form, Hip reasons Gerry is above Homo sapiens, but he also realizes that both life forms are still part of the same society: humanity. What's a gestalt to do?
Quote #7
[The ethos] is a code which requires belief rather than obedience. (3.17.11)
A few moments before Hip places this line in his mind for Gerry to read, Hip wondered if Gerry should choose a code to serve all humanity. But if a code defines what you "should" do, what defines the "should" by which you pick which code to follow in the first place? That circular trap seems to be why Hip says the ethos requires faith rather than obedience. He's a real smart cookie, if you haven't figured that out already.
Quote #8
[The ethos] is a greater survival than your own, or my species, or yours. What it is really is a reverence for your sources and your posterity [...] Help humanity, Gerry. (3.17.12)
Gerry previously chose self-preservation, but here Hip advocates for him to choose social morality. This stuff is getting so brainy we're running out of jokes.
Quote #9
And when there are enough of your kind, your ethics will be their morals. And when their morals no longer suit their species, you or another ethical being will create new ones that vault still farther up the main stream, reverencing you, reverencing those who bore you and the ones who bore them (3.17.14)
Hip argues that ethics, once widely adopted, solidify into habitual morals. It then takes a new ethical thinker to leap ahead in the evolutionary stream to break through to a new code. All ethics, he says, should be based on reverence for life past, present, and future. Gerry's acceptance of this is what leads the rest of Homo Gestalt to finally contact him so that his gestalt can join a society where this sort of view is the ordinary morality. That's probably why Part 3 is called 'Morality' and not 'Ethics.'
Quote #10
Their memories, their projections and computations flooded in to Gerry, until at last he knew their nature and their function; and he knew why the ethos he had learned was too small a concept. For here at last was power which could not corrupt; for such an insight could not be used for its own sake, or against itself. Here was why and how humanity existed, troubled and dynamic, sainted by the touch of its own great destiny. Here was the withheld hand as thousands died, when by their death millions might live. And here, too, was the guide, the beacon, for such times as humanity might be in danger; here was the Guardian of Whom all humans knew—not an exterior force, nor an awesome Watcher in the sky, but a laughing thing with a human heart and reverence for its human origins, smelling of sweat and new-turned earth rather than suffused with the pale odor of sanctity. (3.21.27)
Once humanity—everyone bleshing together—honors its past, present, and future, the novel concludes, it can be an incorruptible self-governing force. Sounds easy enough.