Editing Arthur Balfour (section)

==Writings and academic achievements==
As a philosopher, Balfour formulated the basis for the [[evolutionary argument against naturalism]]. Balfour argued the Darwinian premise of selection for reproductive fitness cast doubt on scientific naturalism, because human cognitive facilities that would accurately perceive truth could be less advantageous than adaptation for evolutionarily useful illusions.<ref>{{cite book|first=John |last=Gray|title=The Immortalization Commission|url=https://archive.org/details/immortalizationc0000gray |url-access=registration |date=2011|publisher=Doubleday Canada |isbn=978-0-385-66789-0}}</ref>

As he says:

{{blockquote|[There is] no distinction to be drawn between the development of reason and that of any other faculty, physiological or psychical, by which the interests of the individual or the race are promoted. From the humblest form of nervous irritation at the one end of the scale, to the reasoning capacity of the most advanced races at the other, everything without exception (sensation, instinct, desire, volition) has been produced directly or indirectly, by natural causes acting for the most part on strictly utilitarian principles. Convenience, not knowledge, therefore, has been the main end to which this process has tended.|Arthur Balfour{{sfn|Balfour|1915|p=68}} }}

He was a member of the [[Society for Psychical Research]], a society studying [[psychic]] and [[paranormal phenomena]], and was its president from 1892 to 1894.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lycett|first=Andrew|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hN9aK1yW1OkC&pg=PA427|title=The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes|location=New York|publisher=Simon and Schuster|date=2008|page=427|isbn=978-0-7432-7525-5}}</ref> In 1914, he delivered the [[Gifford Lectures]] at the [[University of Glasgow]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Balfour |first=Arthur James|title=Theism and Humanism: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of Glasgow, 1914|url=https://archive.org/details/theismandhumani00balfgoog/page/n7|year=1915|publisher=Hodder and Stoughton, George H. Doran Company|display-authors=0}}</ref> which formed the basis for his book ''[[Theism and Humanism]]'' (1915).<ref>{{cite web|last=Madigan|first=Tim|url=https://philosophynow.org/issues/81/The_Paradoxes_of_Arthur_Balfour |title=The Paradoxes of Arthur Balfour|website=Philosophy Now|issue=81|date=2010}}</ref>

===Views on race===

In 1906, during a House of Commons debate, Balfour argued that the disenfranchisement of the blacks in South Africa was not immoral. He said:<ref name="PS"/>

{{blockquote|We have to face the facts. Men are not born equal, the white and black races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different capacities which education cannot and will not change.}}
 
Political scholar [[Yousef Munayyer]] has claimed that Arthur Balfour's antisemitism played a role in the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, citing Balfour's presiding over, as prime minister, the passage of the [[Aliens Act 1905]] that mainly aimed to restrict Jewish immigration to Britain from Eastern Europe.<ref name="PS">{{cite web
|url=https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232119|title=It's Time To Admit That Arthur Balfour Was A White Supremacist — And An Anti-Semite Too|publisher=Palestine Studies|work=Yousef Munayyer|date=1 November 2017|accessdate=19 April 2023}}</ref> Balfour had written in 1919, in his introduction to [[Nahum Sokolow]]'s ''History of Zionism'', that the Zionist movement would:<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DLPpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA11|title=Britain's Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives, 1917–1948|first=Michael J. |last=Cohen|publisher=Routledge|year=2014|isbn=978-1-317-91364-1 |accessdate=21 April 2023}}</ref>

{{blockquote|mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body [the Jews] which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb.}}